Education Abroad in Vienna

Elizabeth Gazzam (Physics, Plan II)

Studying abroad in Vienna was nothing short of a gift. Being in a new city, not just as some tourist absently traipsing behind a tour guide, but as a student–-encouraged to fully immerse yourself into deep conversations and to be a critical observer of your surroundings–-was surely one of my most valuable academic experiences. So many study abroad programs have you go across the world just to sit in a classroom and take a class completely unrelated to the location. This course is different. It’s designed so that exploring the city is our class: every day we were taken to a new site of memory, whether that was examining the different Jewish memorials or experiencing Mozart’s The Magic Flute in the historical Volksoper. This program also did an amazing job of allowing us to experience Vienna, and Austria as a whole, beyond just our syllabus-defined learning. Dr. Hoelscher was kind enough to take us on a wonderful bike ride along the Donau Insel and led us through a beautiful moonlight hike in the Vienna woods. Our excursions out of the city led us to visit the medieval cities of the Wachau, hear Mozart in the composer’s birthplace, raft in the Donau-Auen National Park, and more. Overall, there were so many times as I ate delicious gelato with friends, jogged around the Schönbrunn palace gardens, or just peacefully watched the city pass by through the U-Bahn window that I couldn’t be more grateful that Vienna is the city where I ended up studying.

Hear more from the students who have taken the Vienna course: student comments