A Drink in Vienna

Friday night, Mackenzie and I went to an Irish pub to meet up with her Austrian friends in Vienna. At first, I was a bit nervous to meet them because I was a tourist and had never met them prior. However, after getting over the awkwardness of not meeting them before I began to learn so much about Austrian culture. For starters, Austrians all learn to speak english at the age of five or six and most of the time can speak the language at the same level as me. This was extremely shocking to me because all over Italy, Italians understand english but cannot speak as well as they can understand it. As I was discussing politics with one of the guys named Peter, a law major at the University of Wien, he exclaimed to me the aspects of his socialist government. To my amazement, I learned that students in Austria all get paid 200 euro a month just for attending school, and in order to attend their school they must pay 19 euro per semester. As he told me this, my jaw dropped and I became envious of his country, it also made me question the stereotype that the United States is home to the “American Dream.” In Austria, everyone is  given a fair and equal chance to be successful, and the success of your parents or your family’s wealth has no role in what college you are able to attend. Another thing that opened my eyes to European views was the Austrian’s admiration of Bernie Sanders as a political candidate. When I first realized that they believed he was the best candidate in the elections, I could not believe it. They described him as having a “European mind” and as “genius” which contradicts the classic American idea that Bernie is an extremist. After talking politics, they began to tell me about their own studies in America and the things that they disliked about my country. The biggest thing was the beer, Austrians love beer, and upon sipping a BudLight, they realized how bad American beer truly was. At first, I believed they were just close minded, but in order to prove it to me they ordered some beer made in Vienna called a Ottakringer, and it was delicious. When I first sipped it, the buttery foam hit my lips and dissolved in my mouth acting as a nice pallet cleanser. Unlike American beer, the foam on Austrian beer is a good thing, it represents the beer is in fact high quality and apart of the beer drinking experience. The taste of it magnificent, unlike any beer I had drank before, I was used to beer that was heavily watered down. It was bitter at first like any beer, but the after taste had a slight refreshing tone that made me understand why Austrians drink it on a normal basis. My trip to Vienna gave me an eye opening experience that educated me on a different culture and the people within that culture.