Final Weeks in Vienna

Well, this is a decidedly more depressing write-up with my semester in Vienna being over and all, but at least its brought back plenty of good memories. To start off, one event I forgot to write about back in the middle of May was that I attended a Wien Rapid v Mattersburg soccer game with several other students. I wound up watching plenty of soccer with Mitch and others during the semester in restaurants and at our apartment, but attending a game in person is, of course, a different experience. Enjoyable, though I miss having instant replays watching the game in person.

'CSI Vienna' and Bradley University

One major activity spanning two weeks in May and June was part of one of my classes, titled “'CSI Vienna?' U.S. Cultural exchanges in Austria since the 1980s.” That dealt with studying the impact of American culture in Austria specifically and cultural transfers more generally. No other University of Illinois students were in the class. My group for the collaboration consisted of me and three Austrian girls: Marina, a friend of Alexandra's who I met on her tour of campus before classes started, Laura, and Heidrun.

A major part of the CSI course was our semester-long collaboration with students from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. For the first several months this was largely confined to emails and forum posts back and forth, but in late May the Bradley students joined us in Vienna. Unfortunately, they only stayed for two weeks, but at least my group and our Bradley partners had several opportunities to meet, both in and outside of class. We were tasked with creating a presentation about 'Americanization' in Vienna, and for our project we looked at some stereotypes about American and Austrian/European cities, such as European having more green space than American cities, and analyzed their validity and what might explain them. As a group we spent a Saturday in Vienna's innerstadt (inner city) in a touring/brainstorming session for our group paper and, several hours after arriving back from Italy, I met up with them for further work at one of my Vienna group member's apartment.

One thing that I noticed during our group work was how seamlessly the Vienna and Bradley students got along. This wasn't surprising given my own experience, but was interesting to observe from my unique perspective as an American on the other end, so to speak, of the collaboration.

'Pano BBQs'

Back with my University of Illinois classmates, one recurring activity during these last several warmer weeks was what we called “Pano BBQs” - Pano being short for my apartment building, Haus Panorama which, we noted early on, had a grilling pit out front. If I remember correctly we wound up having a total of five Sunday grillings. Since I'm no Grill Meister, I volunteered to handle the pyrotechnics (charcoal, lighter fluid, etc); fortunately, Lisa knew how to do the rest, and everyone else brought food.

AIEP Final Party

Something that really made the end seem near was the AIEP Final Party on June 20th. It was held at a restaurant called Villa Aurora, located in a wooded area pretty far from the center of Vienna. Unfortunately it was raining that day so the view was spoiled, but it was a nice opportunity to see everyone together again one last time. Anyways, for the party, Prof Murray asked me to put together a photo slideshow presentation about the semester, which I thought turned out nice enough. I just wish I hadn't put off doing most of the work until the night before, which left me up until 4am or so.







Final Weekend

My last couple days in Vienna were jam-packed full with a bunch of different activities. Both Friday and Saturday night I attended Donauinselfest (German for Danube Island Festival), Europe's biggest music festival. The first night I went with Alexandra, Marina, and one of their friends to watch Russkaya, a bizarre but entertaining Russian-Austrian band, and Saturday I headed out with several of the UI students, Gert-Jan, and a couple other Europeans to see Snow Patrol, a Northern Ireland/Scottish group, and Scooter, a German techno band. I started off Sunday with a group breakfast put together by some of the girls at one of the other student dorms, Haus Erasmus – a very nice change of pace from my usual diet – and then started the tedious task of packing.

That left me able to squeeze in as many last-minute activities as I could on Monday, my last full day in Vienna. I left early to meet up with Tony and Gert-Jan at the Vienna tourist office to pick up posters, then headed with Gert-Jan to meet up with Heejung, a UI student, and Konsi, an Austrian, to go on the Stephansdom Catacombs tour. After that the four of us headed out to Hundertwasser House Vienna, a famous and very unique-looking apartment building. I then split up with Gert-Jan for the time being to go with Heejung and Konsi back to Prater. One thing I had been meaning to do for a while was take a ride on the iconic Wiener Riesenrad (German for "Viennese giant wheel"), featured most prominently in the 1949 film “The Third Man”. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived it was raining (a common theme the last couple weeks in Vienna), but I was able to take some photos overlooking the city to match those I took everywhere else I traveled.

Later that night I met up with Gert-Jan at his apartment for a Dutch pancake dinner he was throwing, eventually meeting several other European students he had invited. Tony and Christine also arrived later. By that point it was clear I wouldn't gain much from only a couple hours of sleep, so I wrapped up the evening by going out with the two of them and Gert-Jan to a club. Afterwards. I headed back to my apartment to finish packing and then leave for the airport.

That final ride to the airport was sad, of course, but at least I was leaving with several friends who I'll be seeing down in Champaign in a couple weeks. And on that upbeat note, that's all for my semester abroad in Vienna. These past five months have easily been some of the most memorable in my life, and I can't wait until I'm able to travel to Europe again. And in the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing Marina and two other Austrians from my CSI Vienna class in Chicago this September, and then helping along Joachim, a political science grad student I met who will be studying abroad this fall at University of Illinois.

