August 11

Today in class, we talked about the Ottoman Empire and then shifted over to a discussion on Mozart. The Ottoman Empire lasted for a very long time (1299-1923), but the height of their power was in the 16th century. The history of this vast empire is entangled with Viennese history because the people of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks, laid siege to Vienna twice. In 1529, it looked like the Turks were going to defeat the city of Vienna in their first attack, but they suddenly withdrew because of the onset of winter. If this hadn’t of happened, the world might have turned out to be a much different place. Perhaps, the western world would have turned out to be Muslim instead of mainly Christian. The Ottoman Empire was the only power that seriously challenged the rise of the west. After this first attack by the Turks, the Viennese invested in better fortifications. When the second attack came in 1683 the Viennese were much more prepared for the onslaught, and they managed to defeat the Turks. One interesting piece of information that I learned in class today was that the reason there are so many coffee houses in Vienna is because the Turks introduced coffee to the city when they were trying to defeat the Viennese. After our talk on the Ottomans, we switched gears to talk a little about Mozart as a child prodigy. For example, he played for Maria Theresa in court when he was just a small boy.
After class, some of us went to lunch at a nice restaurant on the Danube canal, which is commonly mistaken by tourists as the Danube River. We had a good time at the restaurant, but we had a hard time getting out of the place because the waitress had apparently forgotten about us and didn’t give us our check until well after we had finished our meal. I have been noticing that at many of the restaurants here in Vienna the waiters all take their time in bringing you the check. In the United States it seems like the waiters are always trying to rush you out of the restaurant. In some ways, it is nice that the waiters here aren’t hovering around you during your meal, but in other ways, it is annoying to not get your check right away, especially when you have somewhere to be. We were almost late for our meeting with the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Gregory Schulte. We made it to the lobby of the UN building just in time to meet the rest of our classmates and go into the meeting room. Even though attending this meeting was optional, most of us showed up because of the promise of brownies, which I think I may have eaten too much of. Once the ambassador came into the conference to give us his talk he went around the room and shook everyone’s hand. He seemed like a very nice guy, especially after he gave us a few pointers on how to figure out what career paths we all wanted to take in our futures. His actual presentation wasn’t too long, and in it he told us some of the things that his department does in the UN. He told us that his department represents the U.S. in the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN Commission on International Trade Law, the UN Office of Outer Space, the Wassenaar Agreement, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Office. I liked that he left plenty of time for us to ask questions after his presentation. I didn’t actually ask a question myself, but many of my classmates did. Most of the questions were about weapons of mass destruction in Iran and the Russia and Georgia conflict. The ambassador was very good at talking around some of the questions though. I also thought it was interesting that he had served in president Bill Clinton’s administration and that he now serves in president Bush’s administration. This fact must make him a little more open-minded to ideas that deviate from president Bush’s plan of action. Overall, I was satisfied with the visit. It made me want to pay more attention to politics because I was less informed on some of the topics under discussion than many of the others were.
The German word of the day is kurz, which means” short”.