Wednesday, January 30, 2013

30.1.2013 The Final 48 Hours




Welcome to Budapest, Hungary!


We just had our last night in Vienna. When we woke up this morning there was a tiny sense of sadness in our group but for the most part there was excitement about the next leg of our trip, no matter how short it may be. For the last day and half of our trip we will be exploring different holocaust memorials and exploring Budapest, Hungary in general.
Standing at the train station we were all trying to delayer because the sun was coming out and it was significantly warmer than what we have been experiencing for the last two weeks. We were hoping that it would be the same in Budapest but Dr. Moser told us that it would be chilly and rainy there.
funny graffiti
View of the bridge
Gorgeous roofs
More amazing roofs
Old Buda
We had about a 3-hour train ride from Vienna to Budapest and then took a trolley from the train station to our hotel. Our hotel is actually old apartments that were turned into a hotel. They are really pretty. There is a spiral staircase going up to each floor. Our room feels really big compared to our room in Vienna, but it feels really homey. After we dropped our stuff off at Hotel Kalvin House we moved on to our tour of Budapest. Within a few minutes of being on a trolley we could see one of the main bridges that crosses the Danube from Buda into Pest. Once we got off the trolley we took a trolley to the top of Buda Hill where we got a really good view of Buda and Pest. The difference is the age but you can really tell by looking at the architecture. The buildings in Buda are all different heights, but since Pest was modeled after Vienna all of the buildings are required to be the same height. Luckily some of the fog from the morning had disappeared so we got a clearer view of the city. There were a lot of gorgeous buildings but the one that stood out to me the most was the Parliament Building. It is an enormous white building with a giant red dome and a lot of towers. The architecture in Budapest is absolutely breathtaking. Since we had a morning full of travel we did not do a lot of super academic things today but we definitely got to see some very pretty buildings, and especially intricate roofing.

The main academic thing we did today was go to a memorial for people who were shot into the Danube between 1944 and 1945. This memorial spoke to me the most out of all the places we’ve been to the whole trip. Once I realized what it was I stopped talking and just stood still for a minute trying to process what actually happened. In school we learn the basics of the Holocaust, but I never learned about people getting shot into the Danube near the end of the war. You can try as hard as you want to wrap your mind around the Holocaust and some of the things that happened but I think it is always going to be incredibly difficult for anyone to ever completely understand what happened or what was going through the Nazi’s minds. The monument is extremely simple, it is just a lot of pairs of metal shoes lined up near the edge of the walkway by the river. It is an extremely inaccessible monument, in order to get to it we had to cross 4 lanes of traffic, walk down a narrow sidewalk, cross 2 more lanes of traffic, hop over a guard rail, and walk down another walkway. When you first turn the corner it doesn’t really make sense what it is, in fact I don’t know if people that didn’t know about it would know what it is, but once I saw it it hit me like a brick wall what it was. There were women’s shoes, men’s shoes, and even a pair of children’s shoes. People had left candles and flowers in some of them.
By this time it was raining and we were ready to move on. We started to head back to the hotel but our professor stopped to ask if we wanted to see more and we all agreed that we wanted to see as much as we could in the short time that we had left in Europe. We wandered around some and saw some more breathtaking architecture and then decided we were tired of getting rained on so we headed back to the hotel to relax and dry off for a little while before dinner.
For dinner we went to a little restaurant a couple of blocks away from our hotel. I got Gnocchi with tomatoes, olives, pine nuts, mushrooms, and a really tasty cheese on it. After dinner a few of us and our professor went for an adventure to see some of Budapest at night. The most amazing view we got was of the Parliament Building lit up and it’s reflection on the Danube.
Time for bed so I can be ready for a full day of adventures and education tomorrow!

