We stayed in Austria this time!

This weekend was a National Holiday in Austria to celebrate the beginning of May.

On friday in Steyr was the raising of the May Pole! This is a big festive event – in Stadtplatz they hung flags and banners, they decorated the bridges with small Christmas Trees, and there was a ceremony-type event where the May Pole was raised in the square.

The May Pole is this giant shaved tree trunk, and they hang wreaths and sometimes some goodies from it. In tradition, young men (usually) would try to climb the pole and it was a source of honor if you could. There might be some goodies hanging from it as reward if someone get to the top, they could take one back down with them.

There’s a May Pole in nearly every town, village, city etc. in Austria. And once the May Pole goes up, they are usually guarded to stop other villages from stealing your May Pole. If your May Pole got stolen, it was very shameful, and you would have to buy it back which is VERY expensive. After 1 May, the pole is “settled” and cannot be stolen. So for the couple days that its up before May, it is possible to take it from another village. Its an old tradition that’s kinda fun!

The Steyr May Pole went up on Friday, 29 May. Citizens gathered in the square to watch! The whole thing took a couple hours – the men lifting the pole kept stopping to drink beer haha.

These pictures are brought to you by Hazel, my friend from Ireland because I MISSED THE MAY POLE FESTIVITIES.

That day I had woken up around 4am for reasons unknown to me. I was invited to go to a High School with my Irish friends and another FH student to do a presentation for a class. The class is taught by one of my FH professors. We went and gave short presentations about our countries, and then had a questions period where the students asked us questions. It was really nice – I LOVE doing classroom visits. The students were super nice and not shy, which is awesome! We also sat down with a student preparing to do his A-level tests in english, and practiced and talked with him.

When I got home from that I wasn’t feeling very good, and decided I would take a nap. I set about 6 alarms though, because I didn’t want to sleep all afternoon – I had homework to finish, and the May Pole stuff to go to.

But, next thing I knew it was almost 5 and my friends were calling me wondering where I was. I was not impressed with myself. I also still felt kinda gross, so I stayed home and did homework and went to bed.

So, very disappointing, its true. But I was regaled with tales of the May Pole the next day by my Irish friends as we set out on our way to Graz!

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Our train ride to Graz was amazing. If you look on a map, Graz is in the south part of Austria, and you have to pass through mountains to get there.

It was an absolutely beautiful ride – we passed through some of the most “Austrian” looking places. The mountains were beautiful, and the rolling hills covered in grass with the small, colorful red-roofed villages nestled beside rushing rivers in a mountain valley was so beautiful. Honestly I barely have any pictures because I was too busy looking at it. (These pictures are also from Hazel).

We got to Graz around 11 – one of our trains was delayed about 30 minutes, so we got in later than we originally planned. But 30 minutes isn’t a big deal, so it was fine.

Our hostel was almost right next to the trainstation which was pretty convenient. We dropped off our stuff and headed out!

Our first stop was Schloss Eggenberg and I’ll be honest – I could have spent an entire day there easily.

It is beautiful!

The Palace is t the end of a long straight road with BEAUTIFUL trees. The gate is also really pretty, and then there’s a long straight path from the gate to the Palace. It reminded me a lot of Victorian novels and movies like Jane Austen’s books.

The Palace is completely surrounded by open gardens and set just in front of a mountain (?). The Eggenberg family built this as a “summer home”, and wanted it to be separate from the rest of the city. At the time it was very far away from the town, but as added measure the gardens and grounds are fenced and a fake moat was dug around the land. The moat was never filled, but it was symbolic of the property being on an island.

 

We also made a couple new friends!

This particular Peacock practically followed us from the gate to the front of the Palace. We tried to get it to fluff its tail up, but it didn’t go for it. Too bad!

We decided to do a tour of the Palace, and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT! You are only able to see the state rooms on the second floor with a guided tour, so we figured it couldn’t hurt to see them.

And it was AMAZING!

The first room the guide took us into just about made my brain explode.

These pictures do not IN ANY WAY capture the room. It was magnificent! Tthe entire celiing was covered in frescos, all the chandeliers are original and hold only candles.

Fun facts about  Schloss Eggenberg:

1. It is the only Palace/Castle in Europe that does not use electricity (in the state rooms). There is no heating, air conditioning, or electric lightbulbs. All the furniture, lighting and decor are all original. There are 612 candles on the second floor that are used to light the rooms.
2. The Eggenberg family was very into design and symbolic representation. The Schloss has 365 windows facing the outside of the castle, representing the 365 days of the year. On the second floor there are 24 rooms, representing the 24 hours of the day, 12 of those rooms have black/dark doors and decorations to represent the 12 hours of the night, and 12 rooms are light with white doors representing the hours of the day. The castle also has 4 towers/turrets, representing the 4 seasons. There are 52 windows on the second floor, representing the weeks of the year. In the room pictured above, there are paintings/sculptures that represent the different star signs and various Roman gods.That kind of attention to detail puts modern buildings to shame!

We walked through the other rooms, all holding various functions and significance. Nearly every room had frescos covering the entire ceiling, which was so impressive to see. Many of the paintings show stories from the Old Testament and early Roman Empire History, since that was what was going on at the time of the Palace’s construction.

Our tour guide moved pretty fast through all the rooms and it made me sad because I felt very unfinished! There were so many pictures I wanted to take that I couldn’t due to time. I could have spent REALISTICALLY 2-3 hours in the second floor rooms. I felt like my eyes were bugging out of my head – every room was so exciting to me. I actually felt a little overwhelmed by the rooms – there was so much to look at!

Because of the tickets we purchased, we were also able to go through the art gallery on the 1st floor of the Palace. The oldest piece that I found was 12th century, which I think is pretty impressive for such a small place. Most of the pieces were from mid-16th century which was still really cool.

