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/