At the end of May, to celebrate the end of our program
courses (we still had another month of university courses), we took a day trip
out of the city. Our trip started out
with a stop at Kahlenberg a hill near Vienna. From the top, there’s a
great view of the city and it was neat to orient where we lived and places we
had visited from above.
We then headed to Kloster Neuburg, a partially completed
castle, monastery, and church about a half hour outside of Vienna. A large
castle complex was planned by Emperor Karl VI, but his daughter Maria Theresia
stopped construction after her father’s death as she wasn’t particularly fond
of Kloster Neuburg. Today, a quarter of the planned castle exists.
We also visited the Baroque style church that’s located
there:
and saw some of the religious items the monastery owns:
Admittedly, Kloster Neuberg was a bit underwhelming for me
after seeing quite the collection of castles and Baroque churches over the
semester.
Our next stop was Kruezenstein, a castle that was haphazardly built from parts of other castles to form a new caste. The result is quite picturesque and the castle is used as a
movie set for period pieces quite frequently.
The text under the clock translates to: “Who rests rusts.”
We finished up the day by visiting a family-run vineyard in Trauenfeld. The owner of the vineyard showed us the vineyard and explained how wine grapes are grown and we then headed down to his wine cellar to try a number of different varieties of wine. He also shared a number of wonderful life lessons to be gained from wine throughout the evening. Some of my favorites: International cooperation is possible (since all wine grape plants today are originally European plants grafted to originally American roots). Everyone has their own preferences and thus everyone has their own preferred flavor of wine and should celebrate when they find it (made even better by our professor immediately responding “But you can’t celebrate if there’s no wine in your glass” and holding up her empty glass for a refill). Regardless of where you come from or where you’re going in the future, when you are drinking the same wine together, you are a community in that moment. We finished up the day by eating a delicious dinner at the restaurant associated with the family winery, complete with even more wine and champagne. Definitely one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had during study abroad.
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