September 1, 2007

Major jetlag…

I am home now from an amazing month in Vienna. It was honestly an unforgettable trip, with unforgettable people. I had a blast learning and exploring what Vienna has to offer with the most remarkable people ever. For those Vienna/Prague 2007 goers who are reading this… I want to say thank-you for an incredible August. I had such a blast with you all!

I found this video and song thanks to someone who commented on this blog. I think this song suits this trip so well and video theme happened to be a bonus. Enjoy!

For more photos of the 30 days in Vienna.. click here... Tracey's Vienna Pictures!

Lastly, my thoughts:

I enrolled in this program expecting to experience and see what Europe was like and to meet friends that will last me a lifetime. I finished the program with everything that I was expecting and got much more to hold on to.

During my 30 days in Vienna, I’ve observed/learned that:
- The Viennese love their dogs! They seemed to have more dogs than children.
- Vienna is expensive!
- Drinking water from the tap is perfectly clean and normal.
- Young to middle-aged Viennese people are very nice, relaxed and easy going, but old Viennese people are always grumpy and will push you out of their way.
- Europeans have no patience for standing lines. There’s a lot of line cutting involved.
- European coffee is truly better than Starbucks!
- Maps and tour guide books are immensely helpful because it would be hard to find places and go to famous sites without one.
- English is a very widely spoken language.
- Water can be served with gas or without gas (carbonated or no carbonation).
- Small local cafes are usually the best places to get coffee and cakes.
- During mid-August there are really good sales… it’s great to do shopping during this time.
- European weather changes rapidly. The early mornings can be chilly, lunch time can be sunny and blistering hot, the afternoons can be grey and muggy, and the evenings can be freezing and rainy.
- European public transportation is so much more convenient than cars and is so much more useful than the public transportation in the US.
- Everything is closed early on Saturdays and is completely closed on Sundays!
- When buying groceries, you have to pay for your grocery bags and bag them yourself.
- Austrian TV shows are just like the American TV shows, just in German.
- American music is generally played everywhere.
- Vienna is like LA, just with more history, beautiful architecture, and a better public transportation system.

...until we meet again....

August 30-31, 2007
The last day of the Vienna/Prague 2007 program…

In the morning, Sherry, Laura and I returned to Café Leopold Hawelka and had the café and plum cakes for the last time. It was a great breakfast!

After, we walked around the rainy streets of Stephansplatz and did some more last minute souvenir shopping. Around 5 in the afternoon, the class met up in front of the Riesenrad (Ferris wheel) at the Prater.

The Ferris wheel was built in 1897 and achieved its fame in the 1949 movie, The Third Man. The ride lasted approximately 15 minutes long and the view of Vienna is spectacular from the very top of the wheel.

The view from the top.

Next, we headed off to Centimetre Restaurant for our class good-bye dinner. The professor ordered 4 swords! They were pretty generous portions might I add.

The Sword!... schnitzel, pork, chicken wings, fries and beans

After dinner, Laura and I left early because we had much packing to do. Plus, on top of that, I was not feeling very well. I also found out that Kristen came down with something so we went to see how she was doing when we arrived back at Simmering. Laura and I struggled to find a taxi to take us to the airport the next morning so we ended up asking the professor to call a taxi for us. I found some people at the stairs and said my good-byes while trying to hold back the tears. I wasn’t ready to leave yet...

Around 5:45am and with only 3 hours of sleep, Laura and I got all our luggage and went to the lobby area to wait for our taxi. Surprisingly the taxi man was already there in the front. He came in to help us with our stuff and said that he only could fit only one person in the taxi. Apparently we had too much baggage for his little taxi. But eventually, he decided to squeeze all of our stuff into this small car and drove us to the airport. Right when the doors of the dorms shut behind me, I suddenly felt so sad. I wasn’t ready to leave my unforgettable Vienna.

Awhile later, we reached the airport…Laura and I checked in our luggage and got our last breakfast together. Her flight was at 7:40am so we parted ways after the security check point. My flight wasn’t until 10am so I had some time to kill… About an hour later, I realized that my gate has changed. I grabbed all my stuff and went to find the correct gate for my flight to Zurich. My flight to Zurich was short; it was only an hour long.

I spent about a good hour and a half at the Zurich International Airport. I wondered around for a bit while waiting for my 13 hour flight to LA. The airport was small, yet very beautiful.

During the flight, I watched the movie 300, ate really good food and slept most of the way. My flight arrived late due to some mandatory detour that we took. The home coming was nice. I got to see my loved ones again.

my flight home....

August 28-29, 2007

Word of the day— (g) wein; (e) wine

During class, we did a digression on what we thought and felt about our visit to Mauthausen. I agreed with many of the students about what they had to say about the camp. I was appalled and aggravated to see a bunch of tourist families bring their little children that only horse around in a place like that. The kids are too young to understand what the camp was, so why on earth would their parents bring them there? The parents should have left their children at home if they wanted to visit the concentration camp. Also, I was disgruntled when I saw the families take photos and was smiling in them like it was a happy situation. Do they not have any respect for the people who died at this camp? I can’t believe how inconsiderate and ridiculous these people are.

I recall tour guide at Mauthausen telling us about how some tourists came to visit the camp, ripped off pictures of people remembered and craved the Nazi symbol in place of the former picture. How terrible is that! I guess there are people out there that still supports Hitler still to this day… and there is nothing to be done to change that. Why are people so ruthless in this world?

After the digression, a few of us went to the Naschmarkt for some wonderfully delicious seafood.

