September 2009
3 posts
The Third Man and the Vision of Post-War Vienna
The Third Man is one of those rare films where the backdrop to the story almost becomes a character in and of itself whose tone, look, and disposition plays off the characters and their hopes and dreams. Vienna is depicted as a lifeless, dismal city where crime and the loss of moral rectitude has become all pervasive in a city where only a dark sense of humor can overcome the myriad of moral...
The Ringstrasse and Vienna Museum
The German word of the day is fussball, or in English, soccer.
Vienna holds a lot of great history and cultural importance and one of the things that make it so interesting is the city’s ability to reinvent itself artistically. There were many architectural changes going on throughout Europe during the nineteenth century especially with Haussmann’s creation of modern Paris and London’s expansion...
Mauthausen
The German word of the day is gesund, or in English, healthy
I had never visited a concentration camp before I entered the gates at Mauthausen. I had studied the Holocaust and had known the many intricacies of life in these despicable camps but I had never studied with my own eyes what happened here during the Second World War. I was surprised when I got out of the bus to see what looked like a...
August 2009
14 posts
Austria and The War
There has been a lot in Vienna describing the country’s history in the Second World War but at the same time these monuments are not openly advertised and so are quite hard to find if you don’t have a guide book or knowledge from word of mouth. So far in Vienna I’ve seen the Monument against Fascism, the German flakturmes, the monument at Schwedenplatz where Vienna’s Gestapo headquarters used to...
Those Basterds
The German word of the day is Offen, or in Englisg, Frank.
I saw the new Quentin Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds (that’s the correct spelling of the title actually) the other day and I think it was not only a good movie but another one of those cultural experiences that just appear out of no where because you happen to be in foreign country. The film is about a group of Jewish- American...
That Weekend We Went to Bratislava
Because I had spent Saturday and Sunday in Vienna this weekend I decided that it would be great to take a day trip to Bratislava on Monday. This trip began in the early morning and I must say there were many things that I did not know to expect upon entering Slovakia. The first thing that I had no understanding of was Slovakia’s history in conjunction with the Habsburg Empire, therefore the...
Visiting the Motherland
The German word of the day is dei der, or in English, at your place.
This weekend I visited Hungary and this trip was an especially important one for me because I have Hungarian ancestry as well as because I plan on studying for a semester abroad there this spring. Budapest is an amazing city and like most other post-communist Eastern Bloc nations, it has its pros and cons. There is an amazing...
Taking on the Alps
Over the weekend I took a trip to the Alps which began in the town of Eisenstadt and ended with a great hike throughout the Alpine mountains of an area that I believe is called Reichenau. Now, there wasn’t much historical significance to be found while hiking through the Alps but many of the excursions we took before and after the trip had some very interesting sites, ranging from the Baroque all...
Discovering Vienna's Jewish History
The German word of the day is Autobahn, or in English, freeway
Vienna has had a long, tortuous past treating the Jewish population of their city. The Jews who lived in Vienna during the fifteenth century were cordoned off in what we today call ghettos where they lived their lives in total seclusion from the rest of the Christian population. Some were allowed to enter into the everyday world of...
The Heeresgeshliteyzt@sfu&fdj museum
August 9, 2009
Today I went to the Heeresgeschichtliche military museum to and visited both the upper stories with their emphasis on the Turkish invasion and Thirty Years War as well the lower floors that described WWI and WWII. Upon entering the museum, I saw the Hall of Strategists, a series of hallways with the statues of Austrian generals throughout history. I only recognized one or two of...
The Coolest Church I've Ever Visited, Part Zwei
August 8, 2009
Today I took another trip up to Klosterneuberg with some friends to see the many treasures the church holds. This was not part of our first tour and one the other students made the arrangement for our previous tour guide, Father Clemens, to show us the rest of the abbey’s many amazing valuables. The collection included many beautiful pieces of ornamentation, cloth, relics,...
That Little Thing We Call Art
The German word of the day is Beantwarten, which means “to answer”.
August 7, 2009
After having a restfull morning without class, I went with some friends to visit the Schatzkammer museum and afterwards met up with the rest of the class to see the Kunsthistoriches museum. The museum faces its partner museum, the naturalhistoriches museum (though you can’t use the pass to get...
Probably The Coolest Church I Ever Visited
August 6, 2009
Our trip to the Augustinian abbey at Kloisterneuberg was one of the most fascinating theological trips I’ve ever taken. Usually when I visit a church in Europe, I imagine a small tour, maybe twenty to forty minutes long and then leave and a tour guide that is serious about the church and its historical role. This trip actually did include that latter point but his...
A Modernizing City
August 5, 2009
Like most European capitals, Vienna is an ancient city modernizing every century to the will of technological and social evolution. It slowly changes and modernizes to the whims of time and with it a mixture of old and new, thus transfixing itself into a conglomeration of different centuries all within the same boundaries of the labyrinthine alleys of Vienna. The molding of these...
USA Is Here To Stay
August 4, 2009
The German word of the day is Wahrscheinlich which means in English, “probably”.
The omnipresence of American culture throughout the world, and especially in Europe, is probably one of the most fascinating cultural phenomenons of the twenty-first century and one that many Americans willingly accept. There are many reasons why America’s fast food, television...
Europe, Weather, and Water
August 3, 2009
Today I got a full taste of Vienna’s indecisive weather patterns that I had been warned about before arriving in this Central European capital. While the last few days have been unbearably hot for the Californian crowd, today went from sun to showers with little warning outside of a growing smatter of clouds that congealed and then spat out drop after drop before...
Sprechen Sie anything?
The German word of the day is Verdienen which means “to earn”
So today was my first official tour of the city of Vienna. It was hot a August afternoon with very little in the way of shade or water fountains for us uninitiated tourists to scavenge for. The day began with our class taking the U-bahn to our school at the Austro-American institute, which is nearby the opera house and...