The end of the school year on the 27th of June
will mark the end of my Comenius year, and the EU project as it’s known. We are
the last participants to complete the program and as of January 2014, it no
longer exists. The new Erasmus+ program incorporates many new opportunities but
nothing quite like Comenius. In this sense, I can only consider myself lucky to
have had the chance to spend this year finding some direction in a city I had
never thought I would end up in.
As one of the final requirements of Comenius, I must write a
final report reflecting on the year spent in an Austrian school and how it has
helped me develop both professionally and personally. Part of the report is
about my contribution to the local community. In the past few weeks, I’ve been
experiencing more and more of the local nature, museums, culture, theatre and
sport! Here’s just a taster of some of those!
Music, History, Drama
and Running!
Recently, I’ve had the chance to accompany some of my
classes on field trips and workshops. With the 2nd graders (7-8 year
olds), I visited the Albertina museum, which is one of the biggest, most famous
museums in Vienna that I had not yet seen. Being my usual frugal self, I was
grateful to be granted free entrance as a responsible adult with the class.
The enthusiasm of the guide was so infectious that we could
overlook the unfortunate rule of NO PHOTOS! She had the children dressing up as
Duke Albert and his wife, Maria Christina. The dominating feature of the museum
is the Young Hare
painting by the German artist Albrecht
Dürer, painted in 1502. That’s the symbol of the Albertina and the
example painting used to advertise the museum that can be seen on posters and
billboards all over the city. It is an impressive painting, but I was captured
more so by the painting Praying Hands
from the same artist. If you’re unaware of the title of the painting, it can
lead to many possibilities of interpretation. 
With the 4th graders from the public school I
work in, I attended a first aid workshop. I’m normally a fainter when it comes
to these things – put me in a real life situation and I will cope with the
adrenaline flowing, but fire a detailed description of a scenario at me and I
will probably keel over! – but this time, I was concentrating so much on the
language that my body didn’t react to the content. If it had have been in
English, I would surely have been on the floor! The kids nominated me to act as
the injured party and I obliged, giving myself a role and providing some
entertainment for those involved. Supposedly, they start training children in
first aid from kindergarten age, so who knows, it could be a four year old who
saves your life some day!
A highlight from the month of May was the Austrian Women’s
Run (Österreichescher Frauenlauf). I had originally registered to run alone,
but after joining the teaching team at the private school, I also joined the
group of female teachers and girls who were registered to run as a school. The
organisation of the run was impeccable. There were 31,000 women and girls
running and yet it ran so smoothly and I had no issues picking up my starting
number, chip and goodie bag (with lots of freebies from sponsors) the day
before. The atmosphere was incredible as well, with many promo and food stalls,
and plenty of people there to cheer on the runners.
The school had also
organised it well, despite the unfortunate coincidence that the Frauenlauf
t-shirts (which everyone who registered received to wear on the day of the run)
happened to be the same colour as the school t-shirt: bright yellow! The point
was that we would stand out so the parents and children could find us easily,
and we could also locate each other easily. However, with thousands of other
people wearing the same colour, it became impossible to find anybody once you’d
lost them. Luckily, everyone managed to locate the meeting point for after the
run and we all completed it, even though it was a rather hot day! I was happy
to reach my goal of running 5k, and hope to aim for the 10k next year. That’s
not much compared to the 42k Ryan ran at the Edinburgh marathon, but it’s
enough for me!
Later that evening, I was treated to a free ticket to the
theatre (originally priced at 40€ each), thanks to my mentor. I went to see
‘wunschloses unglück’, or in English, ‘A Sorrow Beyond Dreams’ in the
Burgtheater im Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz. It is a depressing story about a mother’s
suicide and her son’s attempt to understand how and why she did it. In putting
together the puzzle pieces, he discovers the huge influence World War II had on
his mother and he suffers from schizophrenia. It was by far the strangest
theatre production I’ve ever seen – the actors had no dialogue; all was
narrated from a room on the left of the set; on the right of the set, a sound
lady had a duplicate of every prop to create the sound effect at the same time
it was being acted out; on set, you could see several rooms and camera people
moving around the whole time to show different camera shots from different
angles; and above the set was a screen, showing what was being filmed live on
set. Quite an extraordinary production, and with so much to look at and
concentrate on, my fear of boredom due to not understanding the language didn’t
come true. I was awed and mesmerized by the entire thing.
In keeping with culture and frugality, a few of us attended
a free classical music, evening concert at the palace of Schönbrunn. It
consisted of impressive performances of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, playing
on a televised stage set up specifically for the occasion. The great thing
about living in a city like this is that there is always something going on and
it’s impossible to be bored. Furthermore, it suits my budget that so many of
the festivals and shows taking place exhibit free entrance to the public. The
same existed with the opening ceremony of the Life Ball at the stunning town
hall, including performances from Conchita Wurst and Leona Lewis, and a fashion
show. It’s hard to believe sometimes that such events are open to the public
for free!
