Sunday, May 31, 2009

My first weekend side-trip: Vienna

Two days in Vienna deserves a hearty post, and the best way to construct a large but digestible post is to give it the structure of a photo-journal.  So here it is, divided into three parts:

Part I: General city attributes, including my transportation
Part II: Day 1 of Touring--acting like a tourist
Part III: Day 2 of Touring--mostly just walking around + an obligatory discussion of local animals


Part I: General comments

Vienna--or as they say in Austria, "Wien"--was an amazing place to go for my first side-trip.  Generally, my self-imposed rule for picture-taking is that the only kosher pictures are those that go with a story, but I found myself mindlessly snapping pictures of all the beautiful buildings.  The above picture is from Michaelerplatz, a square near the city center with lots of churches nearby.

It seems like the city roads are made of rings, platzes, and straats.  The rings are literally concentric ring-streets that comprise a big loop around the center.  A "platz" is a square, often with a church, that just sits wherever it wants to within the rings.  "Straat" just means street, and comprises the rest of the connecting roads.

My bus tour brought me by a large area of public housing constructed after WWI.  Rebuilding after wars seems to be the most common theme I've experienced in my trips to Europe.


I went to Vienna on a boat that went surprisingly fast over the water in either direction.  Here is one of the cooler parts of our trip, where we stopped for 20 minutes to float up to the top of a lock before traveling on to Austria.


A subway station.  It looks very "European."  I think that by that, I mean that it is clean and makes use of geometric shapes in an aesthetically pleasing way, but I'm not sure.


This seemed to be a classic image in the downtown area: rich historic architecture with a new twist.


Part II: Acting like a tourist

On Saturday, I bought an all-day ticket on a hop-on, hop-off tour bus that went to all the major tourist attractions in the city.  It seemed like a good idea, and it turned out to be a great structure for my short visit (especially because it informed my wandering on Sunday).  Pictured above is part of the gardens at Schönbrunn Palace, which was a summer residence for the Hapsburg family during the days of the Empire (and Napoleon, while he was doing his thing).  I went inside and saw how luxurious the palace was, etc., but my favorite part by far was the gardens.  Please take note of the little sign at the bottom of the above picture--these signs were everywhere, and I later saw one in another part of the city that read as follows:


I'm pretty sure that the blue ink makes it a rocket-propelled grenade.


It was raining on Saturday morning, but it made the gardens that much better.  It was truly a joy.


Yeah.


For lunch on Saturday I had Wiener Schnitzel!  I hadn't been exactly sure what it was and I thought it was going to be one of those "you-force-it-down-so-you-can-say-you-did-it-because-you're-a-tourist" experiences, but it was actually quite good!  Just in case, it's kind of like a breaded steak, and salad and potatoes are standard accompaniments. 


One of the tour bus stops was an amusement park called Prater.  I rode the first coaster I could see (cause I didn't have much time before I was supposed to "hop on" the bus again), called Dizzy Mouse.  Email me for the video and you can have it in August when I'm back.  It was a thriller.


The most elegant part of the Austrian National Library complex, which houses museums in addition to the actual library.  I visited exhibitions about old musical instruments (cool stuff, considering the city) and medieval armor!


Part of what I loved about the city is that you turn a corner and out of nowhere, there's another beautiful church.  Even on a busy Saturday, there were very few other people around.  This one is an Italian church that I went inside briefly.


Forget what I said about other people.  This is basically in the heart of Vienna, right by a cathedral called St. Stephen's.  An unreal number of people.


I had planned in advance to go to a legit concert Saturday night, and I wasn't let down at all.  This small room (I was near the back when I took this picture) is called Sala Terrena, and it is the oldest concert hall in Vienna.  Mozart used to work and play in it back in 1781.  The musicians' group is called the Haydn Quartet--apparently they are a well-kept secret that I stumbled upon.  Maybe it's just the advertising that says so, but they were still excellent.


Part III: Not stressing out so much about seeing everything

Sunday (today) was a great day.  I started out by going across the Danube to see the relatively new Vienna International Center and Donau-City (literally means Danube City).  I could only see the VIC from a distance--it houses various international agencies and is not open to the public (pictured on the right).  However, Donau-City with its charming new-age apartments, international schools, and strangely constructed convention centers, was a good place to wander around.


On the way back from Donau-City, I saw this.  PKK: The Kurdistan Workers' Party?  I have done a little research on this party as part of my job in Slovakia, so it was strange suddenly to see grafitti from supporters of a Turkish terrorist organization near Donau-City in Austria.


This processional was in a platz near the city center that I happened to stumble upon.  I was told that it was related to the 200th anniversary of the composer Haydn's death, which was apparently today.  Apparently they really do like music in Vienna.


