"Regretfully they tell us, but verbally they can tell us to say goodbye...to you. So long, farewell, auf wiedershen, good night. I hate to go and leave this pretty sight." ("So Long, Farewell", Rodgers and Hammerstein)
Hello faithful readers! In about an hour, we are going to walk to Die Weisse for our celebration dinner. As these famous Sound of Music lyrics imply, all good things must come to an end as my five week adventure here in Salzburg ends tomorrow morning. When people ask me how I feel about going home, I always tell them I have mixed feelings. Although I am excited to see my friends, sleep in my own bed with my cat, and move into my new house four days after arriving back to the US, I am sad to leave the beautiful city of Salzburg and have enjoyed my time here.
So what have I been up to the last few days? As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent the weekend here in Salzburg. Aside from working on papers, I spent a lot of time exploring the city. On Saturday, I walked down Linzergasse (a street near where I am staying), which has great shops. I bought some souvenirs and a belly button ring at a 1 euro plus (equivalent of Dollar Tree in the US) for 3.50 euros. I also visited some churches, including the famous Dom Cathedral. I have visited a lot of churches during my five weeks abroad, and I have to say that the Dom is probably one of my favorites. There is a crypt below the cathedral that may seem creepy, but it is actually pretty cool. There is a prayer room and graves of various church leaders and figures, including John the Baptist. Also, the actual cathedral is very pretty and peaceful. On Sunday, I read for my theology class and walked around the beautiful Mirabell Gardens. The flowers themselves are very colorful, and arranged beautifully. After finishing my theology final yesterday, Lauren (my theology professor's wife) and I went on our own Sound of Music tour. We did not take the "official tour" since I was the only student who signed up and it is expensive. Instead, we took the bus and walked around the countryside where I saw the gazebo where Liesel and Rolf sing "Sixteen Going on Seventeen", walked down the path where Maria sings "I Have Confidence" (the Von Trapp house is on that road, but does not look exactly how it looks in the movie), and saw the Nonnenberg Abbey.
For those of you who are curious about my culinary adventures, let me fill you in about the delicious food I have eaten. A bunch of us went out for coffee and pastries on Monday; I had a strawberry tart and an Eiskaffe. Eiskaffee is essentially Austrian iced coffee with coffee, ice cream, and whipped cream. This drink is very rich, but good. Interesting dessert fact: Austrian whipped cream is unsweetened. Yesterday we had cheese and gelato tastings. The students in the political science class bought cheeses from different regions in Europe, and we went to three different gelato places that afternoon. I have also eaten at two delicious Indian restaurants recommended to me by my friend Sara, who spent the year here in Salzy--Bella Vita (this restaurant has both Indian and Italian food) and Bio Bistro (a vegetarian Indian restaurant).
Well, this concludes my last post here in Salzburg. Thank you for reading my blog, and I hoped you enjoyed reading about my adventures as much as I enjoyed writing about them. Auf Wiedershen!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Prague and Vienna
Hello faithful readers! As promised in my previous entry about visiting Mauthausen, this week's blog entry will be a lot happier. Because I have visited two amazing places, this weeks entry will be about my travels. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of going to these two places, let me introduce you to Prague and Vienna!
Prague: Last weekend, four other people from my program and I went to Prague. The train ride on Friday was long, and we had to change trains a few times. Once I stepped off the train, I was surrounded by a lot of U.S. restaurants and stores (i.e. McDonald's, Sephora) and old buildings. After checking into our apartment, we got dinner at a nearby restaurant where I had one of the best meals I had on my trip---angel pasta with shrimp, olives, sun dried tomatoes, and olive oil. We went back to the hotel to relax and watch the Olympics and Fear Factor on TV before going to a British pub for drinks. On Saturday we met up with a friend's friend who lives about an hour outside of Prague. Two of the girls who went with us were in Prague the previous weekend, so they went to some art museums while the other two people and I made our way to the Prague castle. Unfortunately, the line was long so we decided not to wait. However, we did go into a beautiful cathedral with amazing stained glass designed by Mooka, a famous Czech artist. We walked on the famous St. Charles bridge back to Old Town, where we shopped until we met up with the other girls for dinner. The rest of my group did a pub crawl, while I went to a local wine bar for a glass of Proseco and an ice cream shop for some gelato.
Vienna: Every Wednesday my group has gone on excursions, and our last and most recent one was this lovely capital city. Because Vienna is three and a half hours outside of Salzburg, we had to leave at 6 am. Fortunately, I slept for two hours on the bus before we stopped at a rest stop for breakfast. Our first stop was the Schonbrun Palace, where Austrian rulers such as Maria Therese (Marie Antoinette's mother), Franz Josef, and Elizabeth lived. I love visiting palaces, and I'm not quite sure how Schonbrun stacks up to Versailles (I went there last year when I was in Paris), since they are both gorgeous. My one complaint was that I could not pictures inside the palace. You'll just have to imagine huge rooms, porcelin china, a huge bed...you get the picture. After visiting the palace, we went to the gardens, which are stunning. We had lunch in downtown Vienna before heading to the Jewish museum. Though we were supposed to be at the museum at 3 pm and had maps, we got lost. Our director told us where to go, but he didn't tell us that there were two Jewish museums. The first one we went to was under rennovation, and we eventually found out by asking some locals that there was a Jewish museum in Judenplatz--which our director supposedly told us not to go to! We got there a half hour late, but I didn't feel too bad about being late since the museum was not very impressive. I loved walking around Vienna and wished I could be there for more than a day--spend more time in the gardens at Schonbrun, go to the Freud museum (must do for a psychology minor!), go to the Volkstheater, and other places that I am unaware of at the moment.
