Englishman in Vienna

I’m Tom and I’m from England.
I’m Tom and I’m from Great Britain.
I’m Tom and I’m from the United Kingdom.
I’m Tom and I’m from the British Isles.

In the past 3 weeks, I’ve introduced myself in all of these ways. (Ok, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea.) And yes, I’m now having a bit of an identity crisis about it. Now, before you all start shouting, telling me that there are clear differences, let me stop you. I do know the differences between all of the 4 options above, and I can (and have had to) explain the them in German as well as English. That still doesn’t prevent me from mixing between them when introducing myself.

As someone who’s always lived in England, part of this seems to be how specific I want to be. Part of it also depends on the context or the conversation; for example, when people have asked me about the current situation in the UK with the Scottish referendum, I’ve usually explained as part of that that I’m from England, and so my perception of it is different from that of someone in Scotland. Part of it is also just laziness, in that England is shorter than Großbritannien (Great Britain) or Der Vereinigte Königreich (United Kingdom). In English, it’s slightly different because the latter is usually just shorted to UK, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be a thing in German.

To focus on the linguistic side of things (as I’m prone to do, being a languages student and all…), I’ve event felt a slight detachment from my own mother tongue since being in Germany. Of course, there is the occasional moment on a museum tour where the tour guide asks for someone to translate a word into English to try and make sure that everyone understands a point they’re making, and there’s certainly no shortage of people who speak English on the summer course as a second (or third etc.) language, but there’s still a noticeable difference for me between this form of English and the language I hear when I’m back home in the UK.

As I’ve already said in another post, there are a couple of other people on the course who speak English as a mother tongue, but they’re all from Canada and the US, so even though they don’t have the same stilted speech that those who have learnt English as a foreign language have, they still have what on some level you could call a different language. There are different idioms, words are used in different ways and with different frequencies, and they have different ways of expressing certain thoughts or emotions (or is it that they have different thoughts and emotions because of their language? A debate for another time.) Their use of language is barely foreign to me, given the proliferation of US media in the UK, and I often find myself slipping into their register and even accent after speaking to them for a while, but it still doesn’t quite feel the same as my native English.

However, thanks to various friends being in Vienna this month, I have had a few opportunities to meet up with people here who speak in such a way that I barely think twice about the language itself. Firstly, I had the pleasure of going for a quick coffee and a slice of cake with this charming young lady about two weeks ago:

Manuella posing with her Sachertorte.

Manuella was in Vienna for a week at an interfaith Jewish-Muslim conference, and so part of our conversation was about that, including the Jewish history and influences in Vienna, which is far richer than I had first imagined. I also really enjoyed talking about the influence of Muslim cultures and countries that’s visible in Vienna, as I’ve noticed quite a few women wearing the hijab and also several in the full burka. As I found out from Manuella, Vienna is becoming a popular destination for Turkish tourists, hence why I’ve usually only seen these women in and around the city centre.

Manuella was only in Vienna for a week and had a fairly packed programme to boot, so we ended up not having very long before she had to be back for the next part of the conference. Naturally then, I figured going to a Kaffeehaus would be a good opportunity for her to see a bit more of Viennese culture, and I was hardly going to say no to an Eiskaffee and cake. On what may have been one of her only tourist moments in Vienna, I’m happy that I managed to convince her to go for the epitome of Viennese café culture: Sachertorte and an Eiskaffee.

Just after our Eiskaffees arrived, an American couple on a neighbouring table, having heard us speaking English, lent over and asked us what we’d ordered. That’s two more people converted to the glorious Eiskaffee…

That Saturday turned out to be a rather anglophone sort of day. It was a brief exchange, but it felt a bit out of the ordinary for me, seeing as I’ve had periods of several days at a time here where I haven’t spoken or even thought any English, and then I have days like that when I have conversations with several different people in English.

After I’d said goodbye to Manuella and continued on the U-Bahn back to my hostel, I met another anglophone group, this time in the form of an Australian family who were also getting off at my stop and who then were trying to locate the elevator. Sorry, lift. See what’s happening to my beautiful British English?! Anyway, these people were looking for the lift and weren’t getting very far with asking someone who didn’t speak particularly good English. Being the kind and considerate citizen I am, I went and explained to them where it was and walked with them down the platform to it. Having heard me speak, one of the group then made a comment about the fact that I didn’t sound like I was from Vienna, so I explained how I’m from the UK but studying in Vienna at the moment. Again, it was only a short exchange, but it was one of a few little moments of ease, being able to express yourself without being confined in your thinking by a foreign language or being forced to come up with clumsy ways of communicating your ideas. As I’ve said, it wasn’t much, but it was just another little thing that helped brighten my day.

Flash-forward a week or so, and I got to meet up with another group of anglophone friends, this time Sarah and Charlotte, both linguists who I know from Oxford. Sarah also studies German and is currently in Vienna too, working as a receptionist at the moment in a languages centre and later she’s working in the International Office of one of the universities here. Charlotte was in Vienna on holiday with both of her sisters, and thankfully they were all free on the one free evening I had during the time that Charlotte was in Vienna for. We ended up walking around the city centre near the Opera house where we met up, and despite the busy tourist streets, we managed to find a nice student-budget friendly restaurant that did typical Viennese cuisine for dinner. It even catered for vegetarians, so I managed to try Schnitzel, despite having previously resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to, given that it’s almost always made with meat of some kind.

Charlotte, Sarah and I about to watch Orfeo ed Eurydice. Let’s not talk about the face I’m pulling here…

After we’d enjoyed our dinner and settled the bill despite a waiting team determined to speak English to us, we decided to go to the Rathausplatz and see what was on at the film festival there. Charlotte and her sisters had also found another outdoor cinema that was on at the same time, but as the weather was starting to turn and we didn’t have much in the way of warm and weatherproof clothing with us, we opted for the Rathaus cinema, where there was at least a cover and the hope of warmth generated from the crowds that go for the various food stalls there. We walked through the city centre, arriving just before the showing started, and ended up staying for the whole thing, which turned out to be a filmed version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. As time was getting on once the opera was finished, we parted ways and I headed back to the hostel with the exciting thought of grammar exercises on inseparable verbs to get me through the journey on public transport.

