Aufiderzein, Good Night

My last day in Vienna was a massive success. After meetings at the OSCE in the morning I spent the afternoon with some friends to the Schonberg palace a little bit outside of the city. It was so pretty to walk through the palace grounds with all of the leaves changing colors. Behind the palace are just these huge manicured, rolling hills with little fall-covered side paths splitting off along the way. At the top of the biggest hill is a fountain and a beautiful little cafe with big windows on all sides so you can sit inside and get a view of the grounds from all angles. We snacked on some apple struessel and kaffe Mozart (mocha espresso with chocolate liquor - highly recommend it).

After relaxing we hiked back down the hill to the labyrinth! The palace has its own intricate maze that we wandered through for a bit. I can't imagine that people actually lived in this house and whenever they got bored, you know when something cruddy was on tv, they could just go in the backyard and chill in their personal labyrinth.

One of the coolest things for sure was this crazy playground right next to the labyrinth that has an old school mirror maze with different carnival mirrors, and a bunch of climbing equipment that definitely made me miss rock climbing!

After our little foray back into childhood at the playground my friend and I found a market a little off of the beaten path not far from downtown Vienna. Everywhere we went in the market we were greeted immediately in German and people seemed a little surprised when we looked super confused and asked if they spoke English. It was so nice to get off of the main streets and into the non-tourist site, Viennese Vienna.

If I ever live in Vienna I will come back to this market every day. They had rows and rows of fresh fruits and vegetables, some of the mostly delicious freshly dried fruits I've ever had, cheese stalls with more types of cheese that I knew existed, and one of my favorites - a vinegar and oil stand with vinegars and oils made from all types of fruits and vegetables. We just walked around to every stall spending our spare Euros on taste tests of everything that looked particularly delicious. It was the perfect way to end the afternoon.

After the market we had a big group dinner. It is so strange to think that this time tomorrow we will be back in D.C.! At dinner I had my very first Austrian schnitzel and we all toasted to each other, our professor, and especially to Viego and Azra who have been like our surrogate parents for the past few weeks.

After dinner I went to the opera and it was incredible. Just being able to see inside of an opera house anywhere is always beautiful and fun, but being inside of an opera house in Vienna was doubly amazing, and then having the opportunity to see an actual opera (especially one that I have studied in class) in an opera house in Vienna absolutely topped the charts in my music nerd brain. I saw Il Barbiere de Seville by Rossini and I'm pretty sure I sat there with a big goofy grin on my face the whole time since I was so excited!

I still can't believe that this trip is actually coming to a close. It has been a wonderful and unique opportunity to get to know a culture, a people, and a specific time in history that most people do not have the chance to do. I wish I could tell you that after studying and researching in both D.C. and in the field that I would at least have a first step to solving the issues in the Balkans, but I must say that after all this I am more confused than ever. The more I learn the less I seem to know for sure. But I can't stop learning, traveling, exploring, questioning, and adventuring.

Goodbye and thanks for reading! I can't wait to see you all in person and share the rest of my photos and stories.

Until my next adventure...

Wilkommen to Wien

Woke up this morning...in Vienna! So excited.

I spent most of the day at meetings in the UN, kind of felt like being back in DC. The UN complex here was designed in the 70s and was supposed to be super hip. All of the buildings are grey and then accented with bright orange. Even the inside of the elevators was bright orange walls and orange light bulbs. If Austin Powers were to try and solve the world's problems he would do so from the Vienna UN headquarters for sure.

After the meetings I wandered around Vienna with some friends, played a little frisbee with my frisbee team buddies in a park about a block from one of the prettiest cathedrals, ate some delicious gelato, and stumbled upon monuments to some of my favorite composers (Mozart, Strauss, Mahler, Haydn, and oh my gosh so many more!!).

Not much else to note except that I cannot believe that tomorrow is my last day here, then hopping a plan early Wednesday morning and back to the DC grind...have to make tomorrow count!

the cathedral near where we played frisbee

Haydn and me
Strauss' star

Travels were going way too smoothly...

...I have never traveled internationally with such a big group. Combine 20 college kids, a giant language barrier, and a space cadet professor and I was sure that the logistics of the trip would be a giant recipe for disaster. Things have been running pretty smoothly until today.

We woke up early because we had to drive from Zagreb, up the coast of Croatia, through Slovenia, to Austria, and finally in Vienna. We made it to the Austrian border fine, but the bus had to go through the weigh station and inspections. Turns out the EU is kind of a stickler for functioning machinery and after about 30 minutes of inspecting our janky transportation they deemed the bus' brakes unfit for driving on EU soil. No one was quite so concerned when we were driving the falling apart bus through mountains and four different countries for the past two and a half weeks, but we're down to the final three hours of driving in the bus ever and the brakes are down for the count.

Austrian border patrol was pretty pissed but finally succumbed to giving our illegal bus a police escort back into Slovenia to the nearest train station so we could hop the next train to Vienna. Conveniently enough the next train left in about 10 minutes so we booked it through border patrol no man's land, stopped the bus and ran with all of our luggage to the train platform. My professor and our translator went in first to purchase tickets and immediately came back out with fallen faces. Apparently there was only a ticket machine, not a desk attendant, and the machine only took Euro. We all currently have four types of currency in our wallets and I could see Eleftherios inside rifling through his wallet only to find Bosnian marks, Serbian dinars, Croatian kunas, and American dollars.

