In the course of our DLP-project “Children’s rights”, class 3E went to the UNO headquarters in the 22nd district – accompanied by Lana, our DLP-teacher. Two pupils describe the field trip of January 11th, which they obviously enjoyed a lot.
My class went to UNO on a school trip. I thought it was interesting to learn about the congresses with the different countries and the interpreters’ jobs. It must be so hard to translate everything at almost the same time. We even could try it out by ourselves, which was extremely hard. We also saw that UNO is on international territory. It was built by Austria, but all the other countries have to pay rent in price of a chewing gum. We really enjoyed the trip, especially with our guide who was really friendly. I hope the classes after us can go there as well and enjoy it like my class did.
Sara
When we arrived, we first had to go through a security-check, that reminded me of the airport. We then met our tour guide, and she took us to the square in the middle of the buildings. On the square there was a giant fountain with all the flags of the UNO members around it. There are 193 members and two countries, who have a sit in the UNO but no voting right (Palestine and Vatican City).
After we looked at all the flags and the architecture of the building, we entered the first building on our left and the tour guide told us interesting facts about the history of the UNO. She also told us that their monthly rental is about one chewing gum (~0,7€).
The tour guide then took us to a visitor room where we could look into the biggest event hall there. There is place for about 800 people and the hall can even be expanded.
We learned that:
- The other UNO residences are in New York, Geneva and Nairobi. The biggest one is the one in New York.
- The residence in Vienna was built after the Second World War by the architect Johann Staber because it was looking nice and was the least expensive.
- The UNO has even got an international kindergarten and a school two train stations farther away.
- The UNO building in Vienna has about 13,000 windows and is about 123 metres high.
- More than 5,000 people from more than 125 countries work there.
- The objectives of the UNO are security and peace.
Daniela