Wine, Wachau, and world view

Кругозор [krugozor] (Russian) – world view, horizon, mental outlook, range of interests, perspective, broad-mindedness.

The idea of having a broader understanding of the world.

This was a word I came across whilst drinking Baileys and eating Kazakh chocolates with two friends from the summer course. One was from Ukraine and the other from Kazakhstan, but they were speaking in English for my benefit. Whilst talking about the differences in our cultural heritage and how rich the diversity on the summer course was, we ran into this. After a silence followed by a burst of Russian back and forth, hand gestures were used to describe what was meant. I knew exactly what they meant by that point, but I couldn’t find a satisfying way of rendering that in English, so we carried on with the Russian word instead. And so my Кругозор grows.

There really is quite a mix of people on the summer course. To give you a breakdown in numbers: 69 participants, 39 different countries, 6 continents, 25 native languages, 40 years age gap between the youngest and oldest.

All the summer course participants.

As such, I have found myself forced to confront the idea that many UK-based linguists try and combat: that English is a universal language. While I wouldn’t say that it’s the perfect solution that some UK monoglots would like to think it is, the fact that it’s the first language people turn to after German here is indicative of its universal status. Everyone I’ve spoken to so far here speaks some English, however little, from having studied it in school for some time. But that’s not to say that it’s perfect. Indeed, most of the English that I’ve heard here has been stilted as people try to convey their ideas, often translating very literally from one language into another. Despite that, they usually get their message across. (One guy was telling me on the first day how he didn’t get much sleep because he came to Vienna from Rome on an early morning train and he couldn’t sleep because “the train was dancing”.)

However, there are quite a few native Spanish speakers here, as well as a large Russian contingent and a couple of people from all manner of francophone countries, so I’ve heard those spoken around the academy as well, and when it’s been French, I’ve usually joined in. As a linguist, it has been reassuring in some ways to know that it’s still necessary to speak more than just English and that the languages that I’m studying can actually play a similar role in the right circumstances.

Aside from all of these other languages, what have I actually been doing to improve my German, you know, the reason I came here in the first place? Well, I’ll tell you…

The summer course’s lessons take place every weekday morning for about 3 and a half hours with a break in the middle. There are 6 different classes that we got sorted into based on ability after a written and an oral placement test on the first two days, and I’m glad to say that I’m in the top one. Granted, that’s only partially due to my own language ability, as a surprisingly large number (I’d go as far as to say nearly half) of the course participants had very little German and some had never studied the language before arriving here. My lessons have been a mix of grammar exercises, creative projects like writing and recording our own radio advertisements, reading or watching news articles and thinking about the ideas behind them, and lots of discussion work.

My class at the summer school.

As the head German as a Foreign Language teacher at the summer school, my teacher for the course is very good at what she does, and I’ve already started taking notes from her for lesson ideas for when I’m working as an English teaching assistant in Strasbourg. She’s a teacher whose questions are often curve balls, thrown such that the first difficulties are not linguistic ones where I lack the means of expression, but mental ones where I lack the coherent ideas to express until I’ve had time to reflect. Trying to discuss not what instrument you would play, but what instrument you would be on the first day saw many confused faces before we started thinking about the various implications and aspects. She’s also someone whose language occasionally reminds me of modern dystopian fiction, referring to her personal preferences as belonging to a particular faction. I hadn’t realised that ice cream parlours were such a divisive topic of conversation in Vienna.

The other half of the summer course has been the afternoon programme of activities. Some days this has been research projects about different parts of the city, where we’ve had to go out and explore the area and then give a presentation to the rest of the class about it afterwards. We’ve also had various excursions and tours to different points of interest in the city.

A group of us exploring a local district of the city.

At the end of the first week, we took a coach ride for about half an hour out to the outskirts of the city and to the countryside, where we went for a walk through the woods. I say that like it was a calm and pleasant experience, and not the long, drawn-out ordeal it turned out to be. Ok, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But trying to take a group of about 50 people through woods with no clearly marked trails and steep uneven terrain is rarely easy, never mind when you end up taking ‘shortcuts’ and getting slightly disorientated whilst those at the back fall further and further behind, traipsing along and regretting their choice of footwear. As it turns out, flip-flop style sandals aren’t really the best idea when you’ve got a 4km walk through a forest that would be acceptable terrain for D of E.

In front of a vineyard, but still nearly 1km away from the wine…

Nevertheless, we made it to the Heuriger, an Austrian invention, which is essentially a place where you can drink wine produced from the local vineyards and enjoy a good meal. The word ‘heuriger’ comes from the Austrian-German ‘heuer’, meaning this year, and refers to the grapes grown and turned into wine this year. By the time we reached here, I was definitely ready for a drink… or two…

Our table at the Heuriger. Yes, that is my 3rd glass of wine. Well, if they will keep bringing more…

In the second week of the course, we went on visits to the National Library, where there’s currently an exhibition on about life in Austria in the First World War. Coming from Oxford, home to some of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever seen, I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much, but it was gorgeous. It was also really interesting to see the exhibition, not only because Representations of War is one of the topics for my Finals oral exam, but also because it’s not very often that you get to see history told from a completely different perspective, but not just one that’s the polar opposite of everything you’ve been told so far.

I have a lot of time for libraries with marble pillars and painted fresco ceilings.

We also went to the Art History Museum later that week, but I don’t have any particularly interesting photos or tales from that one, I’m afraid. I’d already visited it with my family at the beginning of the month, so I mainly went along for the guided tour we had and the opportunity to get another look at a few of my favourite pieces.

Last week, we went to the Imperial Furniture Museum, which I appreciate may not sound like the most thrilling place in the world, but I actually rather enjoyed it. Ok, so I started losing interest after looking at the 100th dining table chair, but our tour guide in the museum was really good at telling us the stories behind some of the pieces which helped bring the history to life a bit more than looking at an ornate writing desk might otherwise do.

