Goodbye Graz

I have not really had time to be sad about leaving Graz- everything is has happened so fast here that even sitting on the train (with a roller duffel, small duffel, and two large backpacks) on my way from Graz to Vienna for the last time still seems like just another part of my routine. 

Even though the last week has been "normal," there are so many moments that stand out as having been really exceptional. Like Monday night, when Ruth and I made a quick trip to meet some of our new Austrian friends at a pub and ended up hanging out and watching a movie for the entire evening. Or last night, when the same three guys (+Maria!) came over, and Basti made us Kaiserschmarrn. Christoph brought Maria and I "goodbye Austria survival" gifts of Manner Schnitte and Mozartkugeln. In Maria's words, "unglaublich," unbelievable! 

Basti, Maria, Peter, Christoph, and me- last goodbye!

I have also managed to say goodbye to so many friends, spend an entire day hiking in the Vorberge (foothills), fail my first university exam (and therefore the class), score an A on an oral history exam, 

sell my bicycle (for the same amount I bought it for!), go for one last coffee at Café Binder, and move out of my apartment.

On Tuesday I escaped to the edge of Graz and hiked up the castle ruins which have been tempting me since I first arrived in Graz.... (click Read more)Ruine Gösting's foundationd date back to the 13th century and are free to wander through, including the chapel and the tower. From the small Gasthaus terrasse you have a fantastic view down the Mur valley and over Graz. I spent an hour wandering through dark chambers and crumbling walls. The Auer family, owners of a bread kingdom in Graz, have plans to do some rennovation and plant vines on the hillside. I think it will be worth a trip back!

Mittlealterfest Oberkapfenberg

Today Bastian drove Ruth, his friend Peter, and myself to Kapfenberg (second largest city in the Steiermark) for their medieval festival. I felt like a kid in a candy shop!
The full album is in the Photo Gallery or on Picasa for your viewing pleasure.

Horns were blown, imaginary arrows were shot

Trumpets, drums, and flags spinners performed 

(click Read more)

Swords were admired and silly hats were worn 

Peter and Bastian were great guides  

Kaspresknödel was eaten in the castle

Axes were thrown (3 for 4 and 1 for 4, respectively)

Funny songs were sung

What a fun afternoon! I will post about yesterday's hiking trip later this week, after I trade photos with the rest of the hikers.

a Midsummer Night's Dream

 Last night may have been one of the best Graz nights I have had.
It started out with a free moccachino at Parks (because my card was full) and then migrated to Stadtpark, where  some Swedish girls (Maria and Elena, the ones wearing wreathes in the picture right) planned a Svensk Midsommar festival/party. There was laughing, singing (in Swedish), a decorated Midsommar tree, eating of raw fish and Knackerbrod, drinking Radlers (while the Swedes drank schnapps... they have a lot of drinking songs), and dancing like crazy people in the circle around the tree.

Well, Maria invited two of her Austrian friends, and we got talking when they heard that I was from a place where there was fantastic backcountry skiing. I started to explain my "bucket list" for Graz, and a few hours later five of us (Christoph, Bastian, Ruth, Mikel, and I) were going up Schlossberg to see the stars and the city by night. There might have been some climbing of the Hacker Lion statue once we got to the top...

Afterwords, we sat on the wall near the Uhrturm (clocktower) and talked until it was time to go home (hiking plans for the morning... more on that to come). We all live in the same direction, so we walked home... and made a short detour for Kabap before finally coming home. Ruth and I gave Mikel hugs goodbye, and finally hit the hay. 

Mikel, Bastian, Christoph, and Ruth on the wall

Tomorrow, Bastian is taking me to a Mittelalterfest in a town just outside of Graz :) Another check off the list!

BTW, here is the link to the pension that Christoph's family owns/runs in St. Anton von Arlberg... Christoph designed the website http://www.gaestehaus-kolp.at

Processing...

Since coming back from Croatia I have been trying to deal with the fact that I am leaving Graz in a week. There are so many things that I will miss about Graz... here are ten of them, in no particular order...

1. 

   Taking down the maypole in Hauptplatz

    There are yogurt vending machines at the 
   university.
2. I am free to think critically about american culture, politics, and history and have opportunity to epress my thoughts 
3. I'm not fluent in German yet. I can't leave before I'm fluent, can I? now where i can generally understand people, and am starting to learn to express myself. And there are so many other languages around me! 
4. Transport- bike everywhere. public transportation rocks. and it's flippin easy here. 
5. it is hard to have a "buybuybuy" supermarket when you have to pay for every (resuable!) shopping bag and walk home with it 
6. distinct coffee culture, sweet lokals, and 300 types of bread...
7. just starting to really get to know people, I meet new people every day- so many interesting people out there! 
8. I live at the gateway to so many amazing places with unique cultures, languages 
9. the weather is great- the rain rarely lasts for more than a day, the sun comes out after thunderstorms, and it smells like Creston :) 
10. Castles, Roman ruins, and recent history (first hand and second hand) is so much better than a book!