More photos from my last weekend in Vienna: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157622005104268/

Graz and Bratislava - June 11th and 12th

I was originally planning to travel to Croatia in June to round out my travels in Europe, but that eventually fell through. Instead I took two day trips, one to the Austrian city Graz and the other to Bratislava, the capital of neighboring Slovakia.

Graz, Austria

Graz is the second largest city in Austria, with a population of about 300,000. In 1999 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization added Graz to its list of World Cultural Heritage Sites, and in 2003 the city was made the Cultural Capital of Europe (for this year the position is shared between the Austrian city Linz and Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania). Graz is in the Austrian state (Bundesland) Styria, which is in the south-east corner of the nation, boarding Slovenia, and the city is crossed by the Mur river. It is also nearby the village where America's most famous Austrian immigrant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was born.

I traveled with Tony and Christine, two fellow UIUC students, and Gert-Jan, a Dutch exchange student also studying in Vienna. We began our trip in Graz by heading towards its historic Old Town. Like everywhere else I've been in Europe, I passed many churches and restaurants along the way. Some points of interest included the bizarre-looking Kunsthaus, the blue building you can see in my photos, which was built as an art museum as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2003; the Cathedral of Graz and the nearby Mausoleum of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria; and city hall, or Rathaus.

After arriving in the Old Town we visited the Burg, the residence of the Habsburg emperors built in 1438. Among other things, it contains a famous double staircase (Doppelwendeltreppe) dating back to the Gothic period. Today the Burg serves as the seat of the provincial governor of Styria. Afterwards we checked out the Schloss Eggenberg, a Baroque palace on the western edge of Graz. We didn't have time to take a tour of its interior, which is unfortunate since, as I found out later, the palace contains 365 windows, 31 rooms on each floor, 24 state rooms that contain 52 doors and 60 windows, and 4 corner towers; meant to symbolize time (the seasons, weeks, days, hours, minutes, etc).

By that point hunger was catching up with us, so we headed downtown in search of food. Along the way we stopped by Glockenspiel square, which contains a giant clock. I read online that the clock “comes to life with song and rotating dance figures every day.” My thoughts? It was much lamer than that sounds: during their performance, if you can call it that, the dolls didn't even leave the doors on the clock, and instead just spun around a little. At least I didn't have to pay for that... At any rate it began raining so we headed inside a nearby restaurant. If I remember correctly I had the goulash which was quite good.

After eating we headed off to the Schloßberg, an icon of the city. The name literally translates as “castle mountain”, which is quite fitting, as the Schloßberg is a castle on top of a hill in the middle of the city. Towards the peak of the Schloßberg there is a clock tour, or Uhrturm, and from the mountain I was able to see an amazing view of the city. After refreshments at a nearby cafe we were running low on time, and thus had to head back to the train station.

Bratislava, Slovakia

As I mentioned before, Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia. Yet while the city is technically outside of Austria, it is so close to the boarder that my train ride from Vienna was about 40 minutes or so (as opposed to over 2 hours to get to Graz). Bratislava has a population of about 428,000, and in the past served as the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary under the Habsburg Monarchy. To students from my Illinois group, Bratislava was probably best known for cheap SkyEurope and RyanAir flights out of its airport, but luckily there's much more to the city than that. Gert-Jan happened to know a girl from Slovakia studying in Vienna, Mirka, who had time to join us, so I was very fortunate to get a tour from a native.

Our first stop was the iconic Bratislava Castle (which is on the back of several of Slovakia's euro coins), passing the Slovakian Parliament building along the way. Unfortunately it began raining soon after we climbed up to the castle, but luckily I still had a spectacular view of the city across the Danube River. The castle itself is being renovated at the moment, but it should be quite the sight in a couple years (not that that does me much good now). Climbing down from the castle we took a stroll through the town center, which was quite nice and, as always, chock full of restaurants, cafes, and stores. Mirka then brought us to one of her favorite diners. I don't remember exactly but I had some sort of traditional Slovakian dish, which was very good.

We later stumbled onto a traditional dance and then a concert by the popular Slovakian rock band Desmod to help raise awareness for Down Syndrome. After that we saw the Grassalkovich Palace (Grasalkovičov palác), also known as the Presidential Palace. It is currently used as the residence of the President of Slovakia (who, unlike American presidents, is only head of state rather than also being head of government. Thus the position is largely ceremonial, kind of like the British Monarchy only with elections). After that we headed across the Danube river, passing under the UFO – a famous restaurant in a tower above Nový Most (New Bridge), a symbol evidently of modern Bratislava. I imagine it would have been amazing to eat there with the overhead view of the city, but that probably costs a lot too.

Reaching the other side of the Danube we walked to Sad Janka Kráľa. That is a large park surrounded by the city, sort of like Central Park in New York City. On the other side of the park we saw Aupark, a major and very new-looking shopping mall. We had drinks and a quick dinner there, then had to head back to the train station.


Additional photos from Graz here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619579953825/

And more from Bratislava here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619665439462/

Venice, Rome, and the Vatican – May 28th to June 2nd

Finally I've gotten around to writing up something on my trip to Italy, the country I most wanted to visit while studying abroad this semester. The plan was to take a late-night train ride from Vienna to Venice, explore Venice for several hours, and then take another train down to Rome.