Unrelated to the library and the furniture museum, I found this chair in the Museums Quartier on one of my wanderings.

Those of you familiar with Film Noir will probably have at least heard of, if not seen, The Third Man, a film set in post-WW2 Vienna. Last Monday, the academy organised a screening for us to watch the film, and then on Thursday, we went for a brief tour through part of the Vienna sewer systems where the final chase sequence was filmed. I enjoyed the film, having not seen much of the genre before, so it seemed like a good choice. The tour was… aromatic. Putting it like that makes it sound much more appealing than it was. That being said, I did enjoy the feeling of entering this other world, hidden behind the outward façade of Vienna, getting to see this dark subterranean world and hear the faint roar of traffic rushing over Karlsplatz overheard. It wasn’t an olfactory experience I wish to repeat, but then again I suppose that’s not the tour’s main selling point. Or should that be smelling point…?

In terms of things I’ve been doing outside of the summer course, I’ve been going to even more museums with friends from the summer school. During the first week, a group of us ended up going for a walk through one of the parks and going for a coffee at the Palmhaus café and then going to the Albertina Museum where there’s currently an exhibition showing works from Monet to Picasso. The museum was open later on Wednesdays when we went, and part of that also meant that there was an event going on to try and draw people in, so after we’d had a look around the various galleries, we went out to see what was going on. I must admit, going from Monet and Manet to Nicki Minaj and mojitos was quite a contrast, and not the direction I’d foreseen my evening taking…

Ain’t no party like a museum party…

On the way back from the museum, I also found this. So there’s that.

At the end of the first week, we also took a trip out to the Wachau, a region of Austria west of Vienna, where there are many vineyards and several monasteries. I’m still undecided as to whether I think this is just pure coincidence… Regardless, we had a lovely day in bright sunshine, walking around the various beautiful old buildings and courtyards and enjoying being out in the countryside. One of my friends from the summer course, Maxime, is from Belgium and had driven here to Vienna, so we managed to get around in his car, which was very useful and kind of him, saving us from trying to figure out a system of trains and buses to enable us to get around there.

Whilst we were there, I noticed this sign regarding large vehicles in the area, complete with a very long list of exceptions. I can only assume that lorry drivers in Austria have telescopic eyesight and so have time to read all of these before driving past.

The following day, Maxime, Ariadna (another friend from the summer course) and I went for a look around Museums Quartier, which turned into sitting in a café there whilst it poured with rain. We didn’t end up going into any of the museums then in the end, but we did notice a photobooth in the square, so naturally we stopped off there before heading back our various ways. This was the result:

In case you can’t tell, we weren’t ready for the first one. Apparently Austrian photobooths don’t believe in giving you a countdown or a warning of any kind. We’ve since split the photos, and the second one is now in my wallet next to my driver’s licence. I must remember to show the right photo if I get IDed…

This post is getting quite long, so I’ll leave it here with one final thought I had from the first week of the course. I’ve already got another couple of posts planned, so I’ll probably be updating this twice a week for the next fortnight or so, or until I run out of stories from Vienna to write about.

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In the first lesson at the beginning of the summer school, our first task was one of those “go and ask 5 people these questions” tasks, well-known to anyone who’s studied languages, where conversing in the language is enforced through prescribed questions. As harsh as that sounds, it really was an interesting task because of the questions, like the musical instrument one I’ve already mentioned. One question that stood out to me was the following:

Nennen Sie zwei liebenswerte Traditionen Ihres Heimatlandes! (Name two likeable traditions of your home country.)

Now as you may have noticed, the idea of home and a home country was a key part of this, and so naturally the group discussion afterwards turned in this direction. In our group, everyone is from Europe (I’m not sure if that’s technically correct, but as the three Russians are from Kaliningrad, the sense of being in Europe is still there), which meant that we all went in with the mindset of someone used to knowing that on the other side of the nearest border, there would be a different country with a different language and different social customs. We were therefore already aware of the diversity within Europe, and maybe because of that or maybe despite that, the question quickly changed from being a discussion of traditions to the things that we missed. Except the idea of ‘missing’ something was rarely expressed. Instead, we talked about how things differed between the places we call home and Vienna or Austria, often in terms of presence and absence, having a tradition here that doesn’t exist at all at home and that was something completely new to us. We talked about the differences in the food here, in the way people wait unwaveringly for the green man before crossing the straight, in how we interact with the space and the other commuters on the train in the morning. And despite the emotional attachments we have to these things, shown in the raised tone of voice and the smiles that crept over our faces in a moment of personal reverie, we never said that we missed them. Whether for fear of being too intensely patriotic or because we wanted to keep those little idiosyncrasies secret to ourselves, we never expressed a nostalgic longing for those things despite the novelty and excitement of being somewhere new. We spoke politely, we discussed the differences, focusing on the present moment for our new collective point of reference.

It seems that homesickness goes by the name of culture shock now.

The bare necessities

Once you’ve looked for the bare necessities, pack them and nothing else.

Having previously mentioned that my suitcase was large, nay, mountainous when I flew over to Vienna, I should perhaps explain that whilst I was exaggerating, I wasn’t exaggerating as much as I would have liked. I didn’t bother to weigh my case before I flew, as I never usually take that much and so I’ve never had to give much thought to the weight restrictions on hold baggage before. Admittedly there was one time when it turned out that my hand luggage was about 10kg, but that was because I didn’t want to put my books in my hold luggage in case they bashed about and in case I finished the other 3 novels I was taking before the end of the flight. The possibility of being left without reading material was by far the most worrying prospect of holidays for me as a child. I’d like to say that that’s not the case now, but it’s still a factor in my packing.

Which may have been one of the reasons that my luggage was on the larger side. The standard restrictions are 23kg. My case was 24.5kg. I also made the mistake of checking in my bag last, so when I saw the number on the scales, I was hurriedly trying to think of what I could slip into my hand luggage to balance out the weight. Whether because the person at the desk guessed or somehow knew that I was going to be in Vienna for a month, or for some other reason, I was lucky in that they decided not to charge me for the excess baggage.