28.1.2013 Vienna War History Museum


It was snowing this morning! We got a small breakfast this morning and headed to meet Dr. Moser to go to the War History Museum. It was a very interesting experience, not so much because of what we learned about war history in Austria but because of how the museum was set up and what we learned about how they teach about their own history and the Holocaust. We've discovered by going to a few museums that Austrians don't really know how to teach about Jewish traditions, lifestyle, or the Holocaust. Instead of putting up information along with displays, their main form of displaying information is to put up a lot of pictures, names, or items (such as an entire display cases of Torah scroll decorations) with a very short description in German about what the items are. Some of the descriptions even say things as short as "Scroll decorations" which is a little surprising to me because it seems to me that if people are going to a museum they are going with the intention of learning something from their trip not just to see a display case of things that they may not know the purpose or significance of. Something that was interesting and helpful was that at the beginning of each section there was a rack of sheets that had some information about the most important pieces in each room.
Although it was difficult to actually learn a whole lot from this museum it was still really interesting to see some of the things that are significant to the Austrians. For example one of the rooms we went into was designated to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and more importantly his assassination. They had the uniform that he was wearing when he was shot, the couch that he died on, and the car that he was assassinated in. There was very little written information on these items but it was obvious how significant this event was since they dedicated a room in the museum to it.
Once we were done at the museum we all split up to get lunch and do our own thing for the day.
After dinner Steph, Morgan, Elliot, and I went ice-skating. The area in front of the City Hall of Vienna was turned into an incredible ice-skating rink. There were two main rinks but there were also pathways that went in between trees that connected the two rinks. It was so amazing and really, really pretty.
Once we were done ice-skating we stopped to get a pastry and then headed back for a relaxing night at the hotel.

27.1.2013 Food Day



We spent our day today stuffing our faces with a fabulous brunch and wandering around a History of Vienna Museum. Our professor took us to an all you can eat Sunday brunch buffet at the Hotel Renaissance in Wien Meidling. The first thing he said to us when we met up with him, besides “hurry up, we’ll be late” was “we do not want to miss the sea food buffet” and he was not kidding. They had lobster, sushi, shrimp salad, teriyaki shrimp, crab dumplings, and spring rolls just to name a few. After we had some seafood, I went to get something else. I ended up with some veggies, bread, cheese, and grapes. After two plates of food, I was feeling comfortably full and decided it was time for dessert. The dessert buffet was astounding; there were so many options. I got a piece of chocolate cake that had vanilla icing and a ton of berries on top, a piece of strawberry shortcake, and some coffee flavored mousse (it was like eating a coffee flavored cloud). After inhaling massive amounts of food it would be an understatement for you to say we were full. We were stuffed, I’m pretty sure we all wobbled out of the restaurant like obese penguins.
Windows from St. Stephens Cathedral
Once we made it out the door we ventured down the street to the Vienna History Museum. There were a lot of really interesting looking items in the museum but it was difficult to learn anything because there were very brief descriptions of the items and the majority of them were in German. Something that was interesting was that they had windows that had been taken out of St. Stephens before the war so they wouldn’t be damaged. They were considered very important and beautiful because they had bright colors and Thomas Aquinas said that things that have bright colors are beautiful. There were also a few models of Vienna at different stages of its expansion as a city. They were really cool to look at because you could gradually see how Vienna expand and start to make out where some of the districts formed.
 Model of Vienna 1897-1898

