Freshmen Week

Saturday, 13 August - Sunday, 21 August, 2011 - My last official week of work, but I would hardly classify it as that.What a week! My German professor, Dr. McAllister, brought a freshmen group to Vienna as a pre-school trip both to add another alternative to WFU pre-school options and to increase awareness of how superb Vienna is (and potentially up future study abroad numbers). My question: Dr. McAllister, why wasn't this offered four years ago?? As an innocent, bright-eyed, and impressionable freshman I may well have been convinced to take German all through college instead of dabbling in four different languages. Maybe it was a top-notch group out of the class of 2015, maybe it was a very well thought out itinerary that had a perfect mix of organization and freedom, Viennese culture and fun (not that the two are mutually exclusive by any means), or maybe it was that it was led by a hell of a good professor (with the help of yours truly of course), but this may well have been the best week of the summer for me!

Here's the top-notch itinerary:
Saturday: 1:30pm arrive at house, lunch in the park, get settled, grocery shop, dinner reception at house with faculty, introduction to Vienna and culture
Sunday: 10:30am city tour, 2:00pm Wien Museum tour with Dr. O, dinner at Farouati
Monday: 11:00am tour of Belvedere Palace with Dr. Hanreich, lunch at Salm Bräu, dinner at the Rathaus, 8:15pm Mozart performance at Musikverein
Tuesday: Catch 9:18am train to Melk for biking tour of the Wachau Valley, dinner at Heurigen Fuhrgassl-Huber
Wednesday: 11:00am tour of Kunsthistoriches Museum with Dr. O, lunch at the Naschmarkt, dinner and evening at the Prater
Thursday: Free day (and evening)
Friday: 11:00am tour of Military Museum with Dr. Hanreich, group Wiener Schnitzel making dinner with Günter
Saturday: day at Schönbrunn, dinner at Fischerbräu
Sunday: 5:15am departure

If this seems like a good use of time for an all-encompassing week in Vienna, that's because it is. Better yet, not only did I revisit some favorite haunts, I also got to see many things that I was already familiar with in a new perspective, such as seeing the majestic Wien herself... from the top of Stephansdom's South Spire:

Not sure how I had managed to miss that climb in over four months of living here. I was also introduced to some stellar new places in and around the city. I would venture to say the bike ride down the Danube was one of the highlights, but I might be a little biased.

We woke up early to catch our train to Melk where we were going to start our ride back down the Wachau Valley towards Krems - a pleasant cruise of 33.5 kilometers (approximately 21 miles). We were all a tad apprehensive when the day broke as the first (and only) cloudy day of the week with things looking more ominous the further west we travelled on the train, but it turned out to be a perfect day for a ride with good cloud cover and not a drop of rain. I don't think any of the students had extensive biking experience, but they all pedaled gamely while chatting and joking down the trail.

I took up the caboose position so I could snap pictures continuously (and not hold the group up when I did a bike switch on the fly with someone because she was having trouble getting her gears to work). It was such a scenic ride! The trail weaved right up along the Danube at times

before branching a little more inland to wind through tiny villages with cobbled streets and flower boxes under windows or cut through the middle of vineyards, and the occasional castle watching stoically from hillside lookouts.

I believe we rolled out of Melk around 10:00 and made it to Krems by 3:30, which included a stop in Split for lunch at a Heurigen. We dropped off the bikes by leaving them chained to each other in the middle of the walkway at the town's port - as requested by the bike outfitter. I suppose it worked; as far as I know we didn't get a call from them looking for the bikes. We got to the train station just in time for the 4:01 train back to Vienna, then went out for a great chicken Schnitzel dinner later that evening.

The next night we went to the Prater, Vienna's amusement park and home of the famous Riesenrad (ferris wheel). Somehow I'd never been out to see, much less ride, perhaps the second most well-known icon of Vienna. We waited until the sun had set then all piled into a car together to look out across the Vienna skyline.

One of the other things that I had known about but never actually explored was the Arsenal, Vienna's Military History Museum. Aside from being set in a very impressive building (it was, after all, built to be a shrine to the empire's military accomplishments), it was surprisingly encompassing, thoroughly covering Austria's history from the 16th century to 1945.

Turkish tent from one of their attempted sieges of Vienna

 Car that Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in, 1914

I'd definitely recommend it if you have at least a couple of hours to spare.

But new experiences in Vienna aside, it was just such a great, responsible group and I loved how excited they were about being there. Heck, I might even have to get back to North Carolina to see how they're liking WFU. Or maybe they should all come back and visit me in Vienna.

Here's to you all; it was a great week! Prost!