In David's words

Summer in Wien Program

The summer course in Vienna is an opportunity that nobody should pass by. When I went it was with a group of about 15 other students from UofI and we all became great friends. Everybody seemed to have a great time, those who were leaving the US for the first time and those who had been to Europe before. It is great in terms of learning German, you go through a semester’s worth of material in a month, but as soon as you learn something in class you begin to understand what is being said around the city a lot better. You will see something in class one day and then use that very day at the supermarket! People in Vienna seem to be really nice and happily listen to broken accents...

The best part of the trip to me was to have the chance to see how a different culture works. There are things that you are used to seeing and take for granted in the USA that you will be surprised to see are totally different... For instance, the whole city is perfectly well connected through the subway system and the Straßenbahn (Street-trains) so you won’t need a car and neither do most people the city... So the streets are packed with people. People seem to buy bread and flowers every single day in Europe, and so every street has a few bakeries and flower shops and you’ll find that you HAVE to buy bread every other day because it will not be long before it goes from delicious to hard-as-a-rock. The drinking age is either 16 or 18, depending on what you want to drink... And you can drink out on the streets like a bum if you want without having to worry about the police! Surprisingly, though, people seem to be a lot more responsible with alcohol in these countries than in the US! Could it be that the policies in Europe are more adecuate than those in the US?

Vienna is a beautiful city in itself, but also offers the possibility to travel around to other parts of Europe that would be hard to get to from other places: Munich, Salzburg, Prague, Budapest... The best thing about traveling is that most of the others in the group will want to do it too and so it is easy to round up a group of folks that will go on a whim... anybody want to see Munich this weekend??

--David Osorio

Next letter