Auf wiedersehen, Wien

It's hard to believe the end is actually here. Tomorrow I'm going back to the States.

The sad thing is, I feel like I really just started to like it here, and get used to it here.

I've made many good friends, and it was great seeing them all one last time at the restaurant where we were served the infamous "swords" dinner: pork and schnitzel skewed on swords! And I can tell I've made a reputation with a few of these people by the fact that I was called to help finish one of the remaining swords.

This was actually all after riding the famous ferris wheel as seen in The Third Man, where I got to look out upon Vienna from above for just one more time, and just ponder.

I've been pondering something for a while - whether or not it's okay to love this city. There are certainly many great things about Vienna, but there have also been a lot of bad things. I've wondered if it is okay to still like a city that has been involved in things too numerous to mention here. But in the end, the good is outweighing the bad for me. I've found so many things to like here. Even the people; I don't seem to mind grumpy Viennese at all! All I know is that I would love to be back here someday. There's still many things that I didn't end up doing.

There's no question that I love the people that I've spent this month with. That was clear as we all took shots together in the restaurant tonight. It's been such an adventure exploring this country alongside them.

This was for sure an experience that I won't forget any time soon. I am afraid I have little else to add to this sweetly sappy blog post other than...auf wiedersehen, Wien.

The last German word of the day is "fremd," meaning "foreign."

Last Bit of Time...

I must once again thank Stephanie and Professor Stuart for inviting me to go out with them; we went back to Thomas Frankl's gallery on the Judenplatz, and this time Josh was able to come along too. This time we mostly helped him set up a Facebook account, just so that he could get his father's work and gallery noticed on the internet more. I also took the time to look at some of the paintings a bit more, and shared the experience with other families who had come in through the door.

Later that afternoon while walking around some of the less-crowded streets, I happened to come across this sticker:


And then a few meters later I saw this one:


It means "Stop the demagoguery - Islam is not the enemy."

Interesting pieces of public art. I guess these are signs that there are indeed people in Vienna - people who dwell in the world of underground, DIY-type stuff - who are actively fighting against the xenophobic tendencies that seem almost traditional of Viennese and of Austrians. If I could speak with the maker of the first sticker, however, I would ask him or her why it's printed in English and if the choice of that language has any special meaning or signifcane. I know that this is not the first such bit of English I've seen in public - if you look at the graffiti it can be found in there too. I just wish I knew the reason why. There could be so much to know about the uses of languages that we just don't have in the United States, because we're almost completely unilingual across the country.

There's still so much I could learn and do here, and it's a shame that I'll have to leave soon. At least I got to spend this night at an authentic heuriger with almost the whole class. I have really come to enjoy these heurigen in Austria. The wine is always great and the little bits of food are just right... Again, I wish tomorrow wasn't my last day.

The German word of the day is "Freundschaft," meaning "friendship."

A Band and a Mass

This morning I chose to go see something that I had been meaning to all month, and something that always makes me happy anywhere: seeing a marching band play.

The band in question is the Hoch und Deutschmeister Band, which gathers on the corner of Graben and Kohlmarkt every Saturday morning before marching to the interior courtyard of the Hofburg via Michaelerplatz. There, they perform works by various Austrian composers (the Strausses, Franz Lehár, Carl Michael Ziehrer and Robert Stolz for instance) for 40 minutes.

I excitedly ran ahead of them from the Graben towards the courtyard, where they gathered in a circle around their director who took the time to explain a bit of their history to the crowd. Apparently, the Deutschmeister Band was first formed in 1741 to perform changing-of-the-guard ceremonies at the Hofburg, which they did until 1918. This tradition was only revived just a few years ago, although I think the band has still existed in different incarnations since the end of World War I.

Many of the crowd left before the performance's conclusion, but I stayed for the whole thing (and even found fellow band nerd Me'Lisa James in the crowd!). All in all, it was enjoyable 40 minutes, seeing musicians young and old playing together. I did not recognize any of the tunes, except for the fact that they were all marches and all Austrian.

