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/