Having mentioned this to my family, they kindly offered to take some things back with them when they left to try and get my suitcase back into the realm of what is sensible, especially seeing as I don’t have a bigger albeit younger brother to help me carry it up and down stairs on the way back. I ended up going through my suitcase a couple of times, becoming evermore severe about what I actually needed, and what I could do without for the next 4 weeks. Such things included the third 600+ page novel I’d brought with me (What? A month is a long time in reading terms!), as well as 4 of the 6 jumpers I’d brought with me (NB: the number of jumpers should be inversely proportional to the temperature in degrees centigrade. Ergo, if it’s 30ºC, you need 1, maybe 2. Not 6. Even if they are smart casual as the course dress code states.) I also ended up sending my raincoat home with me. Yes, despite arriving in a thunderstorm and having witnessed deluges since, I made the informed decision to send back my only item of waterproof clothing. Even if it is pouring with rain, chances are you’re not going to be standing out in it for very long if you have any say in the matter. I figured that if the worse came to the worse, I’d just have to find a café and have an Eiskaffee whilst waiting for the storm to pass. I also realised that most people just use umbrellas instead, because nobody wants to be putting on layers in 30ºC heat.

Seeing as I’ve talked about 30ºC several times now, I feel I ought to at least be a bit more realistic in my representations of Viennese weather. Yes, it was 30ºC several times, and it even got up to 33ºC at one point (I felt like I was in danger of melting, all Wicked-Witch-of-the-West style, although a bucket of water would actually have been a welcome gesture), but since the thunderstorm the weekend before last, it’s been a lot cooler. It’s still been 22ºC+ every day, so don’t start sending the pity party just yet. However, since I sent most of my jumpers home, I’ve been rather glad of the shirt-over-a-T-shirt combination and my courtesy university hoodie when the temperature drops in the evenings.

Another clothing-related practical note is washing. In Oxford, the college laundry rooms run off chip cards used to operate the payment machines, so I only have to worry about topping it up once a term or so. However, in the real world without such advanced if specific technology, such things are operated with loose change. But very specific change. So naturally it would be the day after I pay for my coffee with all of my change to get rid of some of it that I find out that the washing machines only accept €0,50 pieces, and that I need 4 of them. Cue panic buying of small items in the supermarket and begging for the change in €0,50 pieces, only to find out that the cashier I went to only had 1 left. What followed was then pleading with everyone I’d met at the academy if they had any such coins I could change. After much strategic purchasing and pleading, I managed to get together the correct combination of change to be able to have clean clothes again. This may not sound that drastic, but when you’re debating washing your clothes with Ariel Non-Bio by hand in your bathroom sink, you know that you’ve got less than 24 hours of clean clothes left. It’s fine, all is well now, I can stroll around Vienna safe in the knowledge that I smell like fabric softener and not like second-hand cigarette smoke and canteen dinners.

They say that mother is the necessity of invention, so once I’d actually managed to wash my clothes, I got creative with finding ways to dry them. This mainly involved covering every possible surface in my room with my laundry, as well as opening all cupboards and doors and draping things over them. I even ended up turning to using the door handle at one point. In Oxford, I usually have a large airer, and by large, I mean big enough to dry two washing machines’ worth of laundry at a time. Seriously, that thing is the envy of the corridor, if only at very specific moments.

In a bid to make sure that I don’t have the same problems of oversized luggage on the way back from Vienna, I’ve left my suitcase out in the middle of my room to act as a constant reminder. My immediate thought when I encounter the possibility of acquiring something is “how much does this weigh?” and “is it something I can use up or leave here at the end of the month?” The effect of this is that I’ve been very thrifty about buying anything that isn’t food, and I’ve even been thinking about what things I could leave behind when I return to the UK in a couple of weeks. Obviously some things are worth the hassle, but I’m not quite convinced that a snowglobe of St Stephen’s cathedral is worth the extra baggage charges.

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TL;DR – DON’T TAKE SO MUCH.

A is for addiction, B is for balmy, C is for coffee…

Right, this is just going to be a general post about all the things I’ve been doing since my summer course started and my family left Vienna after our holiday here.

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Hi everyone, I’m Tom… and I’m a coffeeholic. As I sit down to start writing this, it’s a Sunday evening, 17th August to be precise, which means that this is the last day of a three day weekend due to Assumption on Friday being a national holiday. As a result, I’ve not been into the academy since Thursday, and so I’ve not had any coffee in about 80 hours. The headache yesterday evening was quite something, but I persevered with the help of plenty of water and some paracetamol.

I honestly wish I was joking about the headaches, but sadly such is the effect of drinking upwards of 3 cups of coffee a day when you’re used to that much over the course of a week. I do find myself questioning my choices, but then I remember that Eiskaffees exist and I feel no remorse for my actions.

People warn you about the coffee culture in Europe, but I’ve found that it’s something that you’re never quite prepared for. I knew that drinking coffee was much more common over here, but I drink coffee when I’m back in the UK. (No seriously, all the baristas in my local coffee shop know my order exactly. I would say I’m ashamed, but it’s just nice and friendly, and it saves time.) However, what I wasn’t quite prepared for mentally was the sheer quantity of coffee that people drink over here, purely down to the regularity of coffee breaks. There is an almost constant stream of free coffee in the academy, so every day I’m there I have a cup with breakfast to get me going for the morning lessons. Then, after the first 90 minutes of classes, we have a 30 minute coffee break, so naturally everyone grabs a cup and goes and sits outside in the garden. After another 90 minutes of lessons, we have lunch, which is then usually followed by another cup of coffee before the afternoon activities take place. Following that, I might end up going to do something in the city with a few friends, and we’ll usually stop at a café at some point along the way, and I’ll get an Eiskaffee there. It’s a miracle I can still get to sleep at night.

This currently bears an alarming resemblance to my life. I know this is in French, which a) isn’t the language I’m supposed to be working on right now, and b) may not be a language that many of my readers speak, but I’m fairly sure the accompanying cartoon will illustrate what’s about. Just know that le café in French is coffee, not café.

