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Graz, More than a Parking Place

March 25, 2002

Dear Friends and Family,

OK. So we lucked into a parking place, now what? We were in Graz, Austria with a couple days to kill and no prior knowledge of the place to guide us. Nevertheless, as touring professionals, we had to do something to write about. Here's what we saw.

Graz has a delightful old city surrounding a central hill called the Schlossberg in memory of the castle that once stood guard from it's high vantage point. We rode the cable car up the 61% grade to the top. From there we could visit the 18th century clock tower and hear its 14th century bell. There were wonderful views in most directions and it seems a shame that we couldn't squeeze them all into a single picture. Walking down from the Schlossberg, we passed local and visiting tourists enjoying the cool but pleasant spring weather.

Inside the old town, we went to the provincial armory, The Landeszeughaus Graz. We expected to see a few helmets and a handful of old guns and cannons. Instead we were treated to a vast array of 16th through 18th century armor and weapons. The four-level building was absolutely filled with over a thousand flintlock rifles, about that many ancient pistols and thousands of swords, sabers, spears, and medieval fighting tools with ominous names like tucks, couses, and Morgensterns.

The workmanship on the old rifles and pistols made them works of art. Even more impressive were the racks and racks of body armor. Marianne stood next to the footsolders' equipment and we had to notice that, at just a bit above five foot tall, she would have been a giant among these 16th century troops. One breastplate in particular showed signs of wear with both bullet dents from successful performance and a single, heart-high hole. Officer armor was considerably fancier and free from signs of heavy use.

Outside the armory, in the courtyard of the 16th century town hall, local "villagers" were reenacting scenes from long ago. The action seemed to center on eating, for both the reenactors and local townsfolk like ourselves. This gave a more pleasant image of life centuries ago than punctured, child-sized breastplates.

Speaking of eating, we tried a restaurant that had been recommended by our hotel for good central Austrian food. The first time we went, we were put in a small room with a single table and served a delightful meal of fresh salad and some not quite so light Austrian main courses of sauce-drenched meat. Several months ago in Germany, we had gotten saturated on this type of food, but coming back to it in Graz was comforting. It was so comforting that we repeated this restaurant twice more before we left for Vienna.

On Sunday, on our way to the garage, we drove through a couple of small towns away from the city center. In the town of Barnbach, we ran across a small church designed by an Austrian artist named Hundertwasser. Later in the week, in Vienna, we would see more of his work, but this church was a charming example of form and color that reminded us of Gaudi's Barcelona.

Nearby, we saw some (xxnumber) local folks carrying a long and heavy bundle of pine branches. We'd seen people leaving churches earlier with small bundles and we remembered that this was Palm Sunday. I guess pine branches is as close as Austria gets to palm fronds.

So, that's what we did while waiting to park the car. Graz turned out to be a very pleasant stop - in addition to being a good place to park a car.

Take care and be thankful that armor is out of style.

John and Marianne