VENICE

So, after a very long train ride from Vienna, which among other things consisted of an hour and a half stop in Salzburg for no apparent reason, I arrived in Venice at about 9am (this being after having left Vienna at about 8pm the previous night). Since our train to Rome was going to leave at 1pm or so we didn't have much time in Venice, though from what I've been told there isn't a ton to do other than wander and get a feel for the city.

So wander we did. As with the other European cities I've visited I passed many churches, restaurants and, in more touristy-areas, a good deal of souvenir stands. But Venice is by no means your typical city. In place of roads, there are canals; in place of cars, there are boats; in place of streets there are narrow alleyways; and in place of street names/signs, there are...well nothing really, other than the occasional directional sign pointing to major areas (such as St Mark's Square).

Luckily, my group managed to navigate through Venice to see several attractions. One was the Grand Canal. Unfortunately we didn't have time for a gondola ride through the city, but I did take a few photos and later walked along the canal. Another was the Piazza San Marco, or St Mark's Square. The largest attraction there was St Mark's Basilica, the cathedral of Venice. After walking in the Basilica our time in Venice was almost up, so we headed back to the train station. But, being in Italy, we had to stop to eat some Italian food. Can't remember exactly but I believe I had some sort of seafood salad. After that, I was on my way to Rome.

ROME

After yet another long train ride I had arrived in Rome at about 8pm. We checked into the hostel and then went out for our first Roman dinner. The first and best part of the meal was easily the Bruschetta (grilled bread rubbed with garlic and topped with olive oil and tomatoes). We then headed out to take some photos of the Colosseum lit up at night. But that certainly did not work out. The Colosseum wasn't lit up, there were city vehicles of some sort parked in front of it, and what looked like a group of firefighters, a few with flashlights, was on one of the upper levels of the Colosseum. I'm not sure what they were doing, since there was no signs of a fire or any other sort of emergency, but they were clearly up to something. Anyways, around the area we ran into a group of girls from Boston, a guy from Slovakia, and another guy from Ireland. According to them the Colosseum was not lit up due to a marathon being held in Rome that weekend – the 92nd Giro d'Italia, as I later found out (which ran from May 9th to May 31st, starting in Venice and finishing in Rome).

After some much needed sleep and a refreshingly-inexpensive breakfast at the hostel next morning, we were off to see the Colosseum again – this time to take a tour. I don't remember exactly what was said on the tour, but some impressive details, such as the fact that the Colosseum was built in only 7 years – quite an amazing feat for something that large being built almost two thousand years ago. Another thing I remember is that apparently only two Christians were killed in the Roman Colosseum, making the Christian band that entered while we were there to sing something about martyrdom seem a bit excessive.

After a short break our tour moved on to Palatine Hill, the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome. According to tradition, Palatine Hill is where Romulus founded the city of Rome. On top of Palatine Hill is what remains of the Flavian Palace, the vast residence of the Roman Emperors. I don't remember exactly but I think the tour guide mentioned that, among other things, the Emperor had his own private race track at Flavian. I guess that's the 1st century equivalent to having a private movie theater. We moved on to the Roman Forum, the central area around which ancient Roman civilization developed that was politically and economically the center of the Roman Republic and Empire. Inside the Forum grounds were various temples, basilicas, arches, and other structures.

Later on that day we visited the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome built by Marcus Agrippa, the key general of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Today it's used for masses, and in venturing inside we stumbled onto a choir group singing Amazing Grace. Leaving the Pantheon I happened to stumble onto Palazzo Montecitorio, which is a palace currently used for the Italian Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of parliament). The next stop was the Trevi Fountain. A traditional legend about the Trevi Fountain is that if visitors throw a coin over their shoulder into the fountain they are ensured a return to Rome. Not being superstitious I didn't do that myself; hopefully that was not a mistake as I would very much like to return to Rome some day. One random bit of trivia that I found online - approximately 3000 euros (~$4200 USD) are thrown into the fountain each day, which are used to subsidize a supermarket for Rome's needy.

Next on the agenda were the Spanish Steps. The Scalinata, as it is called in Italian, is the longest and widest staircase in Europe. I was quite confused as to why they were called the 'Spanish' steps, and I now finally got around to looking that up. The history was not quite what I was expecting to find - evidently they were only built in 1723-1725 when French diplomat Étienne Gueffier bequeathed funds to link the Bourbon Spanish Embassy to the Holy See. As you can see from the photo the area was extremely crowded when I visited. Only on the way back from some later travels did I notice the Fontana della Barcaccia, a fountain at the base of the steps which, at the time, was completely obstructed by visitors.

VATICAN

The next day we headed out to the Vatican. Conveniently enough, on the last Sunday of each month entrance to the Vatican museum is free. Unfortunately I guess that is also when most Italians choose to go, so we had to wait somewhere around 2 hours in line. The museum itself was really an overwhelming experience – tons of artwork, sculptures, and statues. There was even a whole Egyptian section for whatever reason. As you might be able to tell from the photos I took I initially tried to get everything, but that quickly proved impossible. Here's one example that stood out to me that underlines just how extensive the Vatican's collection is: with the exception of a little bit remaining in some pillars at the Roman Forum, the Vatican holds the vast majority of the world's supply of Egyptian Marble – one of, or perhaps the rarest form of marble in the world, worth about as much as gold per ounce.

