This past Friday was rather eventful – you’re looking at the first of three posts devoted to the events of one day.
The day began in Vienna, where we walked from the Institute over to the Treasury. Once full of money, now it’s full of a museum. That’s full of probably a billion dollars of gold and jewels. So… not much has changed, actually.
This first week back is a little crazy – starting up new classes at the University of Vienna is a big hunk of time, but we’ve also got midterms.1 We still have a bit of time for fun, though – on Wednesday, we went and saw a concert at the Musikverein, a beautiful building where I didn’t take any pictures because High Society has some powerful judgement they’ll throw your way if you do that.
But that’s not the subject of this post;2 I’m here to talk about the War Museum that we went to as a class trip on Tuesday.
Well, folks, I’m back in Austria.1 The United Kingdom was a lot of fun, though, and I managed to squeeze in a trip up to Scotland at the end.2 And let me tell you, folks, I am very glad I did – only got a day and two nights up there, but it was definitely enough time for me to absolutely fall in love with the city.
It’s a couple different things, really – thanks to Rebecca and her family, I’ve had a deep love of the Scottish accent for quite a while.3 And secondly, Edinburgh specific, is the fact that it’s an old city in a very different way than any of the other European cities I’ve seen this semester. Vienna has a very distinct architectural style, and as long as you stay in the first district you’ll only see, like, four buildings that don’t match that. Prague’s specific style is enforced by the World Heritage Organization. And I don’t really approve of that – it makes for a nice tourism industry, yeah, but living there, you can get bored of it all pretty quickly.
Edinburgh didn’t have that problem – yes, it’s easy to tell that it’s old and a lot of the stuff has been there for a while, but there’s a sense of freedom to the architecture, and the way it varies, that I just didn’t get from anywhere else. I loved it.4
But hey, time to share the love, and that means pictures.
This is a quick one, because I find it hard to take photos while shivering1 and I didn’t grab a jacket today. Or on this trip. I only had a carry-on, it’s a bit difficult to pack ten day’s worth of clothes into a carry-on sized bag.
Anyhow, went for a quick jaunt around one of the other parks on the Nottingham campus. Pretty dang photogenic, and less windy than yesterday.2
I’m in England this week! Because how many other times in life am I going to have the opportunity to say “yeah, I went to England for Fall Break.” (Probably not many, so I’m grabbing the chance when I’ve got it.)
Anyhow, I’m here visiting Chase, because he’s studying abroad in Nottingham.1
I’m actually not doing a whole lot while I’m here – I tend to prefer to just sit around and work on my own projects, or sit around and be lazy as my ‘vacation’ time. I spent yesterday wandering around the campus,2 and today I’m hoping to find a coffee shop or something where I can just sit around and work on my laptop for a few hours.3
Sunday, though, Chase dragged me to a nearby park to take some photos, because he’s even more of a photography nerd than I am. It was pretty cool, though – turns out that the park has a mansion that served as Wayne Manor in the Nolan Batman trilogy.
What’s that? You want pictures? Alright, I can do that.
Didn’t actually manage to write this one on the plane, or on the several-hour-long bus ride from London to Nottingham, but oh well. I’m still in the wrong time zone, so I’m up early, may as well do something productive.
Anyhow, this past Friday was another Planned Outing day. We hopped into a van1 that took us out into what I shall affectionately refer to as “the Middle of Nowhere, Lower Austria.”
I’m behind and getting more behind, but hopefully I can get some of this stuff written on my flight and get a bit less behind.1
Anyhow, our tour this week was to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the big ol’ church in the center of town. If you’ve been following along, you’ve already seen a picture of the outside at least once – it’s rather impressive.2
I’m actually going to go a bit out of order for this one. Usually I try to keep everything in chronological order, so the reader can follow along and have a nice sense of immersion.3 This time, though, I’m going to start with where we ended, because I love gothic architecture and I’d quite like to save the best for last.
So, without further ado, the photos:4
We’re on a bus back from Prague!1 The last three days were spent wandering around the city, taking part in a series of tours where more information than I know what to do with was poured into my brain.2 For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to divide this into a few sections, because after three days I have a solid amount of photos to share.
