25 settembre 2005
A Weekend in Vienna, or, How Much Architecture One can Possibly See in 3 Days, or, How to Herd 55 Architecture Students around without Losing Them
It’s basically insane to try to keep 55 people together in one group, but it seems our professors are, in fact, slightly out of their minds, and that’s exactly what they did.
For three straight days last weekend we moved through Vienna, Austria, like a herd of cattle- pausing every 10 minutes to ponder an important monument or building, sketch it quickly, snap our “obligatory” photos (architects all take surprisingly similar pictures of spaces), and move on. It was an unfortunate way to see the city, but understandably the only way to do it with so many students. I was incredibly thankful I had been to Vienna before and had experienced the city at my own pace.
We saw so many buildings that I won’t bore you by listing them. The architectural highlight of the trip, for me, was the tour of the roof structure above St. Stephansdom. The roof had been built entirely of timber, and was actually taller than the interior of the nave of the cathedral, until it burned down in an accidental blaze near the end of WWII. In the following years the roof was rebuilt to the same scale and height using steel construction, which weighs half of what the timber roof weighed, and is fireproofed. The space inside the roof was amazing- like being inside an oversized barn.
We were given evenings free to explore on our own and experience the city culture and cuisine. I took advantage of being outside Pasta World to eat a fair share of Wiener Wurst and Schnitzel. I even had goulash soup! I was also pretty excited to pull my high school language skills out of the closet and spreche ein bichen Deutsch. German-speaking countries are surprisingly comforting to me, which I’m not sure I had noticed before. I felt far safer and more comfortable in Vienna than I do in Florence- which I think has a lot to do with the language.
The most “cultural” event of the weekend was our trip to the Opera. Apparently it only costs 10 Euros to sit in decent seats in one of the most famous Opera houses in the world. Not bad. We saw “The Barber of Seville”- sung in Italian, but subtitled at our seats in English. It was my first opera experience, and I have to admit I enjoyed it much more than I expected! Turns out the opera is not so bad if you can understand the story and see it live!
The weekend ended with an overnight train ride back to Florence (oh, and I was in first class, by the way… hot towels and fresh espresso in the morning!), arriving in the rain at 6:00 AM. I was exhausted for a few days, and managed to recover just in time for a one-day architectural excursion to the city of Bologna. I have a feeling that this whole semester to going to feel like one long class field trip! Hopefully we will not always be moving like cattle through the streets.
Moo-oo.
For three straight days last weekend we moved through Vienna, Austria, like a herd of cattle- pausing every 10 minutes to ponder an important monument or building, sketch it quickly, snap our “obligatory” photos (architects all take surprisingly similar pictures of spaces), and move on. It was an unfortunate way to see the city, but understandably the only way to do it with so many students. I was incredibly thankful I had been to Vienna before and had experienced the city at my own pace.
We saw so many buildings that I won’t bore you by listing them. The architectural highlight of the trip, for me, was the tour of the roof structure above St. Stephansdom. The roof had been built entirely of timber, and was actually taller than the interior of the nave of the cathedral, until it burned down in an accidental blaze near the end of WWII. In the following years the roof was rebuilt to the same scale and height using steel construction, which weighs half of what the timber roof weighed, and is fireproofed. The space inside the roof was amazing- like being inside an oversized barn.
We were given evenings free to explore on our own and experience the city culture and cuisine. I took advantage of being outside Pasta World to eat a fair share of Wiener Wurst and Schnitzel. I even had goulash soup! I was also pretty excited to pull my high school language skills out of the closet and spreche ein bichen Deutsch. German-speaking countries are surprisingly comforting to me, which I’m not sure I had noticed before. I felt far safer and more comfortable in Vienna than I do in Florence- which I think has a lot to do with the language.
The most “cultural” event of the weekend was our trip to the Opera. Apparently it only costs 10 Euros to sit in decent seats in one of the most famous Opera houses in the world. Not bad. We saw “The Barber of Seville”- sung in Italian, but subtitled at our seats in English. It was my first opera experience, and I have to admit I enjoyed it much more than I expected! Turns out the opera is not so bad if you can understand the story and see it live!
The weekend ended with an overnight train ride back to Florence (oh, and I was in first class, by the way… hot towels and fresh espresso in the morning!), arriving in the rain at 6:00 AM. I was exhausted for a few days, and managed to recover just in time for a one-day architectural excursion to the city of Bologna. I have a feeling that this whole semester to going to feel like one long class field trip! Hopefully we will not always be moving like cattle through the streets.
Moo-oo.
# posted by dena @ 5:37 PM 