After a quick gelato break we then went on to St Peter's Square. Other than a long line wrapping around for entrance into the Basilica it was not all that crowded which was interesting, although I guess that makes sense given that at that point we were well into the afternoon. Apparently the Pope or someone else of significance had been there earlier, as chairs were lined up outside the Basilica, but whatever was going on was long gone when I arrived. I took some photos inside the square and then moved on to the Basilica. The Basilica itself was, of course, very impressive. For whatever reason it seemed larger up close than when I took photos of it from a distance. And the ceilings were very, very high inside the Basilica – obviously the designers focused on form above function when designing the place.

LAST DAY IN ROME

Monday dragged on a bit, a combination of having seen most of the major attractions the previous two days and rainy weather. But as the train back to Vienna left at 7pm, we had some time to make the most of the day by taking a tour of one of the Catacombs of Rome. The catacombs themselves are massive – had I been separated from the tour guide I imagine I could have easily gotten lost done there. One interesting tidbit – even to this day small mass services are held down in the catacombs. I don't think I'd like to go there for mass regularly, but it would be a neat, if a bit morbid, experience.

Finally, after the catacombs tour we checked out of the hostel and headed back to the train station to board the long, long train back to Vienna. It was a bit of a mixed experience – on the one hand, for the first few hours I had to put up with the ventilation not working and a rowdy bunch of American backpackers. But those problems eventually resolved themselves. One random but interesting experience was having an opportunity to use my limited Spanish with a couple Argentinians who were sitting next to me. They were importer/exporters vacationing in Europe. Given the state of my Spanish we eventually reverted to English, but I did get to have an interesting chat about South America with them before falling asleep for the rest of the ride back.

One random concluding thought: it was not until passing a calender for sale that had a picture of Mussolini on it that I gave any thought to that dark period in Italy and Rome's history. I guess that is because, to me anyways, he and his fascist state seem quite insignificant when looking at the broader history of Rome and its impact on the world – being among other things the seat of one of, if not the, most influential civilizations in world history, then capital of Christianity for nearly a millennium, and later, through the Vatican, the capital of Catholicism.

So that was my trip to Italy. As much as I liked Greece, all in all if I had to choose between the two I'd definitely pick Italy – or at least I'd rather study or live in Rome than in Athens. I hope not throwing a coin into the Trevi fountain doesn't come back to haunt me...

Additional photos from Venice - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619293657926/

From Rome - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619212453651/

And from Vatican City - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619213289809/

Mauthausen Concentration Camp Tour

One of the things I had most been looking forward to do while in Europe was to visit a concentration camp. On May 26th I finally had that opportunity when I took a group tour to a lesser-known camp, Mauthausen, as part of my CSI Vienna cultural exchange class. The tour, combined with an approximately 3-hour bus ride each way, was an all day affair. But it was definitely worth it – while I've read a good deal about the Holocaust, actually seeing and walking inside a concentration camp was a very interesting and, even moreso, a very disturbing experience.

Mauthausen concentration camp is located in by the small neighboring town of Mauthausen, which was then part of Nazi Germany but today is part of Austria. The camp itself was designed to hold only 5,000 people, yet at its peak over 22,000 prisoners were held there. To give a sense of perspective, only 2,000 people lived in Mauthausen at the time. Our tour guide described the camp as a city in and of itself (albeit one pretty much totally removed from what we would define as a city today). Over 200,000 people from over 35 nations were brought to Mauthausen, and well over half of those died there.

The main entrance to Mauthausen.

At its core, the concentration camp system was an industry to eliminate those who did not fit into Nazi ideology. In addition to the more well-known religious (such as Jews and Gypsies), racial (Slavic peoples), and political (communists, social democrats, and more generally anyone openly dissenting from Nazi ideology), our tour guide reminded us that many of those people brought to camps like Mauthausen suffered because they were deemed “asocial”. The tour guide mentioned one man from Vienna was brought to, and eventually died at, Mauthausen because he was deemed “shy of work”. And the story didn't even end with his death – the man's wife received a letter a few months later from the SS. In it, they claimed her husband had died of a heart attack. Moreover, the SS used her husband's death as an opportunity to try and make money - in the letter they claimed that the body had to be cremated for 'hygienic reasons,' but offered that she could purchase what was, supposedly anyways, his ashes in an urn for a substantial amount of money.

Anyways, the tour guide took my group on a tour following the process by which new prisoners were initiated into the camp. The path up to the camp was itself very brutal - for example, the tour guide mentioned that, of a group of 25 healthy, mid-20s Polish men being brought to the camp, only 19 made it from the hill from the train alive. Those that survived were likely saw a yellow cloud hanging over the camp. This, according to a former Italian prisoner, was the result of fumes gathering from the crematory when the air pressure was low. In other words, a literal cloud of death hung over the camp; an apt preview of what was to come for most of those brought to Mauthausen.