I will be in Salzburg this weekend, as we have to stay here in order to study for finals. I have two papers and a final exam before I am homeward bound. My final is for my theology class, and our professor explicitly told us we do not have to study for it as long as we have been doing the readings and paying attention in class. Today I gave a presentation in that class about Anti-Semitism (or Anti-Judaism, as my professor likes to say) in the Christian Scriptures, which I rocked--I don't know my grade, but virtually EVERYONE in my class told me I did a great job. Aside from papers, my plans for this weekend are going on the Sound of Music tour and walking around Salzburg to explore the churches and shops. If the weather is nice, I am also going to go to Mirabell gardens.
Tchuss!
Prague: Last weekend, four other people from my program and I went to Prague. The train ride on Friday was long, and we had to change trains a few times. Once I stepped off the train, I was surrounded by a lot of U.S. restaurants and stores (i.e. McDonald's, Sephora) and old buildings. After checking into our apartment, we got dinner at a nearby restaurant where I had one of the best meals I had on my trip---angel pasta with shrimp, olives, sun dried tomatoes, and olive oil. We went back to the hotel to relax and watch the Olympics and Fear Factor on TV before going to a British pub for drinks. On Saturday we met up with a friend's friend who lives about an hour outside of Prague. Two of the girls who went with us were in Prague the previous weekend, so they went to some art museums while the other two people and I made our way to the Prague castle. Unfortunately, the line was long so we decided not to wait. However, we did go into a beautiful cathedral with amazing stained glass designed by Mooka, a famous Czech artist. We walked on the famous St. Charles bridge back to Old Town, where we shopped until we met up with the other girls for dinner. The rest of my group did a pub crawl, while I went to a local wine bar for a glass of Proseco and an ice cream shop for some gelato.
Vienna: Every Wednesday my group has gone on excursions, and our last and most recent one was this lovely capital city. Because Vienna is three and a half hours outside of Salzburg, we had to leave at 6 am. Fortunately, I slept for two hours on the bus before we stopped at a rest stop for breakfast. Our first stop was the Schonbrun Palace, where Austrian rulers such as Maria Therese (Marie Antoinette's mother), Franz Josef, and Elizabeth lived. I love visiting palaces, and I'm not quite sure how Schonbrun stacks up to Versailles (I went there last year when I was in Paris), since they are both gorgeous. My one complaint was that I could not pictures inside the palace. You'll just have to imagine huge rooms, porcelin china, a huge bed...you get the picture. After visiting the palace, we went to the gardens, which are stunning. We had lunch in downtown Vienna before heading to the Jewish museum. Though we were supposed to be at the museum at 3 pm and had maps, we got lost. Our director told us where to go, but he didn't tell us that there were two Jewish museums. The first one we went to was under rennovation, and we eventually found out by asking some locals that there was a Jewish museum in Judenplatz--which our director supposedly told us not to go to! We got there a half hour late, but I didn't feel too bad about being late since the museum was not very impressive. I loved walking around Vienna and wished I could be there for more than a day--spend more time in the gardens at Schonbrun, go to the Freud museum (must do for a psychology minor!), go to the Volkstheater, and other places that I am unaware of at the moment.
I will be in Salzburg this weekend, as we have to stay here in order to study for finals. I have two papers and a final exam before I am homeward bound. My final is for my theology class, and our professor explicitly told us we do not have to study for it as long as we have been doing the readings and paying attention in class. Today I gave a presentation in that class about Anti-Semitism (or Anti-Judaism, as my professor likes to say) in the Christian Scriptures, which I rocked--I don't know my grade, but virtually EVERYONE in my class told me I did a great job. Aside from papers, my plans for this weekend are going on the Sound of Music tour and walking around Salzburg to explore the churches and shops. If the weather is nice, I am also going to go to Mirabell gardens.
Tchuss!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Witnessing History and Intolerance, Up Close and Personal
If a random stranger came up to me on the street and said, "Have you seen any acts of intolerance in the last few days?", I could say, "Not directly, but yes." I say "not directly" because I did not see individuals being intolerant to one another, but I went to a place that is a pretty obvious sign of intolerance.