Eventually he was able to negotiate something with our police escorts and purchase 23 train tickets on the fly with only moments to spare on the platform.

Finally, after a few extra hours of travel time, and a little ounce of adventure I am in my hotel in Vienna!! Meetings all day at the UN tomorrow and then soaking up the aura of Mozart's favorite city to compose in - so excited!

Dubrovnik!

I feel like I say this for every city, but Dubrovnik is actually my new favorite. It is so beautiful. We finally had a full day with no class, speakers, or meetings and it was wonderful.

I spent the whole day in the old city of Dubrovnik. There was a fortress built surrounding the whole city to block off the access point to Vienna and it is one of the only fortress walls in Europe that remains complete. We spent about two hours walking along the fortress walls, trying to take in the incredible view from every possible angle. I have never seen water so purely blue contrasted with bright white rocks, green green grass, and the orange rooftops of the buildings. Then when you turn away from the water the city is surrounded by mountains. The pictures below definitely do not do the view justice.

We took our time mosey-ing along the walls and stopped about halfway for fresh squeezed juice and a 360 degree outlook. I can't even describe how great it was. It is so funny that everyday that my schedule is bleak and depressing it rains or is very grey and cloudy, but in Dubrovnik, soaking up the view and enjoying life, the weather was sunny and it seemed like everything about the city sparkled.

After the walk around the fortress walls we grabbed some lunch, wandered through the farmers market, and then went for a swim in the Adriatic Sea! The water was the absolute perfect temperature. A few friends and I went swimming in this little alcove where we found an open beach and after we had been swimming around for a while we looked up and realized that part of the fortress wall was looking over the alcove and a handful of tourists were videotaping our swimming excursion. I can't wait to be on a Japanese family's vacation video!

The water was amazing though and such the perfect end for a relaxing day. Cross the Adriatic off of the list of bodies of water left in the world to swim in.

part of the fortress wall

Dubrovnik!

walking out into the Adriatic [awesome photo credit to Markie]

Bridges, bridges, bridges

I spent all of yesterday in Mostar, Bosnia and it was beautiful. Mostar is making headway but it used to be one of the most divided cities in the country. Even the university in town sat on an ethnic border with separate classes for students of different ethno-religious identities. One of the most recognizable monuments of Mostar today is The Bridge. The bridge is at the center of the old city, in the middle of the Turkish quarter, and in 1992 it was bombed by Croats and destroyed. The bombing separated the people of Mostar by their political views and also physically and visually since it further cut off communications across town. In 2004 the bridge was finally rebuilt not just for engineering's sake and convenience, but as a symbol of the end of the war and the progression of Mostar into integration and acceptance.

The day in Mostar was one of the first sunny days I've had since coming to the region and walking through the old town with the bright turquoise water sparkling along the side was incredible. Then we spent the afternoon with the Nansen Dialogue Centre which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year when Obama won it. There are a ton of NGOs in the region, many whom I've met with in the past few weeks, who focus on cross-ethnic dialogue and reconciliation, but NDC is definitely one of the strongest, and an inspiring organization to meet with on such a great day!

Mostar is so beautiful!

a poster promoting the rebuilding of the bridge
The Bridge!

Continued...

Some photos from yesterday's post:

The outside of the memorial in Kozarec

inside of the memorial and the flowers we brought

When we were driving to Mostar yesterday we went up through the mountains and saw snow! I only have a few pictures before I had to keep my camera in my pocket to protect it from our snowball fight!

Kozarec, Banja Luka, on to Mostar

I haven't posted in a while, internet continues to be kinda shady. But it has been a rough few days.

Two days ago we went to a DNA identification center in Sanski Most, the biggest center in the region for exhuming mass graves, reconstructing skeletons, and matching the found bodies with a DNA database of families searching for loved ones. There were about 10 newly pieced together skeletons lying on the floor of the warehouse of bodies when we walked in and a family was coming to visit the center, to see the newly exhumed people for the first time.

Talking to the manager of the DNA project was scientific, we talked about budgets, the pioneering technology that allows for DNA matching, and it all seemed fairly logical, a scientific lecture. But then the family agreed to speak with us and this man, who has been living in Austria since the war, walked up and down the line of bodies pointing out his little brother, his cousin, his neighbors. One of the DNA workers came over to show the bullet hole in the skull of his eight-year old neighbor.

Most of the meetings that we attend paint a bleak picture of the future of Bosnia, they talk about the economic decline, the 43% unemployment, the still segregated schools 15 years after the end of the war, but those situations have a little bit of hope. That's why we study this country, to figure out how to rise above the hardship and to make the seemingly inevitably bleak future, not quite so tragic, but the DNA center was a whole other animal. The DNA center for me was a warehouse full of hopelessness. These people put in a huge amount of man hours, money, and energy to identify each body, but they can never bring that person back. Some families may get an ounce of closure, but then there are the racks and racks of skeletons in the store room who can't be identified because families refuse to donate blood samples for matching. They want to hold on to the believe, still almost two decades later, that their loved one somehow escaped, somehow avoided these horrors and will show up again, one day, alive.

After stopping at the DNA center we had lunch at an NGO in Kozarec who brought us into town to show us the memorial at the town's center that she helped to construct. It was so incredible, definitely the memorial full of the most hope of any we have seen so far. The women talked about how much pain came from the war and from the cleansing, so when we remember these people, she said, when we honor their lives, we must do so with light and with hope.

I'm running out of time, leaving for Mostar in about 15 minutes, so I will continue and post photos later.