Once they made it through the gates to the camp, prisoners would go through what were euphemistically referred to as the “formalities of admittance.” Prisoners were first taken to what was called the “wailing wall”, where they had to give up all their belongings, were stripped of their clothes, and were then, naked, made to stand facing the wall. They were sometimes left standing there in place for hours or even days on end – the tour guide mentioned that one group, for whatever reason, was forced to remain standing at the wall for 3 days straight. The camp leader, Franz Ziereis, welcomed new arrivals with his dogs. Any resistance or protest by the prisoners to their new and appealing environment would result in said prisoner being torn apart by Ziereis's dogs in front of the rest of the prisoners.

The wailing wall, where prisoners, upon entering the camp, were stripped of their belongings, their clothing, and were then often forced to stand for hours or even days on end facing the wall.

After that introduction to what kind of life awaited at Mauthausen, prisoners were led to the shower room. Given everything seen so far you might assume that is also a euphemism, but in this case the Nazis meant literally what they said. Of course, showers weren't provided for the prisoner's benefit, but instead were there for logistical reasons: the SS, not wanting to lose their workforce, feared the spread of epidemics in the tightly-packed camp. So, for the sake of greater war production, new groups of prisoners were forced to stand naked in the shower room while being washed off.

Even so, the shower could and was used as an instrument of killing. The tour guide described what was called a “shock shower”. The guards would rapidly (every minute or so) alternate between very hot and very cold water in the group shower, the shock of which would kill weaker prisoners. Efficiency was the rationale behind this - viewing each prisoner solely as a temporary source of labor, the Nazis only wanted to invest their resources (i.e. feed and cloth) those prisoners that would last the longest. The shock shower and the previously-mentioned process of forcing prisoners to stand naked for hours or days on end at the wailing wall were thereby designed to weed out less healthy, and thus less valuable, workers.

Not a euphemism, the shower room was actually used to clean prisoners. Of course, the purpose of this was solely to prevent the spread of disease in the camp (bad for productivity), and in any case the Nazis still found ways to utilize it as an instrument of killing.

After the showers, new prisoners were stripped of all their bodily hair by other camp inmates. Given the sheer volume of new admittances, this had to be done very quickly. You can imagine what the mix of impatient guards and razor blades often led to. After being stripped of their hair (and probably a good amount of skin too), the prisoners were then covered in disinfectant fluid for hygienic reasons.

Onto the barracks. Each was designed to house 300 prisoners, but throughout much of the camp's existence they held between of 600 to 800 prisoners. As you can see in one of the photos, the central room of the barracks I entered has 8 rocks on the ground. These were where the barrack's 8 toilets once stood – 8 toilets for over 600 people. Not only that, but inmates only had 30 minutes each day to make their beds, eat, shower, and to use the toilet. Obviously that was not enough time for each prisoner to do everything. The tour guide mentioned one prisoner's recollections - he had to think along the lines of “can I afford to go to the toilet today, or should I wait until tomorrow? If he went to the toilet, there might not be enough time for him to eat, which would leave him less likely to survive another day of harsh manual labor. And even if he managed to do both, it was highly unlikely there would be enough time to shower, leaving him more susceptible to disease. I can't even begin to imagine what being confronted daily with those kind of dilemmas must have been like.

One of the camp's cremators

Most prisoners were made to work in the quarry, carrying stones weighing between 80 to 120 pounds along a very hazardous path for 10 to 12 hours a day. That alone would be torture. But compounding the woes of the inmates was their lack of adequate sustenance. Just how bad was it? The tour guide mentioned that in 1942 the Nazis carried out a survey of the health conditions. This was at the peak of Nazi power, a time when, if they wanted, the Nazis could have supplied prisoners with adequate food. The results speak for themselves: the average weight of prisoners deemed 'healthy' was only 48 kgs (105 pounds). And the amount of food the prisoners received was only enough to keep a fully bed-ridden person healthy. If anything, I'm surprised the average life expectancy was as high as 2 weeks.

The tour guide recounted that a survivor once told him that you have to be hesitant to call death in the camp a death because, by that point, they were so tired and wasted away. While the image I had of death in the Holocaust was of the mechanized, almost assembly-line style process of the gas chambers, overall this was the fate of most victims: being reduced to an almost-unhuman entity lying in its own waste in a corner, avoided even by fellow prisoners (who didn't want to contemplate that this would likely be their fate in a matter of weeks). Compared to that, the fairly quick death of the gas chambers seems almost humane.

Still, while not the primary means of death Mauthausen did contain a gas chamber. It is pretty self-explanatory what happened there, but one interesting thing I did learn was about the “crematory commandos” (or something like that). They were prisoners whose job it was to pick up dead bodies from around the camp and bring them down the crematory (the reason, again, being for hygienic reasons). As the defeat of the Nazi regime became imminent the Nazis attempted to kill these prisoners, as they knew all of the Nazis's secrets and thus could testify to the allies about the full extent of what went on at the camps. Fortunately, the tour guide mentioned that at least three are known to have survived to tell what happened.

The "Stairs of Death", which many prisoners had to climb for hours on end, while carrying 100+ pound stones from the quarry below, while operating on a totally insufficient diet, and without the aid of the stone steps you see there in the photo (which were put in some time after WWII for tour groups).

