Graz: Home away from home

Hi everyone. I guess its all starting to come to an end, on Sunday we will leave Graz. We will send our larger luggage to Finland by mail and travel through Germany over a week before we fly back home from Berlin. I will probably make a short post with mostly pictures about that trip, but I don’t think I will put too much time into it. Now before we leave, I wanted to make a post about our home for the past five months: Graz. This will be a bit longer post so I will mark themes by subheaders so its easier to navigate. I want to include some thoughts from myself on the city as well as my tips for incoming exchange students or people who want to visit Graz. Ok? That sound good? Of course it sounds good it’s my idea after all. Ok, let’s go.

I’ll add a few pictures from around the city I haven’t used in my previous posts so its not too boring to scroll through. 

The city of Graz

Graz had been a great home for the last five months. It has served as our headquarter for our trips and as our rest haven when we have needed to relax. Graz feels like a relaxed town, being small enough that you can understand the public transport and you don’t feel annoyed by using the busses or the trams, some of the big big cities got that frustrating commute feeling. Graz is just the good size - we feel like we have experienced most of what the city has to offer. There were some very little things we didn’t have time for, but they were mostly on the level of trying different coffee shops etc. 

Experiencing Graz is also fairly easy. Pretty much all the notable sights and pretty places are right in the city centre. