The first installation of my new column for the The Cambridge Language Collective - an online space for language students to share their thoughts, experiences, and love of all things related to their cultural and literary studies.
As I sipped on a coffee and caught up with a friend this morning in the sunny Volksgarten, the identical domes of the resplendent Kunsthistorisches Museum and Naturhistorisches Museum completing the quintessentially Viennese scene, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit guilty. While my third-year Cambridge friends were stressing about dissertation deadlines and final exams, I was out and about in the name of my degree, enjoying the sun in a park in Vienna. However, the Year Abroad is notoriously a mixed bag of emotions, perhaps even more so this year: if you’d asked me about it just a few days before, as I was sorting out Brexit-related bureaucracy, I probably would have rather jumped on a plane back home to have a lovely outdoor lunch, much like my entire Instagram feed seems to be doing at the moment.
Despite all the mishaps and misunderstandings, the lockdowns and subsequent lack of much of what I’d hoped to see and experience in Vienna (Christmas Markets, Ball Season, art galleries…), I’m still glad to have returned for this semester. This probably sounds like the biggest Year-Abroad-cliché, but there is truly something beautiful about watching a city change throughout the seasons; finding cherry blossom trees in unexpected places, your fingers not freezing off every time you step out of the door – and realising that you are changing with it too. It’s those little things make you feel less like a lost tourist and more like a local. Waving to a friend as they happen to cycle past you, knowing which end of the U-Bahn platform to stand on, remembering to weigh your bananas at Billa and saying that you’ve got your ‘Sackerl’ (not your ‘Tüte’ (Austrian German vs German German!) with you at the supermarket checkout.
Setagaya Park in the 19th District, a hidden oasis of calm
I often say that Vienna is the dark horse among Year Abroad destinations. It’s got all the poké and bubble tea you could need to satisfy your millennial cravings, and perhaps even more cultural institutions than other European capitals, but where the streets of Paris, Berlin or London might feel dirty, and their people always in a rush, Vienna still looks and feels pristine. It’s almost hard to believe that the city suffered major bomb damage during the Second World War, so impressive was the effort to restore the capital and its iconic buildings to their former state. The pace of life and of change is also noticeably slower, with students practically waltzing through their undergraduate degrees over the course of five or more years, and aristocratic families continuing to socialise in the same circles generations down the line. It’s almost as if the cold winter temperatures have frozen the city, preserving it from the seismic societal shifts happening in thrumming European metropoles elsewhere. Indeed, as Gustav Mahler is cited to have supposedly said, ‘Wenn die Welt einmal untergehen sollte, ziehe ich nach Wien, denn dort passiert alles fünfzig Jahre später’. (‘If the world were to perish, then I’d move to Vienna, for everything there happens fifty years later.’)
The tension between Vienna’s immaculate appearance and its messy past, specifically its involvement or complicity in the Nazi Regime, is one that’s been on my mind a lot recently – not least because of the fateful Year Abroad Project, which looms in the back of every MMLer’s mind and which we shall not speak of until the week it is due. As a student who has spent the most part of the past few years poring over classics of European literature and trying to get to grips with German adjective endings, I think it goes without saying that I took a fair interest in learning more about the culture of the city I chose to spend a year in.
‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’, which could be roughly translated to ‘tackling the past’, is one of those handy composite German words that is often thrown around the Sidgwick Site; an abstract noun which seems like it has all the clues to questions about recent German history hidden inside it. Indeed, my brother’s reaction when I outlined my Year Abroad Project was – ‘Isn’t there an episode of The Crown called ‘Vergangenheit’?’ (Season 2, Episode 6 in case you’re wondering). The addition of ‘Bewältigung’, from ‘bewältigen’ – ‘to overcome’ or ‘to master’ - suggests that the past is something that needs to not only be confronted, but also to be overpowered. The term is laden with connotations and is often used as a segue into a discussion of how Germany and Austria deal with the atrocities of WWII, and how such processes of remembering (or too, forgetting) their past collective experiences contributes to the ongoing formation of their national identity.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt over the past few months, it’s that Austria’s relationship with its recent history is a complex and difficult one. While I am used to bouncing ideas around quite openly at Cambridge, there have been several raised eyebrows and uncomfortable conversations with older Austrians about my area of interest. I’ve realised that trying to understand the Viennese mentality or contemporary political tendencies is an ongoing and lengthy process, and one that can be a sensitive or personal one too. Yet these are conversations which cannot be found on the shelves of the MML library, attitudes which cannot be found in the microcosm of Cambridge, people whose lives take place behind the grandiose façades of the Ringstraße. It will certainly be these moments, encounters, and friendships from the Year Abroad that will have taught me the most, and which I will value far more than any dissertation grade. I suddenly don't feel too guilty about that coffee after all…
Spring in the Stadtpark