Two stories from survivors told by our tour guide stood out most to me. The first was a recollection one prisoner had while walking down to the quarry. On the way past the gate he looked at one of the guards, and the guard looked back. In that instance, this man thought that, if circumstances were different, their positions could well have been reversed. That I think is probably the most frightening aspect about the Holocaust of all – that most of its participates (soldiers, guards, etc) were basically normal people. Their motivations to do this kind of work were, in their own words, things like wanting to have a secure job, a social group where they would fit in, not having to go to the front, and so on. That in no way excuses their crimes, but it is a reminder that the Nazis were, at their core, human. Given the right conditions, such atrocities could happen again, and indeed have in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and so on.

The second, which I thing speaks most deeply about the horrors of the concentration camps themselves, was a story told by a survivor that the tour guide called the most honest person he had ever met. This man recalled that one day he woke up and noticed that his father was not moving. He said that he had hoped his father was indeed dead, as he knew his father had saved a piece of bread from the previous day to eat in the morning, which the son wanted to survive. The story (and unfortunately I'm probably missing some details) I think illustrates dramatically the depths of dehumanization brought on by life at the camp. As the tour guide said, to really understand life in the concentration camps you have to rethink or forget everything you know about how humans relate to one another.


Additional photos are here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619071246511/

Also, a couple articles with additional information on the camp:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005196
http://en.mauthausen-memorial.at/index_open.php

May update on life in Vienna

On the first of May I went with several UI students to Prater, Vienna's famous amusement park. It is the location of Vienna's famous Ferris wheel. Information on its other attractions is avaiable here: http://www.prater.wien.info/index-e.html. It was fun being at an amusement park for the first time in a couple years, though Cedar Point in Ohio is still my favorite.

Later that weekend I went to Schönbrunn Palace, the former residence of the Habsburg royalty. Mitch advised that we skip the palace tour, so instead we explored the grounds of the complex. The place is huge, and the gardens went on as far as I could see.

More recent activities included tours of the Organization of Petrolum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, the International Atomic Energy Association, or IAEA, and the United Nations office in Vienna. I found the OPEC tour very interesting. The PR representative gave a presentation to our group in the conference room used during official meetings, and on the way out were given several books/reports and a polo shirt. The organization is basically a cartel of 12 major oil exporting countries. The PR rep made a persuasive argument of how maintaining oil price stability is beneficial to both producing and consuming nations. Producing countries benefit from being able to better judge the financial risks and benefits to further oil exploration and from more stable government revenues. Consuming nations benefit in that businesses are better able to predict fuels costs in their operations, and society more generally from the reduced risk of catastrophic spikes in the price of oil, as happened in 1973 and 1979. What was also interesting to me is that, despite how vocal and controversial some members of OPEC, like Iran and Venezuela, can on the international scene, the organization itself is very non-political. For instance, the organization continued to function even while two of its members, Iran and Iraq, battled each other during most of the 1980s.

My tour of the UN and IAEA (housed in the same complex) began on an unexpected note: a saftey drill was apparently scheduled that day. That unfortunately left us with only enough time to sit inside one of the meeting rooms before needing to leave for our scheduled presentation by the IAEA. And the day didn't really get any better there: the presentation was fairly lackluster, at least compared to the one at OPEC.

Otherwise I've spent most of my time here working on classwork and hanging out with Illinois and European students. I'll have something up about my tour of Mauthausen concentration camp and my travels in Italy soon.

Anyways, here are photos from Schönbrunn Palace - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619152222244/
and then photos from the UN and OPEC tours - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157619068661869/

Athens, Greece – April 13 to 17

Earlier this week I flew to Athens with Mitch, one of the UI students in the German program who lives across the hall from me in Haus Panorama. Since the end of the Metro line connecting to the airport in Athens is offline until September, we had to ride a bus into the city, which was quite a wild ride - motorcycles swerving between cars seemed normal here. Some bad news at the hostel: when booking the hostel I assumed "Double Bed Private (Shared Bathroom)" meant two beds, but evidently that was not the case, so Mitch and I had to set up a 'backpack barrier' down the one bed.

By this time it was late in the afternoon. Having little else open to us we took a tour of the National Archaeological Museum. The Museum and most other tourist attractions offered free admission for European students, so it was fortunate that both of us had brought our Vienna university IDs. The museum had, among other things, prehistoric, sculpture, vases, bronze, and Egyptian collections which were all interesting. Well, some more than others. Afterwards we went out for a Greek dinner - I had stuffed peppers and grilled feta, which were both excellent. We then headed back to the hostel, but before calling it a night decided to check out its bar. We wound up staying up for several hours chatting with the bartender, Hannah, the hostel manager, Jonathan, and a couple others.

That probably wasn't the smartest decision, since while checking in we had scheduled an early walking tour of the city. Compounding matters was the fact that somehow both our alarms failed to go off, but luckily the manager gave us a call. So we had all of five minutes to get ready to go. The tour group was pretty small, just me, Mitch, and two Texans from our hostel. But that wound up being a good thing since we were better able to hear and interact with our tour guide, Walter, who was very knowledgeable about Athenian and Greek history. We saw Hadrian's Library, the Roman Agora, the Tower of the Winds, the Theater of Dionysus, the Odeion of Herodes Atticus, the Arch of Hadrian, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the National Gardens, the Zappeoin, the original modern Olympic Games stadium and, of course, the Acropolis. The Acropolis was of course the highlight of the tour, but being able to run the track of the Olympic Stadium was an unexpected surprise. More details of each in the description section of my Flickr photos.