A word on lunch at the Diplomatic Academy: while breakfast is self-service, for lunch there is a team of waiters and waitresses on-hand from the kitchen, so the whole process is rather speedy. Despite the fact that there are usually about 60 of us having lunch at the same time, we’re usually in and out within 30 minutes. (A gentle reminder to you that this is a 3 course meal.) When we arrive for lunch, the first course (soup) is already laid out, and usually still surprisingly warm. The moment you’re finished, a waitress will appear to whisk the bowl away, only for it to be replaced by your main course seconds later. A similar process happens with the main course and dessert, and suddenly you come to the end to find that you’re feeling rather full from having downed a considerable meal in less time than it takes you to drink your coffee in the mid-morning coffee break. One of the advantages of such a meal, however, is that I rarely find myself hungry enough for anything more than a light salad in the evenings, so I’ve not had to worry too much about cooking for myself then.

I realise that I keep shifting between talking about the ‘university’ and the ‘academy’. Essentially, it’s the same thing. When I’m feeling particularly British, I’ll refer to it as a university, because that’s the British equivalent. It’s an institute of Higher Education that offers postgraduate courses during the academic year, and then business management and language courses during the summer. However, it’s called the Diplomatische Akademie Wien, or the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and so whenever people there talk about the place in English, they refer to it as the ‘academy’. You see my problem? So, until I can decide on one particular way of referring to it, or even just a more fixed contextual basis for which word to use, I’ll probably continue to switch between them.

I realise that for many of you, this is just a boring photo of a morning taken from the tram stop. But for me, as someone who’s been living in Vienna for nearly 2 weeks now with 30ºC heat on a regular basis, this is a picture of hope. Hope that I’ll finally be able to step outside without constantly making a note of where I can seek refuge in shade. Hope that maybe by 4pm I won’t look like I’m in danger of melting into a puddle on the floor.

Gone are the days of praying for the next tram or underground train to be one of the modern ones with air conditioning rather than having to sit in an oven on wheels for my daily commute. Instead, I can now happily sit in one of the older trains with their rustic, if a little uncomfortable, wooden seats, or face the challenge of the old-style U-Bahn trains with their manual doors.

Yes, that’s correct – some of the U-Bahn trains have manual doors. As in, you have to pull the handle to release the catch and slide open the door to get in. Schadenfreude has taken a new form in watching people struggle with these doors, especially when you end up in a carriage where one of the doors doesn’t work. Bonus points if someone inside the carriage has to help or if it’s a tourist who then tries to slide the door closed behind them. Yeah, these doors are manual when you open them, but they close automatically. Something about energy efficiency and not losing heat from the carriage…

Another wonderful feature of these trains is the priority seats, and the handy diagrams explaining this. I say hand rather than creepy, because they do at least have some practical function, but despite being clear, they’re still creepy.

See what I mean? Just look at the eyes!

To those of you who have noticed my slightly odd way of talking about this sub-terranean mode of transport – yes I am having difficulty finding a good way of translating ‘U-Bahn’ into English. So far I’ve decided that ‘metro’ is the closest, but that still makes me think of Paris. Subway is too American, and underground or tube is just blatantly London. In light of this, I’m just going to stick to U-Bahn.

Despite being a regular commuter on this fine mode of transport, I do still feel a rush at the thrilling sensation of the increasing wind coming down the tunnel, signalling the imminent arrival of the oncoming train. Whether it’s because I’m still vaguely haunted by memories of the earlier hot weather or whether it’s because I just still feel excited about the joys of modern transportation (I promise you I belong in this century), I’ve still yet to progress to the point where I pull a face of mild annoyance at the inconvenient effects of the wind upon my hair and general appearance, as many other commuters seem to do here. However, I do get plus commuter-points for the fact that I’ve now been recognised as a local commuter by someone who asked me which U-Bahn line went from my local station.

Having my family around for the first few days of me being in this new place was certainly quite reassuring, and it allowed me to interact with the space in a different way. By that I mean, and I’ve touched on this before, that I was the one to help navigate the way around the city, and in some senses it artificially catapulted me into this position of authority and familiarity with the place that I might not have felt if I’d just been there by myself or if I’d been there with a group of students and people that I didn’t yet know very well. Similar to this is the fact that not only was I relied upon at times to help get us to various things, I also got to see a lot of the city, the city centre in particular, and more so than I would have done in the first 5 days had those 5 days been at the beginning of the summer school when I was in lessons during the morning and on pre-organised excursions or activities in the afternoon. In many ways I’m very thankful for this beginning to my experiences here in Vienna, because it gave me such a good grounding in the public transport system and the overall geography of the city, and I got to see and do some things that I might not otherwise have done, either for financial reasons or just because I wouldn’t necessarily have made the time to go.

But there has been the odd moment where I’ve questioned that bit of planning. To be clear, it was something I completely agreed to and that was a communal decision, rather than me insisting on my family’s presence or their insisting upon coming along. There’s a saying: “Never regret anything, because at one time it was exactly what you wanted”, and I feel that’s appropriate here. When it was suggested, the idea sounded like a good one to me, because it would tick many boxes, allowing me to spend time on holiday with some of my family that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to have that time with, and as I said, it widened my horizons in terms of things I could do and see in Vienna.

And yet there have been these moments when trying to organise going to do things with friends from the summer course that have been a bit more difficult as a result, especially in my friendship group at the academy. One of my friends there, Maxime, is fairly familiar with Vienna, because his girlfriend and her family live there, so he’s already been and seen most of the sights there before, and while he’s fairly happy to do some things again or give recommendations, there are things that he doesn’t feel he needs to see again. Combine that with the fact that I’ve also already seen many of the city’s main attractions and within a far shorter time span, and it means that trying to find something that we all want to do together has been rather difficult.