26.1.2013 Royalty and Religion Part II



Jewish Monument at Judenplatz
The first thing we did this morning was go to Judenplaz, this is the Jewish quarters where the majority of the Jews lived. There was a monument there recognizing the Jews killed in the Holocaust but to be completely honest it was extremely disappointing. It looked for all the world like it could have been a shed that housed an A.C. unit. The structure was supposed to have books on the outside but they didn’t look like books, there was not a lot written on the monument to tell people what it was, people had let their dogs use it as a bathroom, and to me the worst part was that it was obvious that no one cared about it or had put any significant though behind it besides that maybe they should make a memorial there.
Next we made a short stop to see a memorial for the Black Plague and quickly moved on to your next stop.
Everyday Silverware
A Cabinet designated to glasses
The next stop of the day was Hofburg, the downtown palace of Queen Elisabeth and Franz Joseph. Queen Elisabeth did not stay at the palace very often and was not as recognized by people as Franz Joseph’s mistress Sisi. The first floor of the palace was turned in a display for all of the royal dishes and silverware. It got a little over whelming because you couldn’t turn your head without seeing more dishes and at the end we were trying to figure out how to get to the next floor. It was really interesting to see how tastes progressed in the royal family along with what the everyday use dishes looked like versus dishes they used for extravagant meals with special guests. Once we got out of the maze of dishes we went to the second floor. The first part of the second floor was designated to what Queen Elisabeth was like including her reaction to her son’s death and her obsession with her physical appearance. After the section about Queen Elisabeth we got to tour some rooms in the house. My favorite was the ballroom. It was enormous, with beautiful paintings on the ceilings, and lots and lots of sparkly crystals on the chandeliers and candles mounted on the walls. It was interesting to see the difference between this palace and Schonbrunn. Hofburg felt smaller and therefore less formal than Schonbrunn did, I think that probably had a lot to do with the fact that there were family portraits in a lot of the rooms that we got to tour.
Welcome to Vienna!
After our tour of Hofburg we rode a bus to the top of one of the first Alps near Vienna and got an aerial view of Vienna in the snow which was absolutely gorgeous.
Interior of St. Stephens Cathedral
Our final stop today was St. Stephens Cathedral. When we got there, there were people setting up for mass the next day. We got to look around the church and listen to a group of strings play some beautiful songs.

25.1.2013 A Whole New Meaning of "Close"


Bratislavský Hrad
We left an hour later than our syllabus says this morning, a much needed delay. When we left the hotel we were headed for Slovakia! On the way there our professor informed us that it was about 18 degrees outside but there was a 9-degree wind-chill and we sure felt it. We were warned before we went to bed last night to wear more layers than normal because not only was it going to be colder than what we were used to but we would be on top of hills and near the Danube so we would be experiencing some seriously cold winds. Despite the fact that it was really cold I was really excited because it was one of the first days that we’ve seen sun since a few days before we left Ashland.

View from the castle
 

The first place we went was to Bratislavský Hrad, the Bratislava castle, which had been destroyed and rebuilt. Once we got off the train to Bratislava, Slovakia we got on a bus that was absolutely packed with people and rode it a few stops, then we waited on a street corner for the trolley bus that would take us to the top of the hill where the castle was. It was extremely difficult to ride the trolley bus because it would stop quickly and then start quickly, and it was very shaky. Nonetheless we made the best of it and the view at the top was definitely worth some Slovakian trolley bus riding. There were cobble stone walkways and a little street leading up to the castle, both of which had patches of ice on them. Once we were at the top we were standing between an enormous white castle with red shingles and a gorgeous view of Bratislava and the Danube. When we left the castle we got hit by a very cold and very strong wind, we were all making jokes about getting blown away.
Hungarian Style Goulash with Dumplings
Interior of the restaurant
Once we got to the bus stop we decided it was already time to sit down and have something to eat. Dr. Moser talked the majority of us into having goulash, I’m not a picky eater so it didn’t take too much arm-twisting to convince me and  I didn’t regret it at all. I got Hungarian style Goulash with dumplings. Dr. Moser said that goulash is kind of like a stew so I was expecting it to come out in a bowl but when it came out I was pleasantly surprised. The goulash was on the same plate as the dumplings, which were more like slices of bread. The pork fell apart before I could even get it to my mouth, and the dumplings were delicious soaked in the sauce.
After lunch we went to the site of a synagogue that had been destroyed. A monument has been built for it but the sad thing is that a freeway was built right behind the monument so in a way it seemed as if people do not care that there was a big piece of history there, or that they are not educated enough about it to care.
Monument for the Synagogue
After we went to the monument for the synagogue we went to a Museum about the history of Jews in Slovakia and more specifically in Bratislava. This was the first place where it really occurred to me that people do not know how to talk or teach about the Holocaust. The majority of their displays were objects with out much description. There was one room in particular with a lot of pictures but little to no description about what its significance was.
Jause
After the museum we went to jause, our afternoon snack of pastries and coffee. I got a Truffle Torte, which was super chocolaty, and a cup of coffee. After sitting and enjoying each other’s company for a while we went to a mall and to walk around the newer and nicer side of Bratislava and then decided that we were ready to head back to Vienna instead of walk across a bridge going over the Danube and walk on ice in the dark.
We had an interesting experience getting back to Vienna. On the way back to the train station we had to take a trolley and a bus. We had to run for the trolley and barely made it, and did the same for the bus. Once we got off the bus at the train station we had to sprint to our train so that we wouldn’t miss it and in the process we accidentally lost one of the guys in our group. Dr. Moser decided he would send everyone back and wait for Elliot to arrive and as the train was about to leave I looked up and Elliot and Dr. Moser were walking down the aisle of the train to go find seats. To say the least it was a very exciting day.
When we arrived back in Vienna we all went to get Japanese food at a place right around the corner from our hotel which was really nice because after a long day in Slovakia, and an interesting trip back we were all ready to sit (again) and be social and relaxed. More tomorrow!
           
