This weekend, I took a very cool trip to an area of Austria called Styria (Die Steiermark, auf Deutsch). Although the trip was really quick, I had a great time and I'm really glad I got to get out of Vienna, even if for a short weekend.
I got up around 6:15 to leave on saturday morning. It was super early, but it was kinda nice to get out into the city that early in the morning. I walked past the Flohmarkt to get on the U-bahn, and it was very cool to see people setting up their stands that early in the morning, and even seeing some early-birds trying to find the best deals of the day before the sun had even risen.
I made it to the bus and we took our 3 hour bus ride to an open-air museum in Styria. The open air museum had the potential to be really cool, but our tour guide kinda sucked. Basically, they had taken very old houses and structures which demonstrated early rural life from all over austria and reconstructed them in this one valley to make a little town that kind of spanned a few hundred years of the life of rural austrians. I thought it was interesting, but the tour crawled along at a snail's pace.
We then had lunch in a Gasthaus by the museum, got back on the bus and drove to Graz, which is such a wonderful city. It is the second largest city in Austria, but only has a popluation of 250,000! It's very beautiful and feels like a large village, rather than an important city. It's also surrounded by beautiful mountains. We had a tour of Graz with the most hillarious tour guide ever. She was so entertaining and told us that she had just come fromt he Weinstrasse (the road through the mountains where there are a ton of vinyards) and was actually "A little tipsy!" We saw a lot of the sights of Graz and noted some places to come back later when we had free time at night.
Then we went to the Hostel, which was very similar to the Hostel in Mariazell (more of a Family Gasthaus). We had dinner at the Hostel and I showered and hung around a little, had a beer with the Dune and Bill, the former students who are now like pseudo advisors here, and waited for people to be ready to go. The story of my night was a little long and convoluted, but the abridged version is: the group that I was goign to leave with left without me, then I went with another group who wanted to go to a bar. I was planning on having a drink with them and then go the museums on my own, but they took so long ot leave, that by the time we got into the city, I just went off on my own to go to the museums. (I forgot to mention, Saturday night was the "Lange Nacht ins Museum" - all museums all over austria are open till 1am and you can buy a pass for 11 euros to get into as many as you want!). By this point, I got a little concerned - I was on my own in a city at night that I really didn't know at all and I had had 2 drinks. But I had such a feeling of accomplishment when I I found the place to buy the tickets, got on a "lange nacht" bus, it ended up beign the wrong bus, so I had a great conversation with one of the people working for Lange nacht in german, ended up back where the bus left from, got on the right bus, and headed to the right museum. I felt like "Hell yeah, I can speak german!" - It was a really great feeling of accomplishment.
Anyway, I had planned to go to 2 museums, the Kunsthaus Graz, which is like this crazy alien-looking modern museum. It was really incredible and I ended up bumping into group 1 there. A few of us then went to the 2nd museum, a geological museum with a lot of really incredible fossils and animal stuff. Then people wanted to go to a bar to meet up with group number 2, so we found our way there, but by the time we got there, I was super wiped out from all the walking of the day. A friend of mine named Eric, Mimi and I stayed for a drink and then walked back and crashed - I was so tired!!
Today was fun as well - woke up for breakfast around 9:30. At 10 we left for the Weinstrasse adn stopped at a winery on this giant hill overlooking the most beautiful landscape.
The day was absolutely gorgeous and picturesque and people enjoyed their refrshing Sturm. We then drove to a town called Gamlitz which has a famous carnival and parade.
I had a great Schnitzel sandwich and enjoyed the atmosphere, but I was really pretty tired. I ended up going into a cafe with a girl from my German class, Elizabeth (One of my friends thought her name was Lauren, and kept calling her Lauren throughout the day, so I started calling her Lauren as a joke!). Then at 4, back on the bus to head back to Vienna.
That's about as quick a summary of my weekend as I can give. Tomorrow is back to work.