Following the tour the four of us took a bus to the Athenian coast to check out the beach. Since it had rained earlier and was still fairly cool out we didn't try to swim. Still, it was worth it to see the Mediterranean up close. Instead of going out to eat that night we instead had sign up for dinner at the hostel: the home cooked food there was both excellent and significantly cheaper than going out to a restaurant. Following dinner Mitch, the Texans, and I hiked up one of the mountains in the city for an amazing view of the Acropolis lit up at night. Definitely worth the close run in with two stray dogs along the way.

Wednesday turned out less eventful, but that wasn't for a lack of trying. We had planned out a trip to Delphi, a major archaeological site, and even woke up to try and catch a 7:30am bus. But unfortunately we narrowly missed it, so after a short nap we tried again at 10:30. Ultimately that didn't work out either, so we gave up and instead headed out to Cape Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon. Cape Sounion is, according to legend, where Aegeus, king of Athens, leapt to his death after seeing a black sail on his son Theseu's ship returning from Crete. The crew was supposed to hoist a white flag if he survived the fight with the Minotaur, but had forgotten to. Anyway, that's where the Aegean Sea gets its name. The approximately 2 hour bus ride to the cape was very scenic going along the coast. At Sounion we checked out the temple and took in an awe-inspiring view of the mountains, sea, and islands.

The following day I got to be a tour guide...well sort of. Five girls from UI had flown out to Greece the same day as Mitch and I (that's where we got the idea). For the first several days they stayed on the island of Santorini, leaving Wednesday via boat for Athens. Since Mitch and I didn't have anything else planned, we offered to recreate Walter's tour for them. It was interesting how much more crowded the sites were on Thursday, but on the upside it wasn't cloudy this time around (no new photos though since I forgot to charge my camera). Likewise, there were no dog attacks. Just the opposite canine experience actually: a dog followed us up the mountain, stayed around while we were taking photos, and then followed us almost all the way down to the subway station.

That night we all went out to an Italian pub to cool off after a long, hot day, and to watch Mitch's favorite soccer team, Manchester City, play (didn't turn out well). After dropping the girls off at what we heard later was a fairly shady hostel, Mitch and I headed back to ours. Jonathan, Hannah, and her Italian friend were going out to some clubs, so in perhaps a less-than-wise move with the early morning flight Mitch and I went to check out the Athenian nightlife. That left us with no sleep and little time to get ready in the morning, but we managed to get on the plane fine.

Anyway, so that was my 5 day spring break trip to Greece. The best trip yet, and certainly more fun than the previous week which was almost solely consisted of me working on my research paper.

Here are my photos from Greece on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157616945079913/

Trip to Prague - March 27 to 29

Unlike my trip to Salzburg, where I didn't do much as far as planning, this time around I took a more active role: finding and booking a hostel for our group of 7. Since most of the rest of the group had early class Friday morning (one advantage of not being in the German program), I decided to head down early to figure out the hostel situation in advance. Following a nice nap on the train, I arrived in Prague for my first European trip outside of Austria.

After withdrawing some Czech koruna from the train station ATM (the Czech Republic isn't yet on the Euro) and buying a transit pass, I set out on the subway for the hostel. It struck me how similar the metro system in Prague was to that in Vienna. The only real differences were the language and number of lines. That feeling continued once I left the subway and reached Prague's downtown: other than some minor differences, it all seemed fairly similar to Vienna.

Walking to the hostel, Kafka's Castle, I felt a bit of anxiety. $170 two nights for 7 people at a hostel located in Prague's downtown seemed too good to be true. So I was a bit wary after hearing the hostel owner's instructions to meet him outside the building as there was no reception office. Not helping was matters was that, as I soon found out, the hostel is only two floors above a pub called Skybar. I was bracing for some catch, but luckily it all worked out. Actually, I shouldn't really even call it a hostel: as you can see from the photos on Flickr it had more of an apartment-style layout. I was very impressed.

That settled, after dropping off my stuff I headed back to the train station to wait for the rest of the group. After they had dropped off their stuff we went out for dinner and then met up with Petrz, a friend of Kim's. He has lived in Prague for almost two years teaching English, and offered to give us a tour of Prague the next day. In the meantime, we explored Prague's nightlife. Among other things, you can see to the right a photo of the crazy old man we ran into who alternated between dancing with himself and trying to get us to dance with him.

The next day we were off to meet Petrz for his tour of Prague. Before going out though, we went to the internet cafe Kava Kava Kava, and along the way ran into some sort of marathon. Among other things, we saw Nové město, or New Town - which has among other Wenceslas Square with many shops and restaurants, and then at the top of the National Museum (which we did not have time to go into) – Prague Castle, evidently the biggest ancient castle in the world; and Charles Bridge, which goes over the Vltava river and is lined with shops. After a long day of tourism we stopped for dinner at U Fleku, a traditional-style restaurant with music and special beer. That night we went first to a bar and then the, uh, interesting looking Cross Club (don't have any photos of that, but it looked it a converted warehouse with tons of rooms and several people looking to sell drugs).

