Vienna Trip
Sixth Form musicians accompanied Year 8 and 9 German students on a wintry, cultural trip to the Austrian capital.
Thirty pupils ended the term with a festive, five-day trip to Vienna filled with language-learning, history, art and music. Hannah and Georgia in Year 8 report back on the highlights of the experience.
After a double decker airport train ride, and settling into our hotel, we visited the most famous Viennese Christmas market, Christkindlmarkt, decked with pretty lights and a giant red heart, where they were selling personalised gingerbread, spinning decorations, salt from the Alps, and an array of traditional Viennese foods – soup served in a loaf of bread, shredded pancakes, and dumplings. The next day, following a tasty hotel breakfast, we saw the famous white horses and carriages on an old town walking tour and learned that Beethoven, Marie Antoinette and Mozart all used to live in Vienna! We visited the famous Stephansplatz, admiring the architecture and patterned, colourful roof tiles of the cathedral, before lunch at a traditional Viennese café, including some schnitzel. Climbing 343 steps to the top of one of the towers of Stephansplatz, we could see the whole of Vienna. After an early dinner, we watched the Hansel and Gretel opera in German with really talented singers in an extremely hot theatre.
The next day included a visit to the Hundertwasser museum with a very cool, uneven floor – you really had to concentrate on where you put your feet – and an interactive tour of the Belvedere museum, where we saw Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, and a painting that was part of the series Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David, before a really fun ice skating session. The following day, we went to Schonbrunn Palace to learn how to make apple strudel in the traditional way – Hannah even got to help the chef at the front! After lunch in Stephansplatz and a Viennese waltz lesson, we went back to the hotel for our last dinner in Vienna before an evening at the Prater, a really fun theme park. On our final day, we visited a fascinating music museum with lots of virtual reality activities allowing us to create unique music compositions using technology – an entertaining end to a wonderful few days exploring a new city and practising our German.