Nancy Goes to Vienna: A Week of Exceptional Visits

Every year for the past 15 years, undergraduate students of the Nancy campus have had the opportunity to go on one-week study visits to Vienna, Berlin, and Brussels. The goal of these visits is to give them a glimpse into how European and International institutions work behind the scenes.

The Nancy campus hosts the Europe & Franco-German concentration programmes; thus these cities are of particular interest for students. This year, it was the first-year students who travelled to Vienna, whilst the second year students went to Berlin.

The five-day programme was divided as such:

On Monday: visit of the Opera. On Tuesday, students visited the Diplomatische Akademie (the Viennese equivalent of PSIA) and the University of Vienna, where they listened to a social democrat politician speak about Austrian political life. On Wednesday, students visited the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, created in 1975 to ease tensions during the Cold War). Thursday, a visit was organised to the Viennese Headquarters of the United Nations, complete with meetings with French and German ambassadors at the United Nations Vienna base. On Friday morning, students got to peak inside the OPEC, The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Outside of this rich programme, students were also given free time to explore. Some visited the cities’ numerous museums and art galleries, filled with large collections of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Others returned to the opera to see a performance.