My to-do list for when I get home is also a bit intimidating- Find a job, take my "intecultural studies course" (because WSU does not accept studying in Austria as an intercultural study), find a way to not forget all of the German that I've learned, and generally figure out what direction to go with life...

Cooking Turkish

Petra, Mediha, and Ezgi invited me over last Friday (before I left for Croatia) for dinner and a lesson in how to make a delicious Turkish desert called Helva. Here is how Mediha made it:
Helva (from Istanbul)

• 1,5 cups flour into a pot on medium heat, stir continuously
• 1,5 cups sugar + 2,5 c water in a second pot
• When the flour starts to brown a little add ~ 200g butter and approx. the same amount of sunflower oil. It should  be about as thick as cream of wheat. Keep stirring until it boils.
• Drop a little batter into the sugar water. If it turns white quickly, you are ready for the next step.
• Pour the sugar water into the batter. Watch out- it is a little explosive! Stir rapidly until thick. 
• Cool, spoon onto a plate, and enjoy!

One note- the "cup" we used was just a regular cup. Mediha said that she has made it from many different recipes, and this time she didn't use one- so everything is approximate!
Our main dish was pasta- which, I learned, the Turks top with yogurt! Evidently my love of eating just about anything with yogurt would be quite at home in Istanbul :)

In other news, it is only two weeks until I leave Graz. At this time on July 1. I will be on a train somewhere in northern Italy, on my way to meet up with Erin and her dad and bro in Venice. Yikes! So much still to do... time for a list!

1. go up Schloßberg on a clear night
2. eat a Steirer Schnitzle
3. go to the RitterFest near Brück on der Mur
4. have coffee at the cute blue place near the Opera that I saw the first week here
5. finish my "regular's" card at the climbing gym 
6. ... Suggestions??

Hrvatska day 2 - Zagreb

Goodbye, Hostel Elena!

I left my four hostel-mates soundly sleeping when I rolled out at 7 am Sunday morning. It turned out that a slightly later bus was a bit cheaper and got me there only ten minutes later, so I bought my ticket and then walked across the street and got some breakfast at the supermarket. On the bus I had a chance to talk with a lady from London who was an expert in applied linguistics. I explained that I had found my lessons and discussions on language and culture more interesting than my civil engineering internships had been and asked what sorts of opportunities there were for linguists. She laughed and said there wasn't much, that most become teachers, the pay wasn't great but at least you got to travel (if you liked that sort of thing), and asked how the outlook was for civil engineers. It was little bit of a wake-up call for me. Yes, I am loving languages and cultures right now and could be perfectly happy living off of oatmeal for the rest of my life, but is that enough compared to the stability of a career position with a city or civil engineering firm? At the same time, I don't know whether having a desk job with my signature on legal design documents scares me more or the idea of being in one place for more than a year or two.

Best guides ever!

Ana was waiting for me at the bus station when we pulled in at 12:30. We drove to her house and she fed me cherries Turkish coffee (unfiltered caffeine) and then turned me loose to explore the city while she finished up a German report. Zagreb was not what I had expected. Sunday afternoon and about half of the shops were closed, but all of the restaurants were open and the streets were full of people and a soap box derby and a 3-on-3 basketball tournament. There was music and laughing and the buzzing of mopeds- so much more lively than Sunday in Graz!
Ana met up with me at later in the afternoon and we had dinner at one of the restaurants just up the hill from the main square. A little while later we met her boyfriend and the two of them gave me a walking tour of downtown, complete with a lesson in recent history, from the breakup of Yugoslavia to the acceptance of Croatia into the EU which had been announced two days before. When it started to get dark we walked down to a pub on one of the streets that were filled with them and spent the rest of the evening swapping stories over Croatian beers.
It was the first time that I had talked with people my own age who had experienced their country at war, and one of Ana's boyfriend's stories made me smile. He was staying at the home of a Serbian for a debate tournament in high school and went to brush his teeth. As he pulled out his toothpaste his host came in with a machete and asked "what, is our toothpaste not good enough for you?" - and then they both started laughing. "It is so great to be able to joke like that with a Serbian," he said.
If you get a chance, I definitely recommend a trip to Croatia. You will be stunned by how clear the waters are, warmed by how friendly, welcoming, and quick to laugh the people are, and drowned in the thousands of years of history.

A day on the Croatian Coast

For the past week or so I had been debating where to go over the long weekend. I facebooked a classmate from Croatia, and she sold me on her home country. I was at first going to go with some other girls, but they had other trips planned or school assignments (some people here actually have to study) so I got on the bus at 10:00 with just my backpack. My shoulder bag stuffed with a jacket made a perfect  pillow, and I slept remarkably well considering. The bus was unloaded at the Slovenian border sometime around 2 am for passport control. A few minutes later a Croatian border guard walked through the bus, and we were officially admitted into Croatia.
Besides a short stop at a rest station (with a meters long line for the bathroom), I the next thing I distinctly remember is blearily asking the fellow next to me if the bus leader had just announced that we were in Zadar. At 5 am I stumbled off the bus, asked a taxi driver which direction town was, and walked through the gate as the sun hit the islands. My first hours in Zadar were spent walking along the white stone promenade and through the city. There is a "sea organ"built along the wall which is "played" by the waves as they roll in. The rhythmic splashing of the water was turned into chords which were quiet and peaceful in the morning and louder when the breeze picked up in the evening. You can listen to it on the Videos page. (click Read more)