Salmon, white fish: chef's special, calamari and shrimp... definitely satisfied my seafood cravings.

Awhile later, Sherry, Laura, David and I went to Kunsthalle Wien/ MUMOK and visited the Dream and Trauma exhibition.

“The exhibition approaches two phenomena that draw on the unconscious, the dream as well as the psychic injury – the trauma, with over forty contemporary artistic positions. Dreams and trauma are two dimensions of human experience. In their own particular way, both generate imaginary worlds of the mind and fantastic scenarios. The dream, the companion of sleep, belongs to everyday life and links together various states of being: “To die, to sleep, to sleep: perchance to dream,” says Shakespeare’s character Hamlet and thus delineates essential experiential parameters. In contrast reality is manifested in the trauma as a psychic deformation and a symbolic wound. This non-place, a zone of formlessness and fragmentation collects whatever has been suppressed or has disappeared from the conscious. Sigmund Freud defined the trauma as an experience which brings such an increase in stimulation to the inner life in such a short period of time that the normal usual way of dealing with or processing the experience fails.”

This exhibition didn’t exactly traumatize me… it was just made me feel really uncomfortable and weird because it was digging deep into my subconscious and revealing it. It touched on strange morbid sexual aspects of the subconscious. But nonetheless this was a rather strange yet interesting experience.

After Dream and Trauma, the 4 of us decided to take it easy and cruise down Stephansplatz for some more of Demel!

The next morning was our last lecture forever!

We discussed about the death of Franz Joseph I in 1914 and the becoming of the new emperor, Charles I. Charles I’s reign lasted for only 2 years before it ended. This marked the end of the Habsburg rule in Austria. It all started with Rudolf I in 1273 and ended with Charles I in 1918. We also touched on Hitler’s Austria. Hitler arrived in Vienna in 1938 and began his Nazi terror that spread all over Europe. During this time National Socialism was rising in Vienna.

After class, Sherry and I headed off to the Rathaus for the last time. The weather got really bad the last few days; it started to rain while we were walking.

While walking towards Museumquartier to meet up with Laura, Sherry and I passed by the Austrian Parliament.

The girls and I ate lunch at Café Sperl! I had the most amazing cakes and café!

Me and my 2 cakes: light and fluffy cheesecake (not like the NY ones) and plum cake

The best Grandma’s coffee. It's called the Grandma's coffee because it's made through the old styles of making coffee.

While walking around, we found a small festival happening in front of the Hofburg.

We also did major souvenir shopping! I will surely miss the shopping in Vienna when I leave… that’s for sure. We decided to go back to Simmering early to start packing for our trip back home.

August 26-27, 2007
I spent most of Sunday on my own. I visited Karlskirche and took a stroll in the Resselpark. The Karlskirche (aka the St. Charles’ Church) was built in 1716 in the Baroque style. It is located on the edge of the 1^st district, 660 feet from the Ringstrasse. Currently, the church is in the process or restoration and the ceiling is open for viewing. There is an elevator that takes people up the small platform and a tiny stair way that leads to the dome at the very tip of Karlskirche. I especially love the architecture of this church. I was speechless when I first saw what the structure looked like. It’s so magnificent and beautiful!

This is the beautiful façade of Karlskirche.

The alter and the interior of the Karlskirche.

I took the elevator and the stairs to very top! The tiny shaking stairs were a bit creepy to walk up though. But I made it to the top and back down alive.

The very tip of the top dome!

When evening hit, I met up with Laura and Sherry for some dinner at the Kebab place across the street from the dorms and a bike ride around the Danube. We had technical difficulties renting the public bikes and working my broken bike. Embarrassingly, I haven’t ridden a bike since I was kid, so I was not exactly sure I remembered how to ride a bike. Plus, the bike was a tad bit taller than me; that made it more difficult for me. Laura, the sweet gal that she is, helped me get on my bike each time I fell off. When I got on the bike, I only knew how to go straight…didn’t exactly know how to turn or stop. We biked along the Danube Canal and the whole way through, I was hoping and praying that I wouldn’t crash into the Danube! After biking for an hour, we decided to go on a search for an available bike box to return the bikes. We literally walked all over town trying to find open slots.

Me and my rather juicy Kebab

The view of the city from bike route along the Danube...it was such a beautiful night!

We ended the night with some Toblerone crepes at the Rathaus.

The next morning, Sherry and I visited the upper Belvedere.

The Belvedere Garden from the 3rd floor...

This is a painting of 'A Mother's Love' (1839) by Joseph Danhauser. The painting was considered a Biedermeier art, fitted for the ideal bourgeoisies at the time.


This is is a painting by Ruldulf von Alt of the 'St. Stephen's Cathedral' (1832). I particularly found this piece very facinating because it gave me a feel for what life back in the 1800's was like in Vienna.


Gustav Klimt's 'The Kiss' (1907-1908). This painting is painted with a lot of silver and gold. The piece, to me, is warm, loving and peaceful. It's really a sweet romantic treat.

I also observed other works by E. Schiele and O. Kokoschka.

Around the lunch hour, Sherry and I met up with Laura in Stephansplatz and ate at Café Leopold Hawelka. The café and plum cakes were absolutely superb. For dinner, the girls and I took the bus to Passauerhof Heurigen in Grinzing. The place was so cute! The food and wine was really good. After dinner, we headed back to the bus stop and waited there for awhile, but the bus never came. So we walked all the way down the hill to the U-Bahn station.

Me in front of the heurigen.


Ah, dinner is finally served.