Bike Ride

For the first day off from class a group of us decided to go for a bike ride down the Danube. Our group, being primarily made of UC Davis students, took for granted that everyone in our program could ride bikes as well as those of us that ride daily to class during the school year. We forget that bike riding is a part of Davis culture probably more than anywhere else in California, if not the rest of the nation. This bike culture that we are so fully immersed in at Davis is probably one of the greatest crossovers into Viennese culture. The Viennese appear to be consumed by a greater culture of physical fitness and exercise with bike riding being only a mere component. While America is defined by most as a “fast food nation” or an “overweight nation” it is clear that a huge portion of the Viennese get regular exercise for their health, but also as an integral part of their culture.

After we completed a quick bike riding instructional session for those of us not from Davis, we made our way to the island that resulted from dredging the river that now divides the Danube. We rode a considerable distance until we found a place to get in the water. I was amazed at how the Viennese use the Danube for tanning, relaxing, and swimming just as we would do at the beach in California. We promptly joined in with the river activities, some of us choosing to swim across the Danube to the other side (luckily all of us made it back!). This trend of physically active Viennese continued as there were numerous people swimming all around the river for both pleasure and exercise. I wish I could come up with a definitive answer as to why the Viennese are so active, but I’m afraid there is no way to truly know, just as with discovering the source of cultural elements in general. We can make assumptions based on influences and tradition, but ultimately there is no way to know how different cultures come to be.

Speaking of Viennese culture, we unexpectedly got a large dose of a rather unique element as we biked right through a nudist colony area. It appeared that nudity is more openly accepted here than in the United States. Being a native San Diegan I only know of one beach area that condones nudity and that is a private beach. I took this experience as yet another part of our continued immersion into Viennese culture.

After a full day of riding bikes around Vienna I think that stereotypes about the health of the Viennese are similar to stereotypes about the health of Americans. While the Viennese appear to be extremely physically active and more fit and than Americans, I have witnessed first hand how a huge portion of the Viennese smoke cigarettes regularly and drink at all times of the day. This is both a huge departure from American culture and a huge breach in the health stereotype of the Viennese. However, at the same time it says a lot about cultural stereotypes in general. Just as we Americans assume that the Viennese are more active and healthy than we are with our “fast food nation”, Vienna probably has one of the highest smoker populations in the world. It made me reexamine my culture and myself and brought me to the realization that a lot of the cultural stereotypes about Americans are also not necessarily true.

Americans have a bad reputation of being a severely overweight nation, but at the same time I feel like our proportion of overweight citizens isn’t that much different than the Viennese. While my samples of both the Viennese and Americans may be slightly skewed I believe that both stereotypes might be distorted just as any other stereotype.

Riding bikes was a great way to expose ourselves to areas of Vienna and areas of Viennese culture that we had not previously been aware of and I would like to do it again, hopefully taking a trip to Melk. I look forward to exposing myself to other European stereotypes and not only assessing them, but comparing them to the stereotypes about American culture and finding out how they are perceived here in Austria.

The German word of the day is Autobahn and it means ‘highway’