Hej, friends!
As promised, let me tell you more about my long study tour…
Before leaving Copenhagen last week, I only knew as much about Vienna as my professors here had told me, along with the facts that Freud lived there and that The Sound of Music was filmed somewhere nearby. Clearly, I was not an expert.
Similar to Core Course Week, the events and activities of my long study tour made it easy to combine academics and culture and the city actually did this as well. For those who don’t know the history, Vienna was home to tons of great thinkers who shared ideas in the cafes of the city center. They include Gustav Klimt, Alfred Adler, and of course, Sigmund Freud, just to name a few. With my love of chocolate cake, my friends’ need for coffee, and knowing the history behind the walls, I visited quite a few cafés during my six days in Vienna.
From an academic perspective, I gained so many interesting insights from psychologists who use multiple kinds of techniques in European Clinical Psychology ranging from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to Existential Psychotherapy. I’d say that most of our focus, however, was on Victor Frankl and of course, Sigmund Freud. Both men lived in Vienna and had major impacts on the field of psychology as we know it today. Victor Frankl developed Logotherapy, a branch of existential psychology, and we learned that much of his theory was derived from the time he spent in a concentration camp during World War II. To gain further insight into his experience, my class actually visited Mauthausen memorial – another example of the perfect combination of learning culture and psychology at the same time. We also visited the Sigmund Freud Museum on our last day in Vienna. That was super cool because we were actually in Freud’s old apartment. They even had some of his old furniture and belongings in the museum! As a group of (mostly) psychology majors, we were thrilled to see that part of history.
I also got to see some amazing art. Many of the people who I mentioned earlier, were part of a revolutionary time in Vienna and did some pretty spectacular work. One example of that is Gustav Klimt and his artwork, which is all very famous now. I was able to view some of his pieces at the Succession House and the Leopold Museum and Belvedere Palace (and the buildings are even works of art themselves).
Aside from that, I discovered most of the city just wandering around with my friends. When the sun was shining on Friday, we literally couldn’t help but sit down in the park for a while with some music and enjoy the fact that we’re all in Europe having the adventure of a lifetime. I’m so grateful that I got to visit Vienna and experience all that it had to offer.
Now my next big adventure is Amsterdam in two weeks! Time flies when you’re having fun!
Diaries from Denmark 
Looks like a wonderful time
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