Moon and the Slovakian flag


 

24.1.2013 Royalty and Religion

Entrance to Schonbrunn
The Ballroom
We started our morning by going to an enormous palace called Schloss Schönbrunn, the summer home for the Habsburg family. We walked easily more than the distance of a block once we got off the trolley next to what looked like just a normal two story business building but about half way past us our professor told us that the building we had been and were still walking past was the servants quarters which should have given us some estimation of how large this palace was but I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the size of this building. The palace has 1,441 rooms but only 40 of them are accessible to the public, it took us about an hour and a half (if not more time) to cover those 40 rooms, that is just shy of 3% of the palace that we got to see. Most of the rooms just seemed large, unnecessarily large, but the most amazing room in the house was the ballroom. There were enormous and incredibly elaborate paintings on the ceiling, gold plated decorations on the walls and ceiling, floor to ceiling windows, gold chandeliers hanging from the ceilings with flickering candles in them, candle holders on the walls, and beautiful wooden floors. The palace itself was gorgeous but the ballroom itself left quite the impression with me.
View from the top of St. Stephens Cathedral
After we went to Schonbrunn, Cody, Morgan, Elliot, Dr. Moser, and I went to climb the tower in St. Stephens Cathedral. There were 343 steps in a spiral staircase to get to the top of the tower but the views were definitely worth it, even the view of the roof of the Cathedral was spectacular. Once we were done taking pictures of the view of Vienna we went to a small café right down the street from the Cathedral and got some pastries and coffee and chatted and made goofy faces at each other. After that we went back to the hotel to hang out for a little bit before we went to dinner. Dinner tonight was Turkish  food in the Turkish district of Vienna. I had a Doner sandwich. It had calf meat in delicious bread, with lettuce and tomatoes. After dinner it was time for another relaxing night at the hotel.
The roof of St. Stephens Cathedral
More tomorrow, stay tuned!

20.1.2013 Planes, Trains, Automobiles, Cameras, and other machines

We had a very cold start to our day today. We started off our morning at the Deutcshes Kinematek or the German Film Museum. The museum talked a lot about different actresses and movie directors. It was interesting to see not only how technology in film making changed but also how acting changed both over time and especially during the time of the war.

Front side of the Anhalter Bahnhof
Side view of the Anhalter Bahnhof
Afterwards we went to another site of deportation of Jews from Berlin. The plaque that was at the site had dates and numbers of Jews that were deported and where they were deported to along with the dates. Unlike the first deportation site we went to, Bahnhof Berlin-Grunewald, there were no deportations that were greater than 100 people. Anhalter Bahnhof suffered a lot of damage during the war but was reopened. However, the trains that ran through it were eastern trains and the station was in the west side of Berlin therefore it was closed and everything was destroyed besides the front of the station which was left as a reminder of what happened. It was very interesting walking through the doorways that Jews walked through before they were deported but it was really hard to imagine what the station looked like since there is now a soccer field there and no tracks running through the field.
Model of the Anhalter Bahnhof in the Deutsches Technikmuseum   
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cattle car
Once we were done at the Anhalter Bahnhof we went to the Deutsches Technikmuseum which had a lot of trains and planes in it. We spent the most time with the trains. There was essentially a timeline of trains in the room we stayed in. It started with trains used during the beginning of train travel all the way through trains that are currently used. The most interesting thing I learned today was that the railway system is a connection to the Holocaust which was made very clear in our tour of this museum. Between the older trains and the newer trains there was a cattle car that was standing all alone in the middle of the room. They didn't do an overly elaborate job with the cattle car or displaying information about the Holocaust, but instead they made it blend in with the rest of the exhibit which was interesting to me because it shows that people are starting to warm up to the fact that it is a part of their history and it needs to be discussed.

