Submitted by Haley Stanko on the 2017 fall semester DIS (Denmark’s International Study Program) program in Copenhagen, Denmark…
The DIS program in Copenhagen is unique because students get the opportunity to travel with their classes. This past week was “Long Study Tour Week” which means that I got to travel for six days with my core class called The European Urban Experience. We traveled to Vienna, Austria and then to Budapest, Hungary. Over the course of the week, we visited different sites around the city for guided tours with experts who work there to learn about the history of the cities, housing policy, and future development. My favorite part about this program is the opportunity to visit and compare these different European cities. I am really interested in architecture and history and one of my favorite parts of the study tour was getting to learn more about the history of each city and how that influenced the architectural design. You can read the history of a place by looking at how the built environment expresses the political identity and economic health of a place throughout time. This was especially prevalent in Budapest, where fantastic buildings from the 1896 millennium celebration stood out in stark contrast to communist apartment blocs that were built during Soviet occupation after the Second World War.
In addition to tours and site visits, we were given lots of time to explore the city on our own. I took advantage of that time to set off on my own to wander the streets looking at the architecture, popping into bookshops to find translations of Hungarian authors, and reading in parks. In my opinion, when traveling, it isn’t as important to see all the tourist sites, as it is to really understand the context of the place you’re in and the way people live there. In Budapest, I set out to do that by getting a little bit into Hungarian Literature. I found an English translation of a book by the author, Margit Kaffka. She was a Hungarian woman who grew up at the turn of the nineteenth century, and she wrote about the changing role of women at the time. From her perspective, there was a struggle as a woman strives to be financially independent and find happiness in a society that defines women by their ability to please a man. I enjoyed reading about her real life just as much as reading her fiction, which was largely based on her experience in life. The things she wrote about living in Hungary spoke to the experience of women all over the world, and it’s in finding these connections through space and time that I think travel becomes a worthwhile experience. Moving throughout the city, I brought her novel Colours and Years around with me, stopping to read at benches along busy streets, in public parks, and on hills overlooking the city.