By seven the market was starting to buzz. Zadar has a special fish market built inside the city walls and full of the local catches. Raw fish didn't sound so great for breakfast so I visited two bakery stands to satiate my grumbling stomach. It was even more fun at the fruit stands, where I tried to explain to the apricot lady that I only wanted one piece of fruit, but ended up with one kilo! The currency in Croatia is the Kuna, which was trading at about 7,5 Kn : €1. Even in a tourist town like Zadar, everything runs cheaper. Boutique gelato cones are 6 Kn (€0,81 vs Graz, €1,10), a gourmet cappuccino 10 Kn (€1,35 vs Graz, €2,50-€3).
At 8-ish I stumbled across my lodging, Hostel Elena, and decided to give it a shot even though I was not technically supposed to check in until 12:00. The owner greeted me at the door, showed me to the bathroom so I could freshen up and change clothes, let me deposit my heavy backpack in the office, and then led me up to the kitchen on the top floor and put a pot of water on for tea for me, since it was still so early that I probably didn't want to go see the city yet. The hostel was full of English, Aussie, and American students/recent graduates.
My morning/afternoon consisted of walks through the harbor, a Franciscan monestary/museum, a ride across the harbor from one of the "Boatmen of Zadar" in his bright orange boat (rowed standing up), finishing my history class reading at a cafe, sun-bathing on the wharf and beach, visiting the archeology museum, catching one of the Zadar sunsets over the islands made famous by Alfred Hitchcock, and my first Casablanca at the Garden. Why is it that when I finally find my ultimate club I am travelling alone? Relaxed music, bean-bag chairs and pillows stacked on benches, overlooking the harbor from the top of the city wall. Dreamy!

Hi from Zadar!

The last 12 hours have been CRAZY! I learned how to make Helva from Mediha, had some fun conversations with little old Austrian ladies while we waited for our 40 minute late bus, got my passport stamped by the Slovenians while the Croatians only glanced at it, and stumbled off of said bus at 5 am this morning in time to hike into town and see the sun rise on the islands near Zadar. So lovely here!
More to come- Ana has invited me to stay with her in Zagreb tomorrow night!
Miss you all, leave me a comment!

Vienna III: Van Geest Edition

   I have been avoiding blogging all of this because every time I sit down at my computer I feel guilty for not working on my history paper... but that is in the final stages, so here is the week's news from Graz in summary.
   Monday afternoon I jumped on a train to go meet two very special girls who were passing through Austria on their way from Prague to Venice. Erika was my roommate for a year and a half, but studied abroad my last semester at Calvin. She and her sister Marijke are currently in the middle of a month backpacking around Europe. Wien Meidlung train station was the first time we had seen each other in two and a half years. There was much screaming and hugging :) (click Read More)

   We popped on the U-bahn and started our walking tour of downtown at the Dom, enjoyed some famous Austrian white wine at a café, and then jumped on a subway to Hostel Hütteldorf. We had been upgraded to a private room with en-suite bath. Sweet! Breakfast was included in our stay so we fueled up at the hostel the next morning, then trekked back to the U-bahn for a day packed full of sightseeing.

Neumarkt - Karlskirche - Schwarzenbergplatz - Belvedere - Kärntner Ring *Vienna coffee stop!* - Albertina (we highly recommend the Monet to Picasso exhibition) - Heldenplatz - Volksgarten *stop to smell the roses* - lunch at a park café - Parliament - Innenstadt - Prater...
I had to catch at train back to Graz to be back for a class Wednesday morning. Erika and Marijke decided to stay an extra night in Vienna and visited Schönbrunn and the Tiergarten, and then arrived in Graz in the evening. We had a gluten-free Steirisch/Deutsch dinner with Südsteirisch Welchriesling and did three loads of laundry before crashing falling asleep talking about friends and good times ... just like old times in our bunk beds :)

   A complete fluke, but Thursday was Ascension Day and Graz was even quieter than a Sunday. We hiked all around town and hit the most important spots: stadtpark, Schloßburg, Murinsel, Hauptplatz... we finally ended up having lunch at Glöcklbräu, where the Glockenspiel did it's 3:00 display while we were in the middle of a rather good lunch. Marijke discovered the joys of Käsespätzle, Krautsalat, Kürbiskernöl, and Radler. I realized that, with the potato pancakes for breakfast, Erika and Marijke had probably just had more german food in 24 hours than they normally eat in a year.
I still can't believe that they were actually here. The three days went by so fast that they feel like a huge blur. That is about the pace of life right now. I realized a little while ago that there were only 8 weeks left until I flew home. Last night Ruth, Petra and I went to see the King's Speech. Hanging out in Petra's flat with our Turkish friends (Mediha had cooked- lessons to come!), we realized there was only one month left in Graz. And when I leave, so will they. Coming back to Graz will never be the same.