Thomas and I are excited to have found a flat that’s very
central and would allow us to spontaneously experience the city whenever we
feel like it. We had a little taste of this last week as we checked out the
area of the apartment we would like to rent on a Saturday night and enjoyed a
date night, imagining that that’s what we could do more often come August. We
went to a relatively new restaurant that I’d read a raving review of on the
‘Vienna Reviews’ Facebook page and it did not disappoint! The restaurant, named
Ulrich, is in a lovely part of the city called Spittelberg, where there are
narrow, pedestrianized, cobbled streets and a cosy, inner city atmosphere. The
food was scrumptious, the staff were fantastically friendly and efficient, and
the restaurant oozed a charming quirkiness that would entice anyone to return.
In terms of personal development, learning German has been
the defining feature of this year spent in Vienna. This week I will receive my
certificate of proficiency in German at A2/2 level, meaning I will move on from
being a beginner and can now take intermediate level. The teacher also said,
based on my active participation and demonstration of the language throughout
this course, she will put in a good word for me to skip B1/1 level and go
straight to B1/2 (the levels are taken from the "Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages (CEFR)".)
City vs. Nature
During the last week, I have been alternating between city
life and experiencing the local nature. Festivals versus forests. City spa
versus swimming in the Danube. Dining out versus campfire grilling. All of
those appealed to me!
The influence from nature mainly came from an overnight
camping trip spent with my 4th graders from my Comenius school. We
travelled by coach to Donauauen, about an hour and a half away from Vienna, in
Lower Austria. It’s located right next to the Danube River, amongst a huge
national park. Two rangers greeted us upon arrival and didn’t spare a minute
getting to know the kids with icebreaker games. They guided us on a hike
through the forest and national park, where the children spotted many creatures
such as a beaver, turtle and a grass snake. In the evening, we all gathered
around a campfire and grilled sausages, vegetables and dough.
The rest of the time flew in with activities to keep us
active, from swimming in the Danube, to cycling to the river and rowing
together to an island. I was glad that the children were also given paddles and
the rowing wasn’t just left to the adults to do. It is a great opportunity for
the children to be involved, rather than feeling bored and moving around in the
boat, upsetting the balance and making it more difficult for those who are
rowing. Instead, every child had a role and it was a fantastic way to
encourage teamwork and exercise at the same time! I hope my next overnight
camping trip with the 4th graders from the private school will be
just as fun!
The aforementioned city life stems from quality time spent
with my cousin Jenny, whom I met in Budapest and later showed her around
Vienna. I was met at the train station in Budapest by the granddad from my Hungarian
au pair family, who very kindly offered to drive to the airport to pick up
Jenny as well. We stayed in his house, where I’ve stayed every time I’ve been
to Budapest (I can’t imagine staying anywhere else!), giving Jenny somewhat of
an authentic Hungarian experience. We enjoyed our breakfasts outside in the
summer morning sun and could conveniently hop on the metro to take us directly
into the city.
As city life tends to present you with random events you
would never have even thought of, Budapest had a unique street food festival
that happened to be over the weekend we were there. A colleague of mine alerted
me to it, originally recommending the beer, but as we’re not beer drinkers, we
went for the locally produced cider instead, along with some tasty, Asian food.
After that, we challenged our feet to a walk along the river to admire the striking
architecture of Buda and Pest, before heading towards the thermal baths. I
always seem to find myself at this one particular spa in Budapest (this was my
third time), but I can hardly resist, especially as I know it can reach the
expectations of visitors who want to experience this as something special that
Hungary has to offer. Every time I’m there, I thoroughly enjoy going from 18
degree water to 40 degree water and relaxing in the naturally heated, mineral
pools and saunas.
There was just enough time to show Jenny around Vienna while
she was here too. Because Vienna also has so much to offer, I thought carefully
of what my lovely cousin might like to do in order to have the best possible
impression within such a short time. I took her around the old part of the
city, where she could feel the Viennese, old school atmosphere with the
elaborate, elegant, old buildings and horse-drawn carriages trotting by.
By simply walking around, we randomly discovered festivals,
raves and events that were happening that we wouldn’t have known about
otherwise. Having such an efficient public transport system, as Vienna does,
helps to make the city more accessible, especially if time is of the essence.
One of the many highlights of the weekend was at Vienna Zoo within the grounds
of Schönbrunn Palace. There we saw so many amazing animals, including cheetah
cubs and a baby panda playing with its mother, but the most spectacular of all
was observing the polar bears swimming and playing with a ball underwater. This
was one of the most fascinating sights I’ve ever seen; such huge creatures
gliding through the water, with their giant back paws trailing behind them made
you stare in awe at how they are such powerful swimmers and beings.
Packed into the same day, we managed to relax by the river
Danube and refresh ourselves with a swim in the Alte Donau, which is a
separated, older and warmer part of the river. We needed this, as the
temperature rose to a scorching 30˚C and the afternoon sun was too strong to do
anything else. Jenny came over the perfect weekend as I had the most free time
due to a public holiday (the schools were off), and it was the first proper
summer weather we’ve seen, in terms of it becoming consistently hotter and
staying warm and sunny the whole time. Jenny’s visit came to an end with an
elegant evening spent having traditional Austrian food at a very typical,
upmarket Viennese café/restaurant with my tandem friends.
As always, a lot was packed into the last few weeks and as the end of my Comenius year approaches, my schedule only becomes tighter and tighter! With another visitor arriving on Saturday and plenty of school and cultural events coming up, I'll surely be kept on my toes!
No comments:
Post a Comment