Once we finished our scheduled tours and activities we went back to the hotel to hang out for a while and then headed to eat more German food for dinner. We all had a great time and it was a great way to end a long day on our feet.

Dinner: large meatball with a fried egg, and veggies
Apple Strudel for dessert. YUM!


Tuesday, January 29, 2013

29.1.2013 Walking Tour of Vienna


Today we started off with 39-degree weather and rain, what a change. We spent the whole academic portion of our trip today doing a walking tour of Vienna focusing on the Holocaust. The first thing we did was go to a couple of sites in the first district of Vienna, including a staircase that was dedicated to Theodore Herzl who was the father of Zionism. We go to see that the Jewish community wasn’t allowed to live inside the city wall so they literally lived right outside the wall.
Next we went over the Vienna River to the third district to see some plaques that have recently been placed at different sites having to do with the Holocaust. The first one we saw was at the site of a Jewish school. During the time of the Holocaust Jews were separated from the rest of the community, including schools. The first plaque we saw commemorated the building it was in front of as a school for Jews for 3 months. The second one we saw was in front of a building where 380 Jews were held before being sent to concentration camps. The third one was in front of an apartment where 29 men, women, and children were deported and killed and their apartment was robbed. The final plaque we went to see was in front of an apartment building with a synagogue in the courtyard that held about 50 people and is now used as an art studio. The plaques were put up by people in the community who want people to learn about the history of the Holocaust in Vienna. It was really interesting to see how the community reacts to this concept of putting plaques up explaining the significance of certain locations because people that live in the buildings do not want the history of their house to be public so the plaques are small squares in the sidewalk where they can be easily walked over or covered by snow or dirt.
After we saw all of the plaques we went to see the Hundertwasserhaus. This was an apartment building with a very interesting type of architecture. None of the walls, floors, or ceilings are straight, and the exterior walls of each apartment are painted different colors. You can see where the walls and floors are based on tiles that line them on the outside of the building.
By this point it was raining pretty hard so we walked past a few more locations concerning the Holocaust on our way back to our hotel. One of the places we stopped at was a memorial for the Jews who were taken out of Vienna. It had a man standing in ragged clothes, he was standing in a small room made of rocks. Our professor said that people have tried multiple times to destroy it because they don’t like it or because it is difficult for them to talk about that part of their countries history.
Once we finished seeing things as a group we all split up to do our own thing, mine was catch up on my blogs. Today is our last day being in Vienna, tomorrow we head to Budapest for a day and a half and then begin our journey back home.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

23.1.2013 Central Cemetery and the Reisengrad


some Soviet officer graves
Today was one of our more serious days as far as site seeing goes. Our first stop was the Central Cemetery of Vienna. It has over 330,000 graves, and has burial grounds for multiple religions including Buddhism, Protestantism, Judaism, etc. When you go in the main entrance, the first graves you see are extremely elaborate. Our professor referred to them as the “V.I.P. section”. Once you walk past these graves there is a Catholic Church that looks really big from the outside, but doesn’t feel that large once you are in it. Once you pass the church you get to a gravesite where only Soviet officers were buried. It was really eye opening to see a site with so many graves all of which belong to just officers and to realize that there were an incredible amount of soldiers under the command of these officers. It can be difficult to wrap your mind around the idea that millions of people were killed in the Holocaust or that hundreds of thousands of soldiers die in battle, but when you have a visual it can help. I don’t know specifically how many soldiers died under command of these officers but I can imagine it was a huge number. When we left the graves of the Soviet officers we went to a section that was designated to composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, and Brahms. Mozart and Beethoven weren’t actually buried there since they died before the Central Cemetery was designed but there were memorials there for them. Once we left the main part of the cemetery we went to the Jewish section of the graveyard that has been abandoned. There are headstones that have ivy growing on them, headstones are falling apart, there is also a pile of headstones that were damaged during bombing and were just left in a pile for plants to grow over. Central Cemetery filled up by 1920 and a new Jewish graveyard was added on a few miles away and that’s where our next stop was. All of the headstones here were a lot more modern looking but unfortunately it had a lot of headstones that had plants growing on them.
Beethoven's memorial
Jewish headstones damaged in bombings
View from the Reisengrad