On Wednesday my group visited Mauthausen, the main labor camp in Austria where prisoners were worked to death. A common saying that the guards liked to tell prisoners was that "the creametorium is the way out". When we arrived, the first thing we saw was the river were prisoners were forced to push other prisoners in--those prisoners who were pushed in the water ended up drowning. We walked up the "stairway of death" where prisoners were forced to carry 100 kilos of stone on their backs. While I can say for sure that I was winded after climbing up those stairs, I could not experience the climb the way the prisoners did as I was a) not wearing wooden shoes b) not malnourished and c) not carrying 100 kilos of stone on my back. Also, the staircase was not as even then as it was when we were there. When we got to the top, we saw memorials in many different languages to commemorate the prisoners who died in the camp. We took a self guided audio tour where I saw several barracks where the prisoners lived, the gas chamber, and the cremetorium. It seemed so surreal to me that I was seeing with my own eyes something that I had been exposed to in different forms throughout my life.
Now that I have described for you all what I saw, let me share my reflections on what I saw (hence the "witnessing" and "up close and personal" parts of this entry's title). Visiting Mauthausen was quite intense, as I walked along the paths where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were harassed, beaten, and even killed. In addition to taking a theology class about the Holocaust, I have read books and seen movies about this tragic event in history. None of the Holocaust related experiences I have had--taking a class this summer, discussing it briefly in my world religions class in high school, reading Night and Man's Search for Meaning, watching The Pianist and Schindler's List (and other documentaries I have watched for my theology class), and visiting the Holocaust memorial in Paris and the Holocaust museum in London--can do justice to seeing a very sad but real place. I realized how lucky I am to be able to eat balanced meals, sleep in my own bed, not have to do heavy labor in unbearable weather, and most importantly, not worry that I am going to be killed based on my religion, sexual orientation, or social class. After all, the people who were in concentration camps were there simply based on their religion, race or social status--Jewish, Jehovah's witness, homosexual, political prisoners, Slavs, Gypsies, and people who were antisocial. It breaks my heart that people were--and still are, sadly--persecuted and killed because of their differences. Too often, minority groups are persecuted by dominant groups for the fear that the minority will overpower the majority. Perhaps certain races, religions, or social classes have or are considered "the majority", but can't we all learn to be respectful of our differences? We may or may not have control of the identifying factors I mentioned above, but at the very least, we can respect and understand them.
Sorry for the delayed update! I got back from Prague this afternoon and have been crazy busy with reading and papers for my classes. Having said that, I will try post another entry this coming week, and I PROMISE that it will be much more upbeat than this one.
On Wednesday my group visited Mauthausen, the main labor camp in Austria where prisoners were worked to death. A common saying that the guards liked to tell prisoners was that "the creametorium is the way out". When we arrived, the first thing we saw was the river were prisoners were forced to push other prisoners in--those prisoners who were pushed in the water ended up drowning. We walked up the "stairway of death" where prisoners were forced to carry 100 kilos of stone on their backs. While I can say for sure that I was winded after climbing up those stairs, I could not experience the climb the way the prisoners did as I was a) not wearing wooden shoes b) not malnourished and c) not carrying 100 kilos of stone on my back. Also, the staircase was not as even then as it was when we were there. When we got to the top, we saw memorials in many different languages to commemorate the prisoners who died in the camp. We took a self guided audio tour where I saw several barracks where the prisoners lived, the gas chamber, and the cremetorium. It seemed so surreal to me that I was seeing with my own eyes something that I had been exposed to in different forms throughout my life.
Now that I have described for you all what I saw, let me share my reflections on what I saw (hence the "witnessing" and "up close and personal" parts of this entry's title). Visiting Mauthausen was quite intense, as I walked along the paths where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were harassed, beaten, and even killed. In addition to taking a theology class about the Holocaust, I have read books and seen movies about this tragic event in history. None of the Holocaust related experiences I have had--taking a class this summer, discussing it briefly in my world religions class in high school, reading Night and Man's Search for Meaning, watching The Pianist and Schindler's List (and other documentaries I have watched for my theology class), and visiting the Holocaust memorial in Paris and the Holocaust museum in London--can do justice to seeing a very sad but real place. I realized how lucky I am to be able to eat balanced meals, sleep in my own bed, not have to do heavy labor in unbearable weather, and most importantly, not worry that I am going to be killed based on my religion, sexual orientation, or social class. After all, the people who were in concentration camps were there simply based on their religion, race or social status--Jewish, Jehovah's witness, homosexual, political prisoners, Slavs, Gypsies, and people who were antisocial. It breaks my heart that people were--and still are, sadly--persecuted and killed because of their differences. Too often, minority groups are persecuted by dominant groups for the fear that the minority will overpower the majority. Perhaps certain races, religions, or social classes have or are considered "the majority", but can't we all learn to be respectful of our differences? We may or may not have control of the identifying factors I mentioned above, but at the very least, we can respect and understand them.
Sorry for the delayed update! I got back from Prague this afternoon and have been crazy busy with reading and papers for my classes. Having said that, I will try post another entry this coming week, and I PROMISE that it will be much more upbeat than this one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)