The first day, we were up early to catch our bus from Vienna to Prague. And then we sat on a bus for a few hours. Turns out that if you have a T-Mobile plan that you bought in Austria, it doesn’t work in other countries, but if you have a T-Mobile plan that you bought in the US, it’ll work anywhere in Europe. Thanks, T-Mobile, for being a horrible mess. So the bus ride was less productive than I’d hoped.3
But you’re not here to read my complaints about the inexplicable tangle that is international cell phone networks, you’re here for pretty pictures.4 So, without further ado, off we go:
Our tour1 this week was to Schottenstift, a monastery founded in 1155 by… Irish monks. Yes, Irish, though name does translate as “Scottish Abbey.”2 I finally got myself a locker in the Institute, because last week I was very irritated by carrying around both my camera and my backpack the whole time. Definitely a good investment. Future students: get a locker, they’re useful.
Alright, alright, I know what you’re all actually here to see, the pictures:
September 21st is the International Day of Peace. It was declared as such by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981, and has been a symbol of ongoing efforts to create true, lasting, world peace ever since.
Paris and I had the opportunity to help out with an event discussing the United Nations’ goal of “Peace and Sustainable Development” this past Friday. It was quite an experience – we both wound up tweeting a lot, which you can see here, and overall we enjoyed the experience.
While a lot of it was panel discussions, which aren’t exactly my photographic forte, the event was held in the Vienna International Center. It’s not super easy to get in there – the security is pretty tight, considering that it’s one of the UN’s three world headquarters. I figured I’d take advantage of being allowed in and snap a few pictures of the grounds.
So, last Sunday1 Alyssa and I ventured around the Ringstraße a bit. I’ve got a whole list of things to go see on the Ring, and we wanted to check a couple of them off.2
A historical note: the Ring was constructed under Emperor Franz Joseph II, following the lines of what used to be the city walls. As part of that construction, quite a few other notable buildings were put up, at a scale that makes me assume that Franz Joseph II had figured out the cheat codes for whichever version of Civilization it is that our world is running on.3
Now, without further ado, the pictures:
Austria,1 in case you’re not aware, has a bit of a reputation for being the center of music culture. There’s a reason it’s referred to as the Viennese School, after all. So it’s a bit understandable that I, being a music major, wound up doing my study abroad program here.
What does that have to do with the title?
Nothing, yet. See, the title is the name of the biggest cemetery in the city – it translates literally as “Central Cemetery.”
Now, one thing about the Great Composers of History is that they were… in history. As in, a long time ago. And since we have yet to invent a cure for death, they’re all. Well. Dead. What’s a music major to do if they want to see the greats?
You go to a cemetery, of course. And, being the camera-toting sort, you take pictures of some of the rather impressive graves.
I promised another post, and here it is. I’m hoping once we get down into the pictures1 you’ll see why I broke it into its own thing.
We went to the aquarium.
It wasn’t really a planned thing – we were trying to find a shop somewhere and got a bit lost, and when we were looking for distinctive landmarks the aquarium was the biggest thing we could see. It’s rather noticeable:2
I’d previously mentioned the flak towers of Vienna, and even made a reference to the fact that one had been converted into an aquarium. This is the one.3 And I’ll say right now, before I get into actually showing you what all there was to see, that this is has become the absolute top of my “things to do in Vienna” list.4 Seriously, it’s an incredible aquarium/zoo, with a fascinating history and some stellar views. If you’re ever in Vienna, I cannot recommend it enough.
Now, pictures:
All three of our history/politics classes are now in session, the first of the other study abroad groups1 have arrived, and our weekly field trips around Vienna have begun – school is well and truly in session now, folks.
As an aside, the blog post for this week will arrive in two parts – this, the first, showing a bit of our academic exploration of Vienna, and the second will show up sometime soon. I had a lot of pictures from my own explorations this week, so it’s going to take me a while to get them all in order.
But now, on to the photos:
Once again, we’ve had quite a busy week. If I’m remembering the schedule properly,1 we’re now done with the ‘Conversation’ component of our Survival German classes and are moving into the Grammar unit. I’m excited – historically, I do better with a language by learning the grammatical structures than I do trying to memorize specific instances of those rules.
The other big thing we did this week was our district presentations – something that faithful readers have already seen a hint of. To be honest, there wasn’t much more to the presentations than what you can see in the aforelinked2 blog post, but for the presentations we had a more captive audience than anyone here reading is.
That said, once the weekend hit, we split up a bit: I know that there’s a group, as I write this, hopping on a bus back from Bratislava, and Paris, Sierra, and I headed over to Schönbrunn3 to explore the park.