Once we had finished with the graveyards we went to ride on the Reisengrad, which is a giant Ferris Wheel with train cars. This was a very cool experience because we got to see an aerial view of Vienna. I enjoyed going up in the tower in Berlin better because we had been to a lot more places and could pick them out from up in the tower, but it was still really interesting to get an aerial view. It was also interesting because in one of the movies we had to watch for the class we saw the Reisengrad, so it was cool to get to go up in it.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

22.1.2013 Beginning Our Journey in Vienna, Austria



City Hall
This morning we were out of the hotel by 6:30am and on our way to the airport to head to Vienna! We had no problems getting to Vienna and when we arrived we were told that it was about 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which seemed quite balmy after a week in Berlin, I even left my heavier coat at the hotel. After we dropped our suitcases off in the room we began to explore Vienna. We went for a walk through downtown and saw the City Hall, the Parliament Building, the Art Museum and the Nature Museum, some Roman ruins that were discovered when Austrians were digging tunnels for the subway, we walked down the street where the main event of The Third Man took place and we made a snowman there, the Vienna Opera House, the tomb of Maria Theresa, and then we stopped for an afternoon snack of pastries and coffee. I had chocolate mousse with cherries in a hard chocolate shell with chocolate shavings and a cherry on top. After having a few hours to ourselves we went to dinner and we all had Weiner Schnitzel that was fabulous.
pastry time!
I think most of us agreed that we like Vienna better than Berlin for many reasons but the one we all agreed on is that the city itself is so much prettier. The architecture is breathtaking. We’ve all seen pictures of  Vienna in textbooks or online but being here is a totally different experience.

More tomorrow, stay tuned!

Monday, January 21, 2013

21.1.2013 Last shenanigans in Berlin

Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue
Today is our last day in Berlin, what a sad thought. I've thoroughly enjoyed our time here. Seeing all the sites that we managed to see this week has been truly amazing. We have seen things about the Holocaust, Jewish history, German History, houses of royalty, and many other things that have been fascinating. Today we went to Oranien Burger Strasse Synagogue which was a synagogue that survived The Night of Broken Glass when Nazis broke into Synagogues and other places that Jews frequented and burned many of them to the ground. The entry ways of the synagogue have been restored to a certain extent with what they could find and piece together in the rubble, but the sanctuary of the synagogue was torn down because it was at risk of collapsing. It was truly amazing how much work had been put into the synagogue to restore it. It was also really interesting to try to imagine what it was like before it was destroyed and the windows were broken. Another aspect that was really interesting was that they had two police officers stationed in front of the synagogue and one behind. Dr. Moser explained to us that this was because of past acts of hatred towards Jews, which makes sense.
View out of the back of Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue
If you look in this picture you can faintly see pillars in the background and some concrete squares going in rows from the entryway back to the pillars. This is where the sanctuary used to stand. When I looked here I tried to imagine what it would be like to be walking in to the sanctuary when it was still standing. With the rabbi talking near where the pillars are and rows upon rows of pews and more pews in balconies, and the torah scrolls decorated near the pillars.





Broken Windows
1958 vs. present




















After we finished at the synagogue we were free for the rest of the day to go see any more sites that we were interested in, or do touristy shopping, etc. In the evening we met up and went to dinner at an Italian restaurant. Afterwards we all cleaned up and packed and watched The Sound of Music. Time for bed! We are leaving at 6:15 am to go to the airport to head to Vienna!