Auf Wiedersehen Wien

After my trip to Switzerland, I only had about a week left in Vienna and far too much homework to do during that week. Despite the large amount of schoolwork and packing, I managed to have some fun in my last week as well.

Right after I got home, I was surprised by a phone call from a friend (who I thought was traveling at the time) telling me to come to an ice cream place for a surprise birthday event. The ice cream was delicious.  On the following day, my actual birthday, I took the day off from work and picnicked with a friend along the Danube. Since the weather was unbearably hot, we went swimming in the river as well. (Don’t worry, it’s very clean, lots of people swim in it.)

Later, I also went out for Mexican food, which was a delicious taste of home. I’ve had enchiladas for my birthday the past four or five years and thought I’d keep up the tradition.

My last weekend was Donauinsel Fest, an annual outdoor music festival on the island in the Danube. I went with a few friends and it was a great way to spend my last weekend in Vienna.

I’ve had very mixed feelings about leaving. I’m excited to continue traveling and to see my parents soon, but will also miss being in Vienna. 

Switzerland: Connecting with My Heritage

Although my ethnic heritage basically includes every Germanic language speaking country in Europe outside of Scandinavia, the Wormans themselves originally immigrated to the US from a village outside of Zurich, Wiesendangen, where members of the Wuhrmann (the non-Anglicized version of my last name) family still live today.  I had visited Paul and Bethli Wuhrmann, a lovely older couple who live there on a family vacation ten years earlier and headed back to Wiesendangen to visit them again. It was great to reconnect with them, especially now that I can speak German. Paul doesn’t speak any English and Bethli’s English is limited, so speaking in German increased our ability to communicate substantially. However, Swiss German and Standard German are completely different dialects so communicating was still challenging. In particular, trying to understand Swiss German conversations was difficult. Although with a lot of concentration and careful listening, I could catch a lot of the words and could usually understand the broad idea, I felt fairly incapable of contributing substantially to the conversation. Thankfully, people were usually willing to explain things further in Standard German or in English so I wasn’t always confused.

Despite the occasional language difficulties, I had a wonderful visit and Switzerland remains one of my favorite countries in Europe. Many of the places we visited I had seen on my previous trip but it was great to go back now that I’m older and can appreciate the experience more.

On my first day, we visited Säntis, a mountain located near their home.  I hadn’t been in the mountains yet this semester, so it was great to see some of the gorgeous Alpine scenery. There’s a cable car up to the summit of Säntis and from the top, the view are breathtaking.

In the background of the last photo is Bodensee, a lake which forms part of the border between Switzerland and Germany.

Snow in June!

The next day, we visited Wiesendangen itself, including the church my ancestors attended before they immigrated.

The rest of the day, we traveled around some of the neighboring villages. Wiesendangen is planning to merge this fall with the adjoining municipality due to low population. A bus traveled throughout the day between the various villages in the two municipalities so people could see the villages in their future municipality. At each of the stops there was food, photo displays of the history of the village, and other activities. At one village, we were able to visit both dairy and cherry farms. I found the culture of small, family operated farms to be great. I think US food production has become far too commercialized.

The experience of the day, along with attending the neighborhood potluck that night and just staying with Paul and Bethli in of itself meant that I was more immersed in the local culture than I have been during my other travel which was wonderful. Here are some photos of their beautiful house and neighborhood.

We visited the municipality history museum as well. Although pretty small, it gives a good sense of what life was like historically in Wiesendangen.

The flag on the building is the official symbol of Wiesendangen.

On my last day, we visited the Rheinfall, a waterfall on the Rhine River. It’s an impressive waterfall with a viewing platform that gets surprisingly close to the water. We also took a short boat ride near the falls as well, which was fun.

Finally, we visited a small village known for the beautiful murals on its buildings. The town square and intricate wall murals were charming.

Berlin: Take Two

Brennan was also heading to Berlin on his travels and I was really excited to go back again and show him the city. I also had the opportunity to visit my host mom again and had a lovely time catching up with her. After meeting with her, I took a walk around my old neighborhood and appreciated being back in what had become such a familiar place.

I arrived a day earlier than Brennan and took advantage of the lovely weather to visit Wannsee, a large lake south of the city, my first day there. I had intended to visit back in February, but the timing and weather never worked out.

After a lovely picnic lunch on the lake shore, I visited the Wannsee Conference House, the lakeside vacation home where Nazi officials planned the Final Solution. While much of the information in the museum wasn't new, the sharp contrast between the beautifully serene and picturesque manor house and the genocide that was planned in that place was horrifically striking. 

The trip was a much more enjoyable experience climatically in June than our two winter months there. In particular, the contrast between my winter visit to the East Side Gallery (which ended with us running to the nearby train station to buy warm drinks and regain feeling in our fingers) and this one is striking.

All the fountains seemed particularly different. Best example of this: Neptune’s Fountain in front of the Rathaus. It’s a dynamic feature of the square with the water running as opposed to the slightly out of place collection of aquatic statuary it seems to be in winter.

Once Brennan arrived, I showed him the major sights. It was a new experience to go back to a place I've lived after moving away. Since I live (in some sense of that word) in both Moorhead and St. Paul, I've never been in a position to do that before. 

This statue (I don’t know if it appeared earlier) is of Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. Amusingly, after taking his photo with, Brennan asked me if I also wanted a political career killing photo of me with the statue.

To continue the socialism theme, here we are living the life of your everyday East German citizen.

Well, actually in the latter photo, I’m living the life of the political elite, since I’m driving a Volvo station wagon instead of a Trabi.

One of the most interesting parts of our trip for me was visiting the Bernauer Straße Wall memorial again. Although I had been there as part of the bike tour along the wall, Brennan and I took the time to read most of the free and abundant information about the wall there, much of which was new to me.

This shows the location of a tunnel built under the ground between the east and west. Through this specific tunnel, 56 people successfully escaped to the west.

This cross is from the Church of Reconciliation which stood in the no man’s land between the two sides. Although most of the parishioners were from the West, the church building and pastor lived on the East side. After the wall divided the congregations’ members, the church became a symbol for the tragedy of Germany’s division. Eventually, the DDR blew up the church as it interfered with their increasing security measures on the border.

Both being political science majors, we also took a tour of the Reichstag. It was a repeat visit for me, but that was nice since I had missed much of the information during my earlier German tour.

We were also lucky enough to be in Berlin on the night of Germany’s first game in the Euro Cup against Portugal.  Seeing the match in front of the Brandenburg Gate was a lot of fun, although I could have skipped being showered by beer by the guy behind me after the goal. Overall, I'm so glad I got to go back to Berlin.