Edinburgh Exchanges

To continue with my last post we had a really brilliant time in Vienna! We took full advantage of it the first week we were there – pushing through the tiredness of all our travels. As well as the things I mentioned last time, we went on a tour of the Parliament building (which is really impressive and grand, like everything else in Vienna), visited several more Viennese cafés, visited Schönbrunn, the Hapsburgs’ summer palace, which houses the oldest zoo in the world as well as mazes and a desert house did quite a bit of shopping and generally just soaked up the atmosphere of what rapidly became one of my very favourite cities!

The maze at Schonbrunn and the Reisenrad

At the weekend we took a bus to Prague which I definitely recommend doing as part of a trip to Vienna – it’s really cheap and only takes around 4 hours. Taking the bus is never really the first transport option to occur to me and I’ll usually take a train if I can, but I have to say that it was a good way to see lots of Austrian countryside, which is really pretty. I know that there are better routes to take for natural beauty – this one was mostly flat farmland and little villages, but I was impressed anyway and we saw a lot of deer and other animals (well, two of us did – Max kept missing them!). We were staying in a youth hostel just outside of the tourist centre of Prague, which Max has stayed in when she visited the city back in November and which is without doubt the best youth hostel I have ever encountered (I know I said that about the one in Basel too, but they keep getting better!) It was full of backpackers, which gave an atmosphere that reminded me a bit of Fresher’s week – everyone wanted to talk to everyone else, was interested in why they were in Prague, where they’d been and where they were going next. It was also good that everyone was either travelling alone or in pairs because it made it easier to get a conversation flowing. We stayed in on the first night there and chatted to people in the hostel’s bar before crashing into bed, which was fantastic after spending a week sleeping on Max’s floor!

Our first day in Prague was ridiculously hot and after heading into town, getting separated from each other (we had picked up a crew of backpackers and were, by this time, a group of about 10 people, which is hard to keep track of in a busy street), finding each other (which cost an awful lot of phone credit) and watching the astronomical clock on the town hall strike the hour, we were too warm to continue sightseeing and so headed for the nearest bar, which was on the roof of a hotel in the main square, giving a fantastic view of all the main tourist attractions! We stayed there for ages and once we had cooled off and the sun was a bit lower in the sky we went on a walking tour of Charles Bridge, Wenceslas Square and the Jewish quarter, which was deserted because it was Saturday, but still really nice to wander around in.

The Astronomical Clock

In the evening we went on a pub crawl we had heard about from some guys staying in the hostel. When we arrived we were a bit concerned to discover that there were two separate stag parties on the pub crawl and apart from two Americans, we were the only girls there. Although I probably wouldn’t recommend this particular pub crawl (there was an expensive cover charge, it went around all of the pricey, touristy bars and ended up in a really bad club) we still had a good time. We bailed on the club at the end as it was full of guys ogling the pole dancers on the tables and headed to a massive 5 storey club near Charles Bridge instead, which was much better.
The next morning we were obviously not in much of a state to do sightseeing but after an extremely leisurely breakfast (we’re talking a couple of hours!) we wandered over to the castle and spent the morning there before heading back to Vienna.

The leisurely atmosphere carried on for the rest of the time we were in Austria – we were so exhausted by the time we got back that we slept in most days and just did gentle sightseeing in the afternoons! We still managed to go to the Hofburg (the Hapsburgs’ palace in Vienna, which is huge), visit the Museums Quartier, see the Rathaus and the main cathedrals, go to the Prater (the permanent fairground on the site of Hapsburgs' old hunting grounds which housesw the Reisenrad, a ferris wheel constructed in 1897), visit the Wien museum which gives the history of the city from Roman times to the present day, take a couple of trips out of the main city and attempt to go to the Seegrotte, the biggest underground lake in Europe which, sadly, we didn’t manage to do because there was some problem with the rail track on the way, leaving us stranded in some random town. We got a bus to another random town then waited over an hour for another bus which should have taken us to Seegrotte, but we missed the stop and ended up, once again, waiting for a bus in some random village! It wasn’t the most successful day of my life, but at least we saw a lot of random Austrian towns!!