When they were done, I took a quick look inside the nearby Augustinerkirche, where, amongst all the other sights of the gothic church, I saw posters up for (what I perceived to be) free daily classical music concerts. Tonight's repertoire included nothing that I recognized, except for the names: Mozart and Bach. The prospect of hearing a Mozart piece other than "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" was enticing to me, and I absolutely love Bach's organ works. I would later inform Professor Stuart and Stephanie Merrill of this when we were relaxing at a cafe by Schwedenplatz, and they decided that the three of us should go, having nothing else planned for the evening.

(A note about the cafe: this was the only time I've ever had a grumpy Viennese waiter/waitress, or at least been aware enough to notice one. And the main reason why she was so is because we sat down in tables blocked off with a "reserved" sign. I am told, however, that usually such tables are not really reserved, it's just that the cafe doesn't want to deal with more customers than it wants to deal with!)

As we walked into the Augustinerkirche shortly before 18:30, I noticed that many people in attendance were wearing much nicer clothes than myself. It felt strange. I then felt completely out-of-place once Professor Stuart and I sat in the pews and she informed me that we were really attending a Catholic mass. I suddenly didn't want to be there, as I am not Catholic myself and I was afraid I was taking up a seat for someone much more devout than me. I began to get really worried at certain points such as the moments when everyone crossed themselves in unison.

The thing is, I hate to stand out as an outsider. I've been trying to do that this whole month as an American in Europe. But how to not stand out as a non-Catholic American in the middle of a mass in the capital city of one of the most staunchly Catholic countries in the continent? The experience almost overshadowed the beautiful orchestra and choir behind me, and I felt stupid for being so naive to think that this was really a free classical music concert. Of course not, I was expected to show my faithful side. But how could I do that when I can't speak Deutsch...

Professor Stuart and Stephanie seemed to get much more out of the experience than I did. Turns out, this was the mass for the feast of St. Augustine, so we had picked quite a day to visit. I was glad that they were both okay with attending (I felt guilty for misleading them), but next time I will be more careful and will not attend something that I don't belong in. Even though Kathy said that most of the attendees weren't religious at all, I still felt out of place. I guess this is just another learning experience.

The German word of the day is "wohnen," meaning "to live."

Art Against Oblivion

Through my works
I have created a memorial
for all nations of the world.

No one,
regardless of religion or
political conviction, should ever again
suffer such - or similar - atrocities!

So says the introductory page to the book that compiles Adolf Frankl's art. Frankl was a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and an artist who expressed his memories of the Shoah through paintings. This afternoon, I had the tremendous fortune of holding a conversation with his son, Thomas Frankl, who runs the gallery that displays his father's work on the Judenplatz. And for that I must thank Stephanie Merrill for inviting me there first.

Frankl had so much to tell us about himself and about his father as well. It's so hard for me to decide where to begin. Should I start with how he once had to dress as a girl in order to avoid being checked to see if he was circumcised? Or how he showed us his mother's handbag which she used to cover up the yellow star she had to wear, and how the contents of her bag were for event that she would be caught outside in an air-raid? Or maybe how he showed us an actual cap worn by Jewish prisoners that was typically maliciously thrown by guards towards the electric fences?

There's one story Thomas Frankl told us about his father that I think says volumes about him. Adolf Frankl was hiding in an upstairs residence when the authorities were gathering together all the Jews of the town (present-day Bratislava) for deportation. The son of the janitor of the complex betrayed Adolf by saying aloud that there were Jews hiding upstairs - thus he was taken. Years later, after surviving Auschwitz, Adolf Frankl was approached by the same man who begged forgiveness from him and apologized on his knees. Incredibly, Frankl didn't just forgive him, he hired him as a janitor for his own office.

Thomas Frankl seems to have much of this same kind spirit in him. "I don't make generalizations" was one of the sentences he spoke several times. He said this to imply that he did not think that all Viennese were anti-Semetic, and hence why he was able to let his father's art have a gallery here. I believe he also spoke of Simon Wiesenthal's idea of "fighting [anti-Semitism] in the lion's den."