So far I’ve not really repeated anything in Vienna, although I did end up going for a walk through the gardens of Schloss Belvedere for the second time with a group of friends in the first week. In some ways though, this is good practice for other aspects of the Year Abroad, both in that I expect I’ll be visiting certain parts of Strasbourg over and over when I have people come to visit, but that side of things doesn’t bother me, because I’ll be there for a much longer period of time, and so I’ll have the time to go and explore other areas too. This is also all good training in terms of being a bit more independent and content with being with myself. I feel that this is something that people struggle more with in an age of immediacy, where human contact is only ever a text away, and it’s something I’ve been thinking more about in recent times. Now I’ve got many opportunities to put such thinking into action, and I’m enjoying it. There are things that I want to do in Vienna that might not be to many other people’s tastes or that just aren’t high enough priorities for people whose time in the city is rather limited, but I’m trying not to let that stop me. This sort of thinking reminds me of a line in The Lord of the Rings: “We might do some things together. […] I go my own way; but your way may go along with mine for a while.” And so I’m going my own way, grateful for the company I have when our paths converge, but content with taking my own path where our interests differ. That’s not to say that I’m insisting on only doing things that I want to do, because I’ve already found value in doing things you wouldn’t otherwise have chosen for yourself, but I’m also trying to make sure that I make the most of my time here and enjoy what I’m doing, rather than going along with other people because I don’t want to be alone. I’m doing things for me with me, and I’m happy about it.

A walk in the park

Earlier today I went to the Prater, Vienna’s largest green space. Here’s what I wrote about it whilst walking the 4.3km back through it.

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“All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.”

– The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the Prater provides an all-encompassing representation of heaven and death, a comprehensive microcosm of society or even just of Viennese society, it does present a wonderful kaleidoscope of the people of Vienna at leisure. Here there are all manner of cyclists, some sporting lycra and riding bicycles with thin frames and even thinner tyres, their heads down as they pedal harder and harder. There are some in uniforms, the sort of thing you’d find being worn by workers in a café or at a tourist attraction, cycling in pairs on their way home after the lunchtime shift. There are some travellers, people with foam roll mats and large rucksacks or packed saddle bags, as they make their way from one stop to the next. There are families, groups of people of all ages riding bikes of all cyclists. Some seem very small and young, especially when riding along next to their octogenarian counterparts, but young and old alike cycle straight and without the need for stabilisers. Occasionally a family or friend group cycles past in one of the four wheeled versions: think pedalo but like a bike and on land. Unlike many of the individual cyclists, they pedal past serenely, taking time to enjoy the view around them, safe in the knowledge that there are others pedalling and steering to prevent an accident. Now and then a larger group will glide past in one, usually a family where the smallest child has opted for the basket at the front rather than sitting in the back and swinging their legs towards the pedals with the futile hope of being able to reach them.

And like the cyclists, there are different runners too, although the activity is clearly a more selective one, as the age range is greatly decreased and so is the variety of people. Nevertheless, there are many different configurations: the solo runners, some of whom have earphones and some who listen instead to their regular footfalls and the sounds of the world as they pass by. The are duos, pairs of friends going on a run together and chatting away as they go past, and there are people who have gone with their personal trainers, the noticeably more energetic of the pair who calls out words of encouragement and does their best to make the experience seem like less of an ordeal.

The Hauptallee, paved with smooth if slightly humped tarmac, and as straight as a Roman road. At around 4km in length, you would be able to see from one end to the other if only the human eye could render images that are 4km away in the same crystalline high definition that it manages at 4m. Along its length there is the occasional intersection, where a road from the rest of the city cuts its way through the green urban paradise, bringing with it a string of overhead lamps. It takes a stretch of the imagination to associate these floating steel blocks by the woods with the black slender lamppost of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia.

Aside from these interruptions, the sights are generally more rural: the dappled sunlight through the light green leaves of the horse chestnut trees that line the avenues and the knotted trunks of the forested patches on either side. Woods that are just thick enough that only the occasional glimpse of bright colour indicates that you’re still surrounded by the city.

And the smells, oh the smells! Areas of newly-laid tarmac that have become hot in the mid-afternoon sun, the damp freshness of the trees the day after rainfall emanating from the more densely forested areas to either side, and the more suburban smell of petrachor wafting from the dusty paths. The rare puff of tobacco smoke from someone poised on a bench, having made the decision to walk a considerable distance to find that perfect spot for a cigarette break.

The crescendo of the traffic as you near the motorway bridge that runs overhead, bringing with it sounds of revving motorbikes and the continuous cacophony of cars, only for it to become suddenly subdued as you walk underneath its eaves. Instead of the thunderous noise you were expecting above you, you’re granted an unexpected moment of calm, where the constant traffic sounds like rain and you find yourself in the eye of the storm.

And you keep walking, and the sounds of motorised vehicles behind you fade away, falling back into the acoustic backdrop of your surroundings. Were it not for the faint rumble of traffic sounding from all directions and the occasional piercing squeal of a siren, I could almost believe I were somewhere more rural. As I keep walking, the sounds of the traffic become replaced by the chirpings of bird and crickets in the trees, the whirring of bicycle chains as people cycle past, and the satisfying thump of a tennis ball hit well.

 To the side, tennis balls are littered over the court like the conkers on the path: both small, round and roughly the same shade of green. The main difference is that the trees weren’t practising how and where to place them like the tennis players. They have no coach to support and guide them, but they don’t need it. Humans have a good habit of aiding their distribution, from accidentally treading on them and stumbling forwards only to regain their balance and composure seconds later, to pairs of runners throwing the natural obstacles into each other’s path.

Amidst the typical soundscape of wheels and footfalls, there’s the occasional reminder from various animals that the space here is theirs too. A pair of dogs barking at each other as they cross paths when on an afternoon stroll with their owners, or the eager panting of a dog enjoying the happy freedom of sitting in a bicycle’s front basket, watching the world flash by at speeds previously unknown to the canine mind. The sound of hoofs and a neigh serve as a reminder of the white and blue signs that reappear every so often, informing visitors to the park that these paths are in fact bridle paths too.

The unexpected accelerating puffs from the small steam engine bring back recollections of the park’s history, now condensed into a children’s ride giving a tour of the wooded areas for a mere €3 whilst the parents wait patiently at the station and wave their little darlings off and hover around the area until they return safe and sound. The far off whistle of the train gives a clue as to the current location, and a warning to those about to tread in its path.