The following morning I went out early with Tony, who I knew from middle and high school, to get breakfast items. While he made us breakfast, I checked us out of the hostel. Following that we hiked up to the Hladová zeď, or Hunger Wall – so named because, according to myth, the purpose of the wall was strategic but instead to employ and thus feed the poor – and then went back down into the city to tour the Staré město, or Old Town, which included, among other things, the “famed” Orloj , or Astronomical Clock (which seemed pretty lame when we were there, but I guess we must have missed the performance they put on). Thoroughly worn out by that point, we cooled off at a coffee shop before boarding the train back to Vienna.

In the meantime, here's the set of photos from Prague - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/72157616570108571/

Greetings from Austria and my first weeks in Europe!

Guten Tag! I'm studying abroad this semester in Vienna – or Wien (pronounced like 'Veen') as it's called in German. I'm doing so as part of the Vienna Diplomatic Program (VDP), under the broader Austria-Illinois Exchange Program (AIEP) at University of Illinois. Six other Illinois studies are also enrolled in the VDP. We'll be joined by several business students and about thirty German-language students, mostly from the University of Illinois, who are also studying under the AIEP.

The VDP focuses on the study of international organizations and diplomacy. Few cities rival Vienna in that department: not only is it a UN city, but a wide range of regional and international organizations are headquartered here. Academically, my semester consists of writing a research paper for the University of Illinois on one of the international organizations located here and taking classes in Vienna. For my research paper I will be examining how the development of a common European foreign and security policy is impacted by the presence of five neutral member states (Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and Malta).

In addition to that project, I'm enrolled in six classes locally. Three are at the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, or Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, and the other half are at Universität Wien, the University of Vienna. Those at the former are a basic German language course, one called 'World Englishes' which looks at the spread of the English language outside of England and the United States, and 'The European Union in English', which is a broad survey of the politics of the European Union. At the University of Vienna, I'm taking a culture studies course titled 'CSI Vienna?' U.S. Cultural exchanges in Austria since the 1980s ' (more details on that in a later post), a political science course of sorts called 'Information Society and e-government', and a history course about the British Empire.

Classes only start at the beginning of March, however, so for the first couple weeks I'm in an orientation session along with the rest of the AIEP students (split between a group for German-language and non-German language students). The non-German section was run by Alexandra, an Austrian grad student, who works with the head of the AIEP program, Prof Murray. Orientation was very helpful: we studied basic German, cultural advice, how to get around in the city, and so on. It was helped by the fact that Alexandra could relate to us not only age-wise but also in that she too is not a native of Vienna, having moved there from southern Austria when beginning her university studies. In addition to orientation, every Monday morning I have a meeting with the other VDP students and Prof Murray to check in on how things are going, to discuss upcoming events, and so on.

Of course, these first several weeks haven't been limited to academics. Among other things, I went on tours of Stephansplatz, Vienna's historical center, and the Naschmarkt, one of the world's largest markets, led by Prof Murray and Alexandra. Along with various Illinois students I've ice skated outside the Wiener Rathaus, Vienna's city hall, gone to local clubs with other Illinois students, heard the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the best regarded orchestras in the world, and even went the Opera to see Lucia Di Lammermoor, an Italian version of Romeo and Juliet....though that last one I probably could have done without. And more recently I went out with a few Illinois students to take advantage of free Sunday admission to museums, seeing among other things the Römermuseum, or Roman museum, and then later to the Uhrenmuseum, or clock museum.

I also really enjoyed the two Europa im Diskurs (Europe in dicourse) forums. The first, titled 'Twenty years after 1989', reflected on the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism and the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. Participants included Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, Kurt Biedenkoph, the former Prime Minister of Saxony, Adam Michnik, editor in chief of Poland's largest newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, formally an illegal, underground publication in communist Poland, and Viktor Orban, the former Prime Minister of Hungary. I found Orban particularly interesting. In June 1989, he gave a daring speech on the occasion of the reburial of several martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Which, amazingly enough, soon happened. That was the theme of the night: the historically unprecedented revolutions of 1989, which, without any significant amount of bloodshed, brought an end to the Eastern bloc and reunited Europe. The second forum held a few weeks later dealt with the topic of borders, focusing on the debates that have ignited with the expansion of the European Union eastward, particularly the very controversial debate over whether Turkey should be allowed the join.

Finally, I ventured outside of Vienna on a group trip to Salzburg. West of Vienna, nearby the Alps, Salzburg is probably most famous in America as the setting of The Sound of Music. We had planned on going skiing, but that ultimately didn't work out – only after some of the girls bought tickets for the Sound of Music tour on Sunday did we find out that it was too late on Saturday to try and make it out of the ski lifts. So instead, we spent the first day touring downtown Salzburg and later the Hohensalzburg Castle, one of the largest medieval castles in Europe. That night, in perhaps a less-than-wise move I trekked up the mountain behind our hostel with Mitch and Ben to see the city before the Alps at night. The next day, after reuniting with those who went on the Sound of Music tour, we further explored the city before heading back to Vienna.

Overall I've had a great time so far in Europe, and I'm really looking forward to traveling outside Austria in the coming months. At the link below you can see the various photos I've taken so far.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32227991@N02/sets/