I am officially a bird whisperer.  It was just child's play catching pigeons red-handed on my porch, but now I can look a duck straight in the eye from across a pond and it will swim over to me and let me take pictures.


Does Donaupark (and Austria for that matter) have mutant squirrels?  This one has dark fur and weirdly long ears... I did a google search and could only come up with "Abert's squirrels," which look similar but are only native to the Rocky Mountains.  It remains a mystery.

I hope this is an enjoyable set of pictures.  I don't intend to have as touristy of an experience as I did in Vienna on my other side-trips.  I'll be meeting up with a friend in Prague this weekend (which hopefully means less mindless picture-taking), and my next trip after that will probably be to Auschwitz in Poland via Krakow--still touristy, but not flashy like Vienna.  Still, what's an American's trip to Europe without flashy pictures?

Thursday, May 28, 2009

I will now finally talk about my job here.

I am doing research for the Liga za ľudské práva, or "Human Rights League" in English.  Their clients are asylum-seekers from various countries, among which are Afghanistan and Iraq.  The way it works is as follows: an individual comes into the office requesting legal aid in the submission of a request for asylum in Slovakia.  The "Liga" secures the services of an interpreter if necessary and conducts multiple interviews with these individuals in order to find out why they are afraid to return to the country of their nationality.




Once the story is ironed out to the lawyers' satisfaction, they go to work making a case that Slovakia is obligated by international law to let the individuals stay.  This generally means demonstrating that it is possible that there is a real threat in an individual's home country from which the individual needs protection, that the home country cannot adequately protect the individual, and that the individual isn't some sort of international criminal who doesn't deserve protection.  Here's where I come in.  Right now, I'm doing COI (Country of Origin Information) research, designed to give the lawyers relevant evidence from each country that they can use in constructing their cases.

It would be pretty standard academic stuff, if I weren't allowed to sit in on interviews with asylum-seekers and to hear them tell their stories.  Yesterday, I sat in on an hour-and-a-half long interview with a client from which I could understand maybe two words.  Even though everything was said in Slovak or the client's native language, I could still sense the urgency in the client's tone.  Next week, I will be going to court to hear the judge's determination about that individual's status.  As I work on future cases, I keep in mind that my devotion to thoroughness could make a real difference in someone's life.  Luckily for me, I will probably get to meet that person each time.


I also finally got around to getting a couple pictures around the dorm that I had wanted for some time.  First is the picture of one of the high rise buildings in the complex in which I'm staying (my building is identical to it):




The sunset is kind of unnecessary and almost makes this shot too glamorous.


The other picture I'm excited about is a snapshot of the culprit that comes to my window every morning at 7 am and makes a terrible wallowing noise.  I can't think of another way to describe it--at first I thought there was an owl within a few miles of my room, but it turned out that this chump was just chillin' on my porch.  His accomplice's foot is in the corner there, too.

I've been taking a lot of pictures of pigeons, but I don't think it's my fault.  It must be that Slovak pigeons just have more personality than other pigeons I've met.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

A Tour of the City*

Let me start this post by making it clear that I understand the difference between blog entries that describe big events or new places and those that simply go on about life in the same setting. Any time that I mark a title with an asterisk, it means that the post is recommended reading but NOT on the test.

That being said, here's what I scraped together while walking through Bratislava.


I stood here for about 10 minutes watching these pigeons.  They alternated between this fountain and the top of the National Theatre, switching every 2 minutes or so.


If you're going to Eastern Europe to escape consumerism, go elsewhere.


EU Parliament elections are coming up soon, and this guy looks ready.  I probably see his face about 3 times every day at various points in the city.  I asked my law professor friend if this election was a big deal, and she said that Slovaks are relatively apathetic about it.  After all--"what is the EU going to do for Slovakia?"


The tramway on the street leading up to my office


The one embassy I haven't been able to just walk up to--but that's not a surprise.


The view from Bratislava Castle

A quick note on that expanse of buildings: it is a Soviet-built housing complex called Petrazalka--the largest housing complex in central Europe.  Just beyond that complex and to the right of this picture is the border with Austria.  Tens of thousands of people under Soviet rule lived right next to the Iron Curtain and freedom in "the West" before the revolution in '89.  Apparently there is a nearby memorial to those who tried to escape and failed.


A more direct view of Austria from the castle.  This view of the Danube points upstream, which is why the boat ride that I'm taking to Vienna on Friday (yeeeah!) will take longer than the return trip on Sunday.  The building on the far right is the Slovak Parliament building.


And of course, the castle itself.  It is stuck in the middle of renovation for the 2nd summer straight now because the city can't find the money right now to restore the castle to its original white color.  The scaffolding still looks pretty nice, though.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Bienvenue à Trnava!