The art itself is incredible. It is meant to be provocative and disturbing - they are all scenes related to the Holocaust, whether they be scenes of deportation or of life in the camps or of anything else. The human figures often appear abstract, and spatial perspective is done away with a lot. The colors are also meant to be bright. As Thomas tried to explain to us, Adolf wanted his colors to "burn like fire." Also, when you look up close at the paintings, you can see that there are huge gobs of dried paint on them, giving them a rough, almost three-dimensional look.

Here are a couple of his paintings that I was able to find online:



I will admit that I did not talk a whole lot. I let Stephanie and Professor Stuart (she was there too) do much of the talking and occasional translating. It's not that I wasn't interested in the art and in the Frankls; nothing could be further from the truth! But sometimes I get silent just listening to another's stories. I hope Thomas did not mind my silence too much.

I was making a remark to Professor Stuart about a particular painting that was sticking out in my mind, called The Last Scream - The End. Thomas heard me speaking and asked what it was I was talking about. I motioned to the painting behind him and slowly stammered out a few words when he said "Give me your hand" and took my right hand in his - his hand which has surely felt far more in this world than I can imagine. It was a gesture of comfort. I automatically brought up something that had come up in our group's conversation. "Mauthausen was...tough." Thomas seemed to have read my mind.

We only meant to stay at the gallery for an hour and a half; it ended up being three. By the end of those three hours Thomas Frankl had agreed to host next year's Vienna students from UC Davis as well as signed the copy of the book of his father's art that I bought. Professor Stuart, Stephanie, and I really could not believe just how fortunate we were in having this experience together.

The German word of the day is "Fußball," meaning "soccer."

Crossroads of the World

This program is called "The Crossroads of Central Europe" but today I felt like I met the crossroads of the whole world. And why not - for today was our visit to the United Nations Office in Vienna.

I felt lucky to be able to visit here, just as Vienna itself must have felt a little lucky and glad to be neutral in the Cold War so that it could get the UNO City established within itself.

Roughly the first part of our tour was spent up in the press box of one of the large conference rooms, which was very cool to look down upon. We learned that in order to be an interpreter, you have to know at least three languages (which may or may not include the six official languages of the UN: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese). Apparently the interpreters don't always know what the conferences are about, nor are they always able to translate something well. One funny instance that was related to us involved a delegate from Russia trying to tell the assembly a a humorous vignette which couldn't be translated easily, so the interpreter just said "Could you please laugh politely? The Russian delegate is trying to tell a joke."

The second part of our tour was spent with a representative of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headquartered in Vienna. Most of what's heard in the news these days concerning the IAEA involves them investigating dubious nations with dubious nuclear ambitions. Hence, it was nice to hear of all the positive things that the IAEA gets to do too. Like helping developing countries use nuclear technology for medicine, agriculture, and mineral exploration. Of course, the agency does have some pretty serious jobs to do, such as making sure that spent fuel rods are not used for malicious purposes.

I learned from this representative that the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China are the only countries legally allowed to have nuclear weapons since they exploded devices before 1967 and have pledged under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue good faith negotiations towards disarmament. The rest of the 182 member countries have pledged not to proliferate at all. Supposedly one of the ultimate goals of the IAEA is to completely disarm all nuclear weapons from the entire world. I wanted to ask how that would possible, but I didn't get to ask it.

Oh, and I must comment on how ironic it is, having the IAEA in a nuclear-free country.

After a very excellent and international lunch we had the third part of our day, listening to a representative from the Office on Drugs and Crime discuss the problem of human trafficking in the world today. This turned out to be a very eye-opening presentation, as we were told of the multiple reasons that people are trafficked, from labor to organ removal to sex work. Really horrifying things. And the really unfortunate thing is that so many victims get led into a life of being trafficked after having been told that they're going to do something good for their families. Then once they're under another's control, they're subjected to countless methods of entrapment. Their passports could be taken away, their "wages" could be held indefinitely, religion can be invoked, the list goes on... Anyway, I was really impressed with this speaker, her lecture, and with this general department of the UN; I got really motivated to learn more about human trafficking. There was a book being passed around describing the trafficking situations unique to every country in the world. I tried to read as much about Austria and the United States as I could before having to pass it down; if I remember right Austria tends to get a lot of people from eastern Europe brought within its borders for labor.

