Vienna Part 2

Part 2:

Vienna has many great museums dedicated to various aspects of the city’s as well as Europe’s history as a whole. Visiting the Narrenturm, which means “Fool’s Tower”, was a very shocking experience for me. The Narrenturm was the first hospital built for the purpose of housing and

treating mental patients. Now it houses the Federal Pathologic-Anatomical Museum. Pictures were forbidden to be taken for many reasons, one of which being moral – if that says anything.

Within, there are hundreds of medical preparations, artifacts, and representations of medical diseases and abnormalities. It was very interesting seeing all of the specimens but at the same time it was disturbing knowing that most of them were real and belonged to real people or were real people themselves. It was an amazing experience, not for the faint of heart. It led me to both understand and question my ideals about life and the imperfect form of humanity.

We took a trip to a Fachschule, which is a vocational college in Europe. Called the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, it opened my eyes to the different type of education system that is in Europe. I believe that the most important aspect of the European education that is nonexistent in America is that of free education. In Europe, the tuition fees are either very low or free. This means that they truly understand the value of educating the young to create a promising future. With only 50% of Americans attending college, I feel like America as a whole has so much potential that it is just wasting away. Along with the medical care system in the states, these would implement much higher taxes in the states which I think America is going to need to gradually accept.

In every way, Vienna has been a great experience for me and I think the same for every person in our group. I have since met several people who are studying in Vienna and I am very jealous of them! I know that I am leaving out much, but the other posts have covered the rest of the trip such as Sigmund Freud’s house, the Natural History Museum, the Vienna Symphony, and the Josephinum but my Physiology book is calling!