4f at the Democracy Workshop

On Thursday 4th April, 4f went to Vienna to attend the Democracy Workshop in the Parliament building. As the workshop began in the afternoon, the first stop was St.Stephen’s Cathedral, for a quick climb up the very narrow spiral staircase to the lookout floor. This really was used as a lookout for hundreds of years, with the main aim to warn of fires as quickly as possible, but also to keep an eye out for potential attackers. It seemed we were not the only people who had this idea, though – it took ages to get up and down because of the constant “traffic jams” on the stairs.

After this we took a stroll through the 1st District to Parliament, where we first had to negotiate the security check before being escorted to the top floor of the building, overlooking the main parliamentary chamber. The pupils did a fantastic job of interviewing two very important government officials (in English) and then writing a series of newspaper articles based on the information they had learned. You can download their newspaper here.

The workshop finished at around five pm, but nobody seemed to feel tired, despite the long day. The pupils thoroughly enjoyed it and their feedback was highly positive, as was that of the Democracy Workshop team and the officials they interviewed, who were most impressed by our pupils’ level of English and general good behaviour. All in all, a very successful day!