Walking Tour in Linz - Part III

After leaving the castle, we go further up to visit St. Martin's Church. It is currently the oldest church in Austria. It was first documented in 799, and was rebuilt several time after that. Click here to learn more about the church.

Unlike those splendid Gothic cathedral, this one is small and down-to-earth. The murals on the wall date back to the 15th century.

What amazed me most is that people still use the church for religious service and wedding. The murals on the wall are expose to the public. They do not install any protection facility over these murals. They preserve the church in a "living" way, as our guide says, and not afraid that people will destroy it. I really admire the self-restriction the Austrian shows.

Sometime we preserve historic sites just because they generate money from toruism, and not because we treasure the history they represent. But here, I feel like people here accept the history as a part of their life and are proud of it.

Walking Tour in Linz - Part II

Finally, we reach the hilltop. What greeting us is a breath-taking scene. Danube flows through Linz, and separates the city into two parts. We are now on the right bank of the river, the older part of the city. Most of the sights are on this side.

If you take a closer look at the picture, you can see there is a church, Wallfahrtsbasilika, on the top of the hill. The "Pöstlingbergbahn", Europe's steepest mountain railway takes visitor to the hill top. People say the view there is beautiful, but sadly I do not have time to visit the church.

We are now standing in front of the castle. It is now used as a museum. Click here to learn more about the castle.

This picture is taken at the edge of a steep slope. One more step ahead and I will fall all the way down to the street level. However, there is no handrail to "protect" tourists from falling.

I think this is very interesting. Because in Taiwan, there definitely will be a ugly steel or concrete handrail to "protect" careless tourists. But everyone knows that it is dangerous to get too close to the edge, then why makes a joke about their own life? If everyone could behave themselves, there would no need for those incompatible handrails, right?

Walking Tour in Linz - Part I

Linz, as many other cities in Eruope, has tour guide service. It is not easy to be a tour guide. They have to pay for the training program and pass the exam. I do not have time to chat with our tour guide in Linz, but last time when I was in Paris, we had a Parisian tour guide. He said that they had to learn not only the Franch history, but also history of the city, architecture, fine arts, etc. When walking on the street, they had to introduce to their guest what styles the buildings were; when in a museum, they had to know who the painters were, what the stories were behind these amazing works, the list went on.


Our tour guide is a nice lady who speak fluent English. We meet her at the Trinity Column. This column was built in 1723. Click here to learn more about the column.


After a brief introduction, we start walking uphill. It seems like we graduate students are extremely lack of exercise, and it makes us breathless just to climb up that little hill, ha-ha.



We stop at a brown, normal house. This is where Anton Bruckner went to school and trained to be a theacher. Bruckner was borned in Ansfelden, a village near to Linz. Latter he came to Linz and played organ here in Alter Dom (old cathedral) and Stadtpfarrkirche (city parish church). He spent 13 years (1855 ~ 1868) here in Linz, and latter moved to Vienna. Bruckner is very important to Linz. The concert hall is named after him (Brucknerhaus), a univeristy (Anton Bruckner Universität), and an orchestra (Bruckner Orchestra), too.

Transportation in Linz

Linz is not a big city. There are only three tram lines and numerous buses routes. No subway. There are ticket vending machines at each tram stations. From these machines, you can buy three kinds of ticket:

Maxi: this is a one-day pass. With this pass, you can take tram and bus as many times as you want.

Midi: single ticket, only valid for one trip.

Mini: this is for short distance travel and is only valid withing four stops.

Wochen: weekly pass. This is most useful to tourists.

Other than buying tickets from vending machines, you can also go to shops called Tabak to buy tickets. There you can buy discounted and other kind of tickets.

To learn more about tickets and ticket price, please visit .

However you buy the ticket, you have to validate it yourself before taking a tram or a bus. It is easy. Just validate it at the machine, and the machine will print the date on the ticket.

I do not see anyone checking tickets during the whole trip. Obviously people respect themselves by paying correct fares. Also, there are no "gates" at the station. You can hop on the tram without buying any ticket. But I believe no one will do so.

Second day afternnon, we all buy weekly passes, validate them, hop on the tram and head towrd downtown area for our walking city tour.

First Impression of Linz: Coffee, Bread, and Water

When we are in Linz, we stay in the Summerhaus of Johannes Kepler University Linz. It feels like a place for short-term exchanged international students. The room is simple but comfy. Our window view is pretty. On the right is a hill with houses scattering over the mountainside; on the left is the city view.

Europeans put a lot effort in protecting the planet and saving energy. Toilet paper and handwipes are made with recycle paper. Hallway light turns off automatically in minutes. I do not see any plastic, disposable tableware during the whole trip.

Tap water is drinkable in Austria, and it tastes really good. It is funny that bottle water costs more than wine and beer. So it is a good thing that I bring my water bottle with me. That saves me a lot of money.

Summerhaus provides simple breakfast in serve-yourself style. The menu is the same everyday: three kinds of cereal, two bowls of yoghurt, three kinds of juice, bread, fruit and coffee. It is very simple, but we really enjoy it, because

THE COFFEE AND THE BREAD ARE AWESOME!!!

Also, there are samll, stainless steel pitchers near the coffee machine. We are supposed to fill the pitcher with coffee, take the pitcher to the table, and pour coffee into the mug. And therefore, it is really easy to drink to much coffee in the morning, not only because it is sooooo good, but also because that I feel bad not to empty my pitcher.

So, if you ask me what I miss most, my answer is: coffee, bread, and water!

Cincinnati - Frankfurt - Linz

March 14, 2007, 7:30 pm, we step on the airplane which will carry us from Cincinnati to Frankfurt, Germany in the following 9 hours, and then we will change plane to fly to Linz, Austria to begin our 9-day-long International Seminars.

This program is one of the main reasons I choose the MBA program at University of Cincinnati. Although I will lose my spring break and have classes right after the trip, I still think it's worthy.

Frankfur Airport is super large. Thanks to the lady at Delta check-in counter. She gave me a detailed direction of how to get to the terminal where we will board the connection flight. Because the terminal is under construction, if she didn't tell me, I might think that I'm in a wrong area.

I really like the lighting they use in the waiting area. And see, T-Mobile is everywhere!