I really should investigate internships for working here. I'm really impressed with this whole UNO city and it seems like a lot of good work for the world gets done here. This would be a very prestigious place to be.

The German word of the day is "heute," meaning "today."

Post-Mauthausen

After yesterday's intense day at Mauthausen, it was necessary to discuss in lecture what we thought about it. One thing that was brought up (which I have not mentioned here) was the presence of rascist and neo-Nazi graffiti that had been scribbled on the walls of the main shower room. (I recall peering at one phrase written, and then automatically turning away in utter disgust.) We debated how one could best prevent such graffiti from appearing again. Many of us didn't think that the interiors of the buildings should be shut away from visitors, however. One possible solution (which I have written down in my notes) was to have people monitoring the rooms, like guards at a museum. (If Ruth Klüger reads what I just wrote, she will completely disapprove of me for using the m-word.)

We were apparently the last class to be allowed to enter the innermost parts of the buildings, including the gas chamber. Supposedly those sections are being closed off to the public very soon. This we decided was not beneficial, for it seemed to us that there's a certain feeling and sense that you get when you're actually standing in a certain place as opposed to viewing it from afar, like in a book. You can't get the same sense of despair and sadistic humor put forward by the Nazis. It is because of this that most of us disagree with Ruth Klüger's belief that concentration camps should not become memorials and not be open to the public. People do need to see these.

One thing I mentioned aloud was how a Holocaust-denier could possibly deny that it happened if he or she was confronted with one of these camps. I think these camps should be preserved somewhat just so that they don't fade away with history like a medieval ruin. I don't think something like this should ever be forgotten, and I really don't think that anyone would just build such a horrific place for any other reason than to kill - they're already damaged in the head anyways.

The German word of the day is "Kino," meaning "movies."

Mauthausen

This is going to be a very difficult entry to write. This has certainly been a very difficult day.

Upon arrival at Mauthausen, Professor Stuart told us that after getting off the bus we were to meet up in the middle of "the modern building." I looked at the walls and edifices of the camp and said aloud to myself "Which modern building?" For these are no medieval ruins, they are less than a century old. The building in question was the one that housed the administration of what is now called the memorial.

"Memorial" - the whole camp is described as such on its website, yet there are also many other memorials set up in front of the camp's gates. These individual memorials have been set up by each nation that had members of its citizenry perish at Mauthausen, each with a different artistic way of paying tribute. The word "nation" here also includes the Roma and Sinti people, as they have their own memorial too. Even West Germany and East Germany erected their own memorials here, though I am told that those were both difficult to deisgn.

Our tour guide led us throughout the grounds, both outside and inside the gates, and we all somberly followed. She gave us much information about Mauthausen, like how the prisoners themselves had to cut the rough stone steps for the staircase from the quarry, or how the dormitories that would comfortably fit 20 people were made to hold 200, or how public soccer matches were held on a field just below the camp and the local citizens would come and watch, oblivious to what was happening higher up on the hill.

It seemed logical and yet perverse how the last place the tour guide showed us was the gas chamber below the camp's prison. Even though far more Mauthausen prisoners died doing manual labor, it was much easier to imagine scores of people being slaughtered in this tiny space, and to me it was the most distressing and saddening part of the camp. There's a chance you can live another day carrying a small boulder up the stone steps - but there's no chance of surviving a room that was explicitly designed to kill you in half an hour. You know with certainty that the four white walls around you - apart from the 80 other prisoners crammed in next to you - are the last things you'll ever see.

I will admit to my credit or discredit that I was far too emotionally downtrodden to really pay attention to anything that we saw in the town of Weithoven, a side-stop for dinner on the way back to Vienna. The gothic chapel and Renaissance-era town hall could not distract my mind from the gas chambers. And instead of joining with others on the bus on the way back and singing songs aloud to release spirits (Professor Stuart would later say that this has happened during every class's return from Mauthausen), I sat twisted in my seat, being driven almost mad from the irony of it all. I did not sing.



The German word of the day is "es geht," meaning "it's okay."