Figure 2.A -- The road to Trnava, but not at the hour referenced in the short narrative below.

So--a Frenchman, a Slovak, and an American were driving to Bratislava at 2 am.  It sounds like the setup for a joke, but I couldn't have been more thankful for a ride home.  I spent today in Trnava, Slovakia, a town located about 30 minutes by car from Bratislava.  It's a college town, and its population pretty much consists of just students.  The Slovak, Petar, and the Frenchman, Harry, assured me that this meant that it was safe to walk through silent, vacant, beat up parts of town at 1 in the morning.

Figure 2.B -- A random assortment of people, most of whom I just met today

Harry is right behind me.  He and Jean-Michel (right, middle) are friends of a girl named Anissa (not pictured), who is also French and worked at the Human Rights League before I did (hence the whole connection).  I thoroughly enjoyed all my conversations with these folks today--they're great people, and it was a new feeling for me to trust people I had just met so easily.  Plus, I got to practice French a lot today with Harry, Anissa, and Jean-Michel.  Though, there were times when I tried to have necessary conversations in French as a challenge (like giving directions), and it didn't always work out so well.  A comment tonight by Harry put things in perspective for me.  In a conversation about deciding when to speak or practice which language, he said, "I think the most important thing is that others understand you."

Oh yeah, and Petar made sure that he wasn't left out just because he took the above picture.

Figure 2.C -- Petar, who told me that he was doing everything he could to make sure that I had only good things to say about the Slovak Republic when I returned home.  A really good guy.







I suppose that today was really a people-day more so than a touring-day.  I had originally intended to go to a castle with these folks and take a bunch of pictures, but they decided that they just wanted to hang out.  HOWEVER, that does not mean that I missed out on being a tourist when it came to food.  When we first arrived in Trnava, we ate at a local pub.


Figure 2.D -- A picture that I took in public

In case you're wondering, that's chicken, camembert, fried apples, chicken, camembert, chicken, fried apples.  It was unbelievable.  Almost pictured to the left is a big bowl of Slovak-style tater tots!  They were huge and definitely still good with ketchup, which I asked for, also publicly.  I promise that I will describe what it's like at work soon once I get more to do.  For now, it's the weekend.  Ciao.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Welcome to Bratislava!


I arrived in Bratislava, Slovakia on Tuesday at 12:30 pm local time.  Two of the lawyers at the Human Rights League were nice enough to pick me up, drive me straight to my dorm, then navigate all the administrative tasks / paperwork I needed to be a resident there for 2 months.  The accommodations are really inexpensive, but it's quite an experience.

I live in what I could best describe as a post-post-communist housing project.  That is, it's a dorm that was built rather recently but still has its fair share of drab architecture and small spaces.  My first night here was really, really hard.  I realized just how disconnected I was from the world (I didn't have internet yet), and it didn't help that I was in a really depressing place.  2 days later, I'm still very much working on feeling comfortable in this room.  




















The city is beautiful.  I am going to have to spend as much time as possible in the city before it gets dark. This is a picture of the cathedral in Bratislava, with a building right next to it that the local art students apparently like to decorate.  I'll include a picture of that, too.



The post-communist theme runs through a lot of my experiences.  Well really, the post-WWII theme.  I took a 4-hour walk (with a break for dinner at the very, very western-looking mall) with a law professor from Trnava today.  She taught most of the lawyers who work at the Human Rights League.  She was so kind--she showed me all around the city, and one of the things she told me was that back in the 1920's, Bratislava was truly a multi-cultural city.

























There were Slovak residents, but there were also plenty of Germans and Hungarians.  Before the war, there was a thriving Jewish population.  This statue is a memorial to that population.  Bratislava still has a Jewish community, but it is much smaller than it used to be.

The picture below really struck me.  It's an engraving of a synagogue on a wall right next to that statue, with a reflection of the present-day town.















It was really refreshing to walk around, especially with a new friend.  Here are some pictures of the city.


The river Danube

Lots of underpasses and overpasses


Here's me at the Presidential Palace.  When the flags are down, the President is away!  When foreign flags are up, they have visitors!  This is apparently "just like the White House."  The difference?  Security here is a fence plus two guys in funny outfits.



This is the pathway down to the building that functions as city hall (the pink building in the center).  Official guests to the city can meet here, and so can patrons of the concerts held here on occasion.

That's all for now.  Exciting plans include: hanging out this weekend with some French students I met at the office, and planning for a trip to Vienna next weekend as well as a trip to Prague the weekend after that.  I'm posting these plans in part to hold myself accountable for actually carrying them out.