The End...

Since it is my last night in Vienna as part of this program I figured that I'd reflect a little on how this trip has changed me.

While I'd like to say that I don't feel like a tourist in this city anymore and I'm more cultured now, I'm honestly still very much a tourist in Vienna and haven't picked up much in terms of culture.

I have, however, become more accepting and comfortable being a tourist here and I care less about trying to fit in as much as trying to enjoy the whole experience.

I can ride the U-Bahn comfortably without getting lost, I can throw out some off-hand facts about the architecture of the city, I can list my favorite museums, restaurants and bars...

I've made a lot of friends and enjoyed being somewhere new and radically different and just gone with the flow.

It hasn't always been good, but it has all been worth it and I would do it all over again. Maybe I will somewhere new next year...

It's been a blast and I'm going to miss it. But it's time to head home to the people I've missed while I was having fun.

Hopefully someday I come back and stay longer. Hopefully it's not the same experience when I do. It's always more fun when it's a mystery.

Kaisergruft

I never gave much thought to how I would like my remains to be handled after I died.

I don't think that I would want to be put in a huge decorative metal casket and left for a hundreds of years underground though.  That just doesn't seem like a nice final resting place.

But I'm not a Habsburg so what do I know.

Even after they're dead, I guess the Habsburgs wanted everyone to know how important they were.

Or maybe it was just a tradition and it was expected of them.

One thing is for certain: there are waaaay too many Habsburgs/aristocrats named "Marie Theresa". Of course the largest sarcophagus is THE Maria Theresa though...

Mauthausen

I don't know the best way to summarize my feelings of this trip.

It's not enough to say it was informative or moving. It wasn't even an experience that I would consider "good".  While of course the trip was very educational and it did move me to a degree, that wasn't what stuck with me after I got on the bus back to Vienna.

What stuck with me was a strong sense of discomfort.

It was discomforting to learn about institutionalized genocide. It was discomforting to learn about the dehumanization of the prisoners. It was discomforting to come to realize that for many people at the time, this horrific act of brutality and injustice was acceptable. Maybe (and probably) it wasn't enjoyed by everyone, but the Austrian populace accepted it nonetheless.

I say it left me with a deep "discomfort" instead of "horror" or "sadness" because while I was walking around Mauthausen I wasn't trying to place myself in the shoes of the prisoners there and empathize with them.

I don't think anyone who wasn't there will ever be truly able to understand or empathize with those who were.

I instead put myself in the shoes of the citizens of Mauthausen.

I placed myself as a citizen of the Third Reich in Mauthausen when the camp was being run and asked myself, "How would I react if I knew of the atrocities going on inside the camp?"

What left me feeling uncomfortable was the realization that I would more-than-likely trust the judgement of the authorities running the camp than I would trust myself.  If the guards were people I knew and liked, if the Nazi government had improved things for my area, if I had been raised antisemitic for my whole life, I could see why some people would do there best to ignore and not think about the violence they are condoning.

This doesn't mean that I'm at all justifying the indifference and moral failure of many people at that time. It just means that I understand how something as terrible as the Holocaust can become a reality. Not through pure malice and bigotry, but though indifference and blind acceptance.

What left me truly uncomfortable after visiting Mauthausen was the realization of how truly real and possible the Holocaust was.  It wasn't a rare and unfortunate series of events directed by one person meant to embody pure evil and cruelty. It is an aspect of a very real and very dangerous aspect of humanity as a whole.

If the world isn't careful, that aspect of humanity could easily show itself again.

The UN

Go to the UN is pretty much like traveling to another country.

You go through security, they check your passport and WHAM people around you are all busy and speaking a different language.  Seriously, being in the UN cafeteria was like being in a blender of dozens of languages.

Considering how little I knew about to UN before going there, I'd say was a very informative if not maybe a little disappointing crash course on what the UN does.  I was disappointed to learn how little power the UN has over other countries, but I guess that makes sense when you need other countries to volunteer their support and cooperation to your multi-national organization. Still, I was very impressed by how organized everything was and how many programs and branches the UN operates.  I would have liked to talk to a scientist and asked them about the work they do there but the people that we heard spoke were also very informative.

I really wish I had learned a second language when growing up now...

Not that I would ever end up working at the UN anyways. That's not really my area of interest. But, it would be really cool to be able to translate as well as one of their translators has to.

One major con though: despite how cool all the building look from the outside, the inside of the buildings are confusing as hell.  It took me forever to find the bathroom that was 15 feet from the room I was in.

A question I wanted to ask our speakers but forgot to was: How often does the UN exercise military force and is the magnitude of said force decided by the UN or the country they are aiding?

The Military History Museum

Ah yes!

Museums full of swords, gun, tanks and battleships! This is more like it.

The Military History Museum, or Arsenal, is strangely hard to find for a building so massive. We wandered around for a good 10 minutes before we found it on the other end of a park near the Belvedere.  Isn't that kind of far from the city center to put the cities arsenal?

Sometimes I forget there is a lot more military history to Austria besides WWI and II. Boy did this museum break that misconception. This museum wanted to make sure that Austria's martial history was well preserved and displayed. It's interesting seeing how the notion of war being a noble and heroic thing clearly is washed away when WWI starts. All the regal aspects of war is quickly replaced by cold, mechanized efficiency. It's scary.

Franz Ferdinand's Assassination Car

These guys really love Prince Eugene of Savoy...