Travel and First days

July 31 - August 1 Friday - Saturday

Today was about the longest day of my life, travel can be just awful for me and the flights just felt like they went on forever. I started the day with a two hour drive from my home in Sacramento out to SFO in the west bay for my flight. The first flight was the 12 hour leg from San Francisco to Amsterdam and I passed the time listening to music and reading the books for the course. However I did lose my headphones in Amsterdam before the flight into Vienna, an auspicious start to the week. Arriving in the early afternoon in Vienna on the 1st I today got to experience the wonders of Viennas public transit, it is so much better and more convienent and senisble than any public transit I've been on in the United States. I took the train from the Vienna airport to Wien Mitte enjoying some of the countryside and a bit of the exterior of Vienna. From Wien Mitte I took a short train to the Volkstheater beofre making my walk to the hostel. Along the way to the Hostel I stopped in a fairly authentic feeling cafe to enjoy a Chai Latte. I will say however the heat today was miserable, and I'm dreaing the lack of an air conidtioner in the apartments. In the evening Prof Stuart invited some of us to join her for a walking tour for which we made our way over to Schonbrunn Palace to walk the grounds. Trusting entirely in her guidance this was my first expeirnece getting 'lost' in Vienna, and was very cool seeing baroque architecture in person, particulary the facade of Schonbrunn.

Schoenbrunn Palace

August 2 Sunday

Today we walked the museum quartier to the parade grounds of the Imperial Palace (the Hofburg. An unfinished structure, as its northern wing was never constructed, the Hofburg is still an immense structure built around the heldenplatz. We took a while to sit in the Heldenplatz and it is here I am reminded that right are fickle, as it was in this place where 80 years nearly a quarter million people celebrated the arrival of Hitler in Ausrtia and of the Anschluss, well and truly aware of the fates that awaited peoples in the country like the Jews. Here in the Heldenplatz is also an excellent place to view all of the architectural styles Vienna has to offer. From the baroque constructions of the Ringstrasse era to the utlitarian structures of Red Vienna and from Soviet occupation, the city has a deep variety to it. The German word of the day today was dusche, to shower, funny since Ich muss duschen, or, I need to shower.