Experiencing Europe:  Trains, British Novels, and Austrian Essayists

Honors Student Pursues Cultural Immersion

Traveling and becoming immersed in another culture is not on everyone's Top Ten list for a summer vacation.  But WSU Regents Scholar and Honors College junior Walter Schlect has come to think of such adventures as "fun." In fact, he's preparing for his third trip to Europe on a study abroad scholarship funded by Germany in summer 2009.

He first traveled to Germany as a teen with a group from his West Valley High School in Yakima.  For his sophomore year at WSU in 2007-2008, Schlect traversed the Atlantic Ocean to study at the University of Salzburg, located in one of Austria’s largest, most beautiful, and historic cities, surrounded by the Alps.  He took classes in literature, politics, and culture designed for non-native speakers of Germanic languages.  Having already studied German for several years, he was able to practice speaking with his Austrian dorm-mates.

“It was amazing to experience life and culture outside the U.S. and to just plunge into another society,” says Schlect.

Waiting at a streetcar station in Vienna, Austria

Travel also brought his studies to life.  “One day I was riding a train from Salzburg to Ljubljana, Slovenia.  I was reading the travelogue ‘Black Lamb and Grey Falcon’ by 1930s British novelist and travel writer Rebecca West and she described making the same trip, except she went further on to Zagreb, Croatia.  She described seeing Bad Gastein, Austria.  An hour after I had read her description, my train circled around the same town, and it looked as she had described it about 70 years earlier, which was fascinating to me.”

Schlect says he fell in love with literature written by Austrians, with their political and social commentaries and thoughts on their native culture.  His favorites are Ernst Jandl, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek, and Peter Handke.

When he returned to WSU in fall 2008, he began to think about his thesis project for Honors.  He plans to analyze novelist and social essayist Handke’s imagination of Austria and the former Yugoslav republics in his recent fiction writing.

As an undergraduate, he is majoring in German language and minoring in English and Russian area studies. For his career, he is considering becoming a professor of German literature or comparative literature.  Before graduate school, though, he plans to apply for a Fulbright teaching assistantship to teach English to Austrian high school students.  “It’s a good way to improve my German before I start grad school.”

At the encouragement of Rachel Halverson, Schlect’s German professor who is also an Honors faculty member, he applied for a summer 2009 study abroad program sponsored by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), the German Academic Exchange Service program.  He received word in February that he was accepted and will be attending classes to study contemporary German literature and practice language in either Berlin or Essen.

“Since World War II, Germany has been striving to improve its international image,” Schlect says, “and it has helped many people to travel there to study and learn about the country and its unique history.

At Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria, Schlect promises, "Ich komme wieder" (I'll be back).

“Going back to Europe and being especially close to Austria is going to be a great opportunity for me.  I’m looking forward seeing my old friends there from my last study abroad trip.  I think it will be a lot of fun.”