 

There was also a coin collection that we had access to, but we didn’t spend much time in there – coins aren’t as interesting I think.

We spent the next while just walking around the interior and exterior of the castle. It was so nice! The weather was beautiful, and it was just relaxing to walk around the grounds and chatting.

 

After Schloss Eggenberg, we crossed town into the main square where the more touristy things are. On the way there was a HUGE open market! It ran down the street for maybe 4/5 blocks on both sides of the road. The street was PACKED! It must have been part of the May celebrations taking place that weekend. It was more of a flea market/garage sale type stuff – it looked all second hand. But there were probably at least 100 stands from different people!

 

We eventually made it into the center. We decided to head towards the clock tower. Which is where we found these:

I don’t understand what it is with stairs, but I don’t like them. And they’re everywhere.

We eventually made it to the top, and got a beautiful view of the city. It was also blazing hot! We sat for a long time just relaxing in the sun, looking over the city. It was really nice.

 

From here we wandered around the square, looked at some churches, had a few laughs, the usual.

 

At some point in the evening we had to get some dinner. We chose a small italian place just across the river from the Hauptplatz where we got super big pizzas!

I got a Pizza, Niamh got a Calzone, and Hazel got Carbonara – #classicHazel.

 

We ended up getting back to the Hostel around 9:45ish, and played cards in the lobby until around 11, when we finally went to bed. We all knocked out pretty quick haha – I myself was exhausted.

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We were staying in a 4 person dorm, and so around 7:15 the next morning, their alarm went off, and they got up and left. We were a little slower to start our day. For one thing, we wanted to go to the second castle in Graz, and it didn’t open until 10, so we didn’t need to rush.

Our hostel was also a hotel, and so there was a breakfast provided. It cost 7euro, but we thought we would try it. It was pretty good!! They had cereal, lots of breads and meats, boiled eggs, salad stuffs like lettuce and tomatoes, juice, coffee, etc. We left full! I actually grabbed a bun to take with me, and Niamh made a sandwich to eat later.

We started off on a train!! Well, more of a cable car. It rode up the side of the mountain (?)  to the top where the old Fortress is.

One nugget of information you might need is that it was POURING RAIN all day sunday. So our pictures may make us look a little wet, and its because we were haha.

The cable car took us up to Schloßberg, which is the castle. However, now its mostly just the fortress walls, and some nice views of the city. We walked around for a couple hours in the rain taking different paths around, eventually ending up back at the bottom of the hill not far from Hauptplatz.

The last few pictures are taken inside an air raid tunnel built during WWII. It now has a night club in one of the off-chutes. Fun fact.

We still had a few hours to kill before our train left for home, so we decided to go to the Grazer Burg, which turned out to be mostly government buildings. Along the way we found a playground (of course).

 

One part of these buildings that is cool is the double spiral staircase. Its 2 spiral staircases fused together – built in medieval times.

At the top tons of people had signed the walls. And thanks to Niamh and Prague, we always carry a sharpie or permanent marker with us wherever we go, just in case 🙂

So we wrote our initials in a crappily drawn heart. We also wrote #classicMartin as a throwback to last week in Prague (you can read that post here).

The last picture in the set shows my tag – the one most noticeable in black. It says “Steyr 4 eva” because you gotta represent the city, and that’s thug language, right?!

From the castle we went to the Cathedral and Masoleum, complete with the Graz bell tower.

The cathedral was pretty big, and Ii made lots of noise because of my wet and squeaky shoes. Thank goodness Mass wan’t going on, because I might have been in real trouble!

 

The Masoleum was also really pretty. In the crypt was the tomb of Ferdinand II’s mother, Maria of Bavaria.

If you follow me on Instagram, you will see that I posted a video of us sitting under the bell tower of the Masoleum. Its funny, and you should go follow me (@ekpattz_) and watch it!

We had to make our way back to the hostel to pick up our stuff and head to the train station after that 😦

We got home around 8pm, and were starving. All we had eaten was some sweets, and breakfast. So we stopped by our favorite Kebap shop, got giant Kebaps, and sat around a table eating and laughing.

And then I went home. And to bed.

 

One thing I have noticed the longer that I travel, the slower I go. There were some other things in Graz we could have seen, but instead we took time to wander around Schloss Eggenburg, or sit ontop of the hill and watch the sun go down, or sit outside a restaurant and watch people walk by. Sometimes part of traveling is the people you go with, and the experience of it all. Sure I didn’t see all the churches in Graz, but I had a lot of fun, and I got to all the major sites. In the end, its all about the experience. I spent a lot of this past weekend just hanging out with my friends in Graz. We weren’t rushed or felt pressured to move on – we just did what we wanted to. And that has been really awesome.

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Less fun topic:

On saturday night I had a headache when Ii went to bed, so I put some Peppermint Halo on my head to help. It was a little runny, and it made my eyes sting.

Tthe next morning I woke up to this:

My left eye was unusually puffy 😦

I held a warm cloth to it for a few minutes and the swelling went down enough that it didn’t bother me for the rest of the day.

Monday morning… it was back.

Unfortunately, I was really busy on monday and couldn’t do anything for it.

Today, it is the same. But after class I held a cloth to it again and it went down.

Nothing is gonna stop me from blogging!!

After sifting through many scary google pages, it seems like I just have a small infection, and it should go away soon – I just need to not put makeup on it and keep a cloth to it and I should be good. It makes me look kinda scary though, so I hope it goes away soon!!

Anyways, I hope everyone has a good day, and a good week! Mine is going to be pretty awesome, including the weekend. Details will follow soon! (Watch instagram, because I post there the most).

 

emma.k