Come with me if you want to live: Little catchup, with a few random adventures

Good day everyone. I just realized that in all the events and shuffle of exchange life I missed a few smaller things to write about. This will be a collection of a few smaller adventures and events we have made. I’ll go over them in a few words to give context to the pictures.

Few weeks ago, we did a little design / modern art culture trip here in Graz. There is a little man made “island” bridge thingy that goes across the Mur river called Murinsel. Murinsel has a small outdoor stage where they hold small concerts and poem readings and other small scale events. Inside the island is small shop highlighting different designs in Graz. There also is a fancy little café / bar where we stopped for a late breakfast. Luckily the weather was nice and it’s really close to all the other sights so you can see some familiar buildings in the background.

Walkway to Murinsel

Familiar sights

Following Murinsel we went to the modern arts museum in Graz, the Kunsthaus or as the locals call it “the friendly alien”, or as I call it “the nipple building”. The museum has shall we say a personal look as it stands out among the old red tile roofed buildings around it. I attached an earlier photo from the mountain so you can see it in all its “glory”. Never the less they had just started a new exhibition at the museum and since many of the other places in Graz are still closed til April why not. The current exhibition is from Jun Yang and deals in what makes an artist, where inspirations come and where is the line of inspiration and plagiarism. Themes like that were searched in this shall we say interesting exhibition. As a space the friendly alien is lovely on the inside and has lots of space for the exhibition to breath, but the exhibition itself felt lacklustre. There were some interesting pieces and stories, but still I didn’t see too much art in it. Still the museum is a lovely building and from the top floor the views to Schlossberg and the river are beautiful.

Kunsthaus on the right

Entrance to the exhibition

Nice view from one of the "Nipple windows"

Last small adventure for this post was that last week we attended our first exchange student event and that was a tour of the local Puntigamer brewery. Puntigamer is the most popular beer in Graz and the brewery is the largest one in Graz. I had tasted it a few times before the tour and the promise of “tastings” at the end was worth the 5-euro price. The tour itself was a simple but informative, taking us through all the processes and different places and facilities at the brewery. It was nice and we got to mingle with some of the other exchange students as well. In the end we got to tastings and that meant we got a pint and free access to two taps of Puntigamer beer. Both of the beers are what they here call Märzenbier which is very similar to Lagers all over the world especially back home in Finland, still good tho. We also got some free pretzels and then got to chill with the tour guides and the fellow students until we left home after a few full pints.