A rare sight: a car drives past. The blue and red stripes down the sides and the word POLIZEI emblazoned across the doors stating clearly the reason for this breach of the peace. And then it’s gone again, its shape dwindling as it progresses further away down the long road.

What at a distance sounds like the steam train coming back again turns out to be a much larger piece of machinery: a slightly more modern train running on a different set of tracks, pulling along a fleet of carriages of people eager to see some of the park’s beauty without the long walk and physical exertion it entails.

In a clearing on the left, many of the trees seem to have been populated at the base by students and people working, their backs up against the trunk with a laptop resting on their folded legs and a collection of books and papers scattered amongst the roots. The bike resting up against the back of the tree gives a clue as to what brought these people to an area that would otherwise requirement a higher level of commitment and perseverance to reach if only in the hope of finding a quiet corner to sit, and to read, and to think, and to write.

A small child nagging its parents to turn and “look at that cute dog” brings me back to my immediate surroundings. What once would’ve have seemed completely normal now feels out of the ordinary. In this European metropolis, it’s a rare day when I hear only the language I came here to study. I’m usually surrounded by a mixture of Western and Eastern European languages, as well as ones from further afield. I don’t always notice at first which one is being spoken when it’s a language I speak enough of to understand the speaker, but here it’s different. Here it’s a Sunday and people are relaxed, away from the world of work and High German, and instead I try to avoid staring as I hear an unfamiliar combination of the language I’ve been studying for nearly half my life and something that I can just recognise as its long lost sibling, the language veiled in a shroud of local colloquialisms and altered pronunciation.

The sound of a belted pop anthem with a thumping dance beat echoes out from the nearby baseball stadium, reminding me of similar events and experiences on the far side of the nearest ocean. And I remember that although this area feels secluded, like a hidden cave behind the waterfall of urban Vienna or a bubble barely clinging to the city’s surface, it’s still very much a part of the rest of the world.

The paths become more populated as I make my way back towards the northern end of the park, back towards the city and the amusement park for which the Prater is known. Here the distinctions between the paths fall by the wayside: the previous system of a path for cyclists, a path for horses and a path for walkers and joggers is no longer maintained.

The clangs of bells, the rumble of exhausts and the screams of excited adrenaline junkies to the right bring my attention back to the amusement park and its rides, its sugar-fuelled children and their fatigued parents. Above all of this, the big grey wheel slowly turns, gazing down upon its younger more colourful cousins with their flashing lights and ringing bells. The wheel turns. It doesn’t need the same dynamic appearance to draw people in. The grey iron frame is a staple of the Viennese skyline, the first silhouette that comes to mind for many tourists who come here. And while the wheel now has a new competitor, a white floral wheel rising up out of the thicket of ground level rollercoasters and spinning sombreros, there are still 2 tourists who want to experience the old attraction for every one who chooses the new. But the crowds that come to park on sunny weekends in summer mean that there are plenty of paying customers to go around, as they line up in front of the colossal structures as they wait for their turn to see the world from above.

As I keep walking back along the long road to where I first entered the park, I turn back and see the great grey wheel. Just like every other tourist in a world of digital cameras and smartphones, I stop and take a photo, yet knowing that the image will no sooner fade from my mind’s eye than it will from my computer’s hard drive. But more than that, I’ll remember the sounds, the sensations, the smelly: the kind of thing that you can’t preserve quite so easily through the lens of a camera.

Son et Lumière, or Donner und Blitzen

People say that rain when you’re leaving a place means that they’re sorry to see you go. Quite what the message is when you arrive in rain, however, I’m not too sure, and as for a thunderstorm…

Such was my arrival in Vienna and the beginning of my Year Abroad. The weather was definitely dynamic, if not downright biblical. I’ve decided that if I am to read it as some kind of omen, then it was a natural firework display, but rather than the usual Son et Lumière display, we had Donner und Blitzen instead. Well what can I say, I like to make a dramatic entrance.

Thankfully, apart from briefly going outside to see whether we could get a taxi to the hotel, and then later running the 20m between the metro station and the hotel, we managed to stay dry, thanks to a series of tunnels and trains. Coming from the UK, you’d think I’d be used to the rain, but there were two slight differences in this case.

Number 1: I had just arrived in Vienna. In Austria. In Europe. Agreed, not quite the southern Mediterranean climate of Italy or Greece, but in August I had at least hoped that the weather might be a bit better than the UK. It was certainly warmer, but sadly the heat had also caused the storm.

Number 2: The sheer quantity of water descending from the skies above. Good Lord. In all honesty, I wouldn’t have been too surprised to have seen Noah sailing down the Danube in a ship of his own making, accompanied by the local fauna. I had at least looked at the weather forecast before I’d left, and seeing the temperatures and the potential for thunderstorms, I’d packed my umbrella, thinking that if the worst came to the worst, I’d just find nearby shelter in a Kaffeehaus or museum and wait it out. Sadly, both of those options tend to be rather unavailable at about 9:30pm, and the rain showed no sign of stopping, so we opted for the damper option instead.

The lightning did make for a somewhat foreboding journey from the airport into the city. It was nearly 9pm by the time we left the airport and were on our way to the city centre on the City Airport Train, so it was already dark outside. As we sped through the urban landscape, we saw many big structures with metal frames and oddly angled lights. It turns out that they were car parks and glass office buildings, but at the time it felt like a scene straight out of the latest dystopian fiction to hit the shelves and screen.

By the following morning, the bad weather had passed, somewhat ironically given that it was then Thursday or Donnerstag, and instead the warmth and humidity had returned. Thankfully, Vienna’s Kaffeehäuser are rather good at having Eiskaffee on the menu during the summer, so we quickly settled into a routine of going for coffee and cake every day for lunch. (Sssh, I know it’s not a proper lunch, but I tend to lose my appetite a bit when it’s rather hot, and I felt it coffee and cake was an appropriate way of getting into the local culture. That’s the reason I’m going with at least.)

