Vienna Take 2

Two weekends ago my class went to Vienna on an extended field trip. We left Salzburg at 9am and our first stop was Mauthausen. It is a concentration camp just outside of Linz. I have been to Dachau where the main focus of the camp was extermination, but Mauthausen was a little different. The main purpose of the camp was to hold POWs and it was a labor camp. There are people who survived 7 years there. It was stilleerie, but it didn’t have quite the same feeling of sure horror as Dachau.

Upon arriving in Vienna we checked into a hotel. At first we were all really excited to be staying in a hotel versus a hostel, but after it was all said and done, I like the hostels better. The advantage of a hotel is you don’t have to bring your own towel and the maid makes your bed everyday. The things I like better in a hostel, even if you have to bring your own towel or rent one, is community kitchens, common areas, helpful staff. The kitchens are great, because you can save food or if you buy food you can always leave it in the kitchen with your name on it and you can cook a really cheap meal. You also never know who you are going to meet in the kitchen or in any of the common areas. It is awesome talking to people and seeing where they have traveled and what they liked and didn’t like about cities. We have gotten great advice from people on what to do in cities this way. The staff at hostels also knows of great place to go around town. I’m sure the lady at the desk in the hotel would have known, but she wasn’t as friendly as a hostel front desk staff. She treated her job more like a job and less like an enjoyment. We had an awesome evening just hanging out around town, but wished the next morning we had gone to bed a little earlier.

We started the morning off with a 3 hour bus tour, this was cool, because we got to see a lot more of Vienna than we would have on foot on our own. The funniest part of the bus tour, though, was the amount of people who fell back asleep, at least half of our class. They just missed out : )

For lunch they dropped us off at a market! You could buy pretty much anything you wanted to eat. Next to the food market was a flea market. Every Saturday it is set up, so we spent most of our lunch break looking at stuff from the flea market. I wish we’d had more time, but we had another tour of Vienna in the afternoon. This time it was a 3 hour walking tour. It was nice to get all the information about Vienna, but 6 hours of touring in one day is a little much. We decided it would have been better to have the bus tour the day before and the walking tour that morning. We didn’t have a lot of time afterwards to look around on our own before the sun went down at 4:30.

That night we got to experience our first Christkindlmarkt or Christmas Market. It was fun! There were a bunch of booths set up with different foods and Christmas style presents. We walked around and looked at everything while singing “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”

Sunday was a free day for us. We could choose what we wanted to do and see. I started the morning off by seeing the Lipizzaner Stallions. I didn’t actually see the performance, just the horses, but they were still cool. Next I got to see the “Beauty and the Beast” library reincarnate. It was incredible! It was two stories with beautiful balconies and it was filled with books. I was with a few other girls and we sang Disney songs and took tons of pictures. We all decided it had to be possible to bring the library home. In the afternoon Me, Ruby, Anne and Kara went to a coffee shop to just sit and observe. Coffee shops are very popular in Vienna and it is something that they are known for, so we used that as an excuse to go. We planned on it being an hour or so event, we ended up staying in the coffee shop for almost 4 hours, just talking and people watching!

Monday consisted of a few more field trips. We toured the Parliament building and the tour guide was by far one of the best we have had. She was direct and to the point and made everything very clear. This was one of the better tours we took. The boys had started this game to keep themselves entertained while on tours and it carried over to the rest of the group for the day. What you do is try and catch someone else while they are not paying attention and if they are walking you trip them up a little and if they are standing still you hit the back of their knee so that it gives out from underneath them. So the day was filled with laughter as we tried to “get” each other. It definitely helped pass the time when we were walking from one tour to the next. The next tour of the day was with a section of the government that helps immigrants integrate into the Viennese life a little better. They set up class to help them learn German and they help with loans and finding houses. It was really interesting information, but way to long. Our professor was even falling asleep. Then lunch and another tour. This one was over the resistance movements in Austria during World War II. Again very interesting information, but a little to long. After that last tour me, Kara and Chris went to look at the Royal Treasury or where they keep the expensive jewelry. Definitely a museum worth seeing!

That evening a few of went to an opera. It was called “Der Sauber Flöte” or “The Magic Flute.” It was one of Mozart’s operas, so it was all in German. Each person had there own screen to look at so you could pick what language you wanted your subtitles in. I picked English, because the woman in front of me had hers in German, so I could listen to the German and read the German and if I didn’t know a word I could then look at my screen for

the meaning. I enjoy hearing German even if I don’t catch it all. The opera in Vienna is student friendly. For 3 Euros you can buy a ticket, this is an excellent price, except you have to stand up through the whole thing, but overall it was worth 3 Euros. That evening everyone stayed in and we talk and ate a giant pizza!

Overall, Vienna is a cool town and a great place to visit. I like smaller towns a little better, but Vienna is a must see if you are ever in Europe.