We arrived in at Wein West around 1:30 in the afternoon from the Muchen Hauptbahnhof. Our hotel was Hotel Deutschmeister. At around 4:00 we went back into the city of Vienna to have a walking tour. We went around the city center and walked by Stephansdom in Stephansplatz. This Romanesque church was quite interesting, but it looked quite similar to the other churches we had already seen. Yes it was elaborate, but it did seem very similar to the other churches. We went to the Catacombs underneath the cathedral. Usually it was an honor to be buried inside a church. However, a bubonic plague broke out in 1735. The charnel house and the cemeteries around St.Stephen’s Cathedral were closed due to this outbreak. The bones were then moved to the church. Burials in the cathedral were took place until 1783. When I walked into the catacombs with our group, it reminded me of a horror film. The dark hallways along with bricks made this catacomb seem eerie. Our guide then pointed us to a room full of bones. This room was literally filled with skulls, femurs and every bone one could imagine. Some were broken, while others seemed like they were ready to come alive. We saw two of these rooms that were filled with thousands of bones. In fact, the last burial spot had bones stacked on top of each other. When people were buried in the catacomb, there was unbearable smell as well as large amount of people in the catacomb with limited space. Prisoners would go into the pits and scrape off the flesh of the bodies and break the bones in order to limit the amount of space. This would truly be
one of the worst jobs possible. After we left the catacombs, Nils told me to tell the group I had taken one of the femurs as a souvenir. It was pretty funny because several people had a shocked look in their face. Several of the girls in the group had pretty shocked faces. I was just smiling , but I asked them if they wanted to see. Nils then asked me where if had made sure the bone in my backpack. Of course I told him it was safe in my backpack. I kept this on for a minutes or so but I let every know it was only a joke. It was pretty funny though. But in fact, it would have been pretty hard to steal one of the bones because there were bars on the windows.
The next day we went to the Sigmund Freud museum. This museum was where he lived for many years until he left for London to escape the Nazis because of his Jewish roots. His house was fairly interesting because this is where he saw patients and had important meetings with his colleagues. I thought his ideas were particularly interesting. I had never known what his ideas where, but obviously I found them radical. Many people in Austria didn’t like his ideas because they conflicted with modern thought and the church. People wanted to believe young children are innocent and don’t have any lustful thoughts. Freud combated this by following the Oedipus Complex. It states the boy’s desire to sexually have his mother and kill his father. Furthermore he says men are mother fixated which means his future sexual partner will resemble his mother.
The following evening was an operetta at Schlosspark Theresianum. We saw Die Csardasfurstin. It was interesting even though I didn’t understand the language. The play took place during the outbreak of WWII that included an arranged marriage and an America trip.
The next morning we went to the Museum of Vienna. This museum covered much of Vienna history from wars to its earliest history. One fight in particular could have changed the history of the world dramatically. In the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Ottoman Empire had attacked for nearly two months. The Viennese army would have lost if it had not been without the help of the Habsburg Monarchy, Bavaria, Swabia and Franconia, and Saxony armies. This was the last city in Europe before the Ottoman Empire could have overtaken all of Europe. If the Ottoman Empire had won, Europe could very likely be Muslim. This obviously had a huge significance even to this day. We then had free time in the afternoon. I decided to go back to the hotel because I was pretty exhausted.
The next day, we toured Vienna University. We had a teaching doctor explain the Austrian medical school system. The university was founded in 1365 and has 7500 students. Their modules are structured around learning the function and structure of the human body systems. The students take FIPS(Formative Integrated Exams) which are taken at the end of each semester. Students start medical school as soon as they graduate from high school. However, they go to medical school for six years and then have residencies after that. We then visited the Old General Hospital. It was made in 1777 for the poor and invalids. Emperor Josef II replaced the old hospital because he wanted to make the supply of health care better in Vienna. He made a hospital with 2000 beds so that each patient could have his or her own bed. In this hospital, the rooms have windows that look out towards the courtyard. There are nice trees with a water fountain. He made this courtyard because he thought it would improve the healthcare of the patients. We also went to the Museum of Medical History in Vienna. Here we actually got to handle 400 year old books. I was very surprised we got to touch these books. Some were small, while others weighed over 30 pounds. All these books pertained to the human body and were used for medical students in Vienna. These books mostly had drawings of the human anatomy in live motion instead of standing still. There weren’t many words, but mostly drawings. It was actually quite surprising how accurate the drawings were of the human body and skeleton.
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