A brief word on the humble, nay, mighty Eiskaffee: Eiskaffee and iced coffee aren’t the same thing. Granted, they’re close, but I’m fairly sure that if you looked up Eiskaffee in a dictionary you’d find the definition would read something along the lines of ‘heaven in a glass’. Essentially, Eiskaffee is your standard strong ice-cold black coffee, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and topped off with whipped cream. As I said, heaven.

Despite the fact that I had Eiskaffee on an almost daily basis during my first week here, I failed to resist long enough to take a photo of said drink before I started. So here’s one I found on Google. I’m sorry, I’ll be a better 20-something next time and remember to Instagram my coffee, along with several different filters for your aesthetic pleasure. (http://wiener-blut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Foto-2-3.jpg)

Here’s the closest I got to a photo of my coffee and cake. I was too late.

During the course of my first 5 days in Vienna, I was a full-time tourist with my family, as at that point, I was still there as a holiday rather than for the summer course. This meant that I seemed to go to a lot of the city’s main museums and sights, and I also became rather good at navigating my way with public transport. It’s not something I tend to find difficult thankfully, but when you have 3 other people look at you expectantly as if to say “Go on then, tell us which way to go”, you can’t just blag it and know that if all else fails, you can get off and try again.

As for the museums and activities we got up to, I’m fairly sure we went to far more art galleries and museums than my brother would have liked, judging by his diminishing enthusiasm throughout the week. To be fair, I think telling him that we were going to a castle, only for us later to revise the wording and declare it a palace, and one that housed several art collections at that, might have been a factor in that process. But hey, such experiences are character-building. Again, that’s the phrasing my aunt preferred, although I’m not sure my brother would agree.

On the first day, I also had my first Year Abroad experience of having to look up vocab. I’d made a point in the weeks leading up to my departure to go back and revise GCSE German – not because I’d regressed quite that far, but rather for the different topic areas. I can talk to you for days in German about literature and all things arts-related, but sadly the rather more practical words for things like ‘return ticket’ and ‘twin room’ had fallen out of my vocabulary, leaving their places free for elaborate descriptions of eighteenth-century Enlightenment aestheticism. However, despite my previous efforts, I was forced to resort to my English-German dictionary app on my phone when in St. Stephan’s cathedral when trying to find out about the decoration.

However, I did find a Reclam stand in a bookshop, so I can just hang around there and speak if needs be.

Of all the words I thought I’d be looking up first upon my arrival, ‘pulpit’ wasn’t high on the list, and neither was handrail. The reason for all this was that there were frogs and salamanders on the handrail up to the pulpit as symbolism for good and bad, but we couldn’t get close enough to have a proper look, so I resorted to asking one of the guides. Even though my ecclesiastical vocabulary is still somewhat limited in German, I managed to get through the conversation easily and painlessly, to the point where I could actually turn round and explain to my family.

While I was still back in Oxford last term, my German language tutor, my fellow German student Sarah, and I had realised that we’d all be in Vienna at the same time, and given that our tutor lives there when she’s not in Oxford, she suggested meeting up to help us get to grips with the place. After many emails back and forth, and even by chance seeing a photo of the University of Vienna posted on Facebook by another fellow German student, we managed to organise meeting up on Friday night for a drink and something to eat. Over the course of the evening, we picked our tutor’s brains and left at the end with the full list of the complete Christina tour to Vienna, giving us enough to do and see in Vienna for years to come.

During this month there’s also a film festival on in Vienna, showing mainly operas, classical music concerts, and dance of various styles. Not wanting to miss out on another bit of culture, we went along on the Saturday evening to see what was going on and to get something to eat from the various food stalls around the square where the film was being shown on a massive screen.

No, but seriously: the screen was massive. You can see the woman at the bottom giving the introductory speech about the festival before the film.

As it turns out, one of the better ways to engage people in conference in a public place (an important task if I am ever to better my German) is to order something rather outlandish and distinguishable. This will probably result in at least 7 people openly staring at the plate in your hand as they shuffle past before one of them plucks up the courage to break social convention and ask where you got it.

The offending article: sushi with rice soaked in beetroot syrup. For the record: it tasted rather nice.

The Sunday did initially pose a challenge, in that Austria, like many other European countries, ceases to function normally on a Sunday. Shops shut early, if ever they bothered to open at all, and many restaurants also decide to take the day off. Add to this the fact that despite it being the summer holidays and tourist season, many shop and restaurant owners had decided to take their own holidays then too. Granted, for some things like doctors and dry cleaners, this isn’t so much of a problem and they probably don’t lose out on much business. However, for restaurants in the city centre, being closed when we’re trying to find dinner is an inconvenience for us and a shame for them for the lost custom.

However, even when everything is closed on Sundays, there are still vending machines which cater to your every need. If your every need includes phone cases and guidebooks.

As for museums, a lot were also out of action come the Lord’s Day, but thankfully there were still some open for business, and so we spent the morning looking around the Sigmund Freud Museum, in his old rooms in Vienna. Somewhat surprisingly, my brother had shown an interest for this, so it was partially on his suggestion that we went there. Freud is one of the writers I’ve previously studied for German, so I rather enjoyed having a look around, finding out a bit more about his life and practices. Unfortunately my brother came away somewhat disappointed. It seems that he’d hoped that by being in the same room and around the possessions and writings of the great psychologist, he’d somehow soak up all of that knowledge and leave with a complex understanding of the workings of the human mind. I did tell him that Freud had written all of these great world-changing ideas down, and that all that was required was to pick up a paper copy of these words and focus his eyes on them, but that wasn’t a popular suggestion sadly.

Given that I’ve probably gone on long enough now, I’ll leave it here. I’ve already got plans for some future posts, about such topics as what not to pack (hint: taking 4 jumpers in 30ºC heat is not necessary) and my experiences after the first week at my summer school. I am very much enjoying said summer school; however, the classes, homework and time spent socialising with the others on the course does have an annoying habit of taking up lots of my time, so finding a moment to sit down and write is more difficult than I had originally expected.