The trip back to France was long and uneventful – we took a night train to Strasbourg which was surprisingly comfy and pleasant, even though we were sharing a carriage with a baby, which could have been disastrous! We left Vienna at 11pm on Friday and got to Dijon at 3pm on Saturday. It was strange to be back after almost a month away, but mostly because it felt so much like home, which I didn’t expect. It’s been really good to see everyone again, although it’s sad to know that we only have a few weeks left until everyone starts leaving.

The month of May is always an important one here in Norway: the 17th of May is Norwegian Constitution Day, a celebration of the constitution declaring Norway to be an independent nation. As a national day it is easily among the most important of the year, and already preparations are underway: on the day people wear their national costume, the bunad, and the national media is currently publishing various articles on the best way to care for and wash your bunad, polish your silver and how best to carry yourself whilst wearing the ensemble, among other items. Strange in my opinion, but clearly the demand for such things exists! On the day there will be parades on the streets whilst the Royal Family stand on the Palace balcony and wave to the gathered crowds.

A major part of the parade on the national day will be the Russ, the young people graduating from high school and about to head to University or other avenues. The Russ celebrations are a massive part of society here and traditionally begin on the 1st May, though this year were evident a few days before that too. The school leavers all wear special overalls which traditionally shouldn't be washed throughout the three week stretch:

Over time these overalls accumulate signatures and badges and different signs that signify the different 'knots' they have achieved through a range of agreed 'daring' challenges. These challenges change each year and are published annually for the new school leavers, but here are a few russ knot examples according to Wikipedia:

Spending a night in a tree (earns a stick from the tree)
Eating a Big Mac in two bites (earns a piece of the wrapping)
Drinking a bottle of wine in 20 minutes (earns the wine cork)
Crawling through a super market while barking and biting customers' legs (earns a dog biscuit)
Spending a school day crawling on hands and knees (earns a toy shoe)
Spending the entire russ period sober (earns a fizzy drink cork)
Drinking 24 beers in 24 hours(girls) 12 hour (boys)
Have sex in the woods
Have sex with 17 different people in 17 days from 1.May to 17 May(norwegian national day)
Go for a swim before the 1. of May earns a popsical
Break up with a random 16 year old very public.
Run over a local bridge or from the school to the sentre or similar place naked.
Sit in a round about with a sign that says "We'll have drink if you honk your horn!"
Host an aerobic class at the local pub and get at least ten people to join.

Reading the list it becomes quite clear that Russ is regarded as a right of passage more than anything, and often the 'knots' are a controversial topic in society. In 2004 a group of female leavers eager to fund a Russ bus to ride in (a common part of the parade) agreed to make a pornographic film with a well-known Norwegian adult film actor in order to make 20,000 Norwegian Kroner, a mere fraction of the end sum they spent on their bus (well over 200,000 Kroner). Asides from that rather extreme example of Russ celebrations the month of May is more taken advantage of as an excuse to party in the lead up to their exams and the national day, and all in good spirits.

As you can imagine, focusing on University isn't among my top priorities in this month of celebration and my final in the country! Exams are important to me, nonetheless, and having already completed one and in the lead up to others, I am spending time reading, etc. However, being able to do it in the sunshine and company is a massive bonus. I have also received feedback on recent essays: the system for feedback here is so advanced compared to home. Each student is given a personal meeting with our seminar leader to discuss our essay. In his office I noticed that he had made 2 A4 sides of notes about my essay alone, and his feedback was positive and helpful, most importantly. The fact that personal feedback meetings existed was surprising enough for me, but to discover how good they were was also a revelation.

Anyway, asides from University things are in full swing: I am meeting my TANDEM partner as often as possible now in our last hopes at improving our requisite languages skills! I am spending a lot more time in the very efficiently run student unions, where volunteers operate the places in a highly admirable system, and on Friday some friends and I are taking the train to Stockholm in Sweden for a weekend which should be a lot of fun. Packing things in is becoming more difficult but I somehow always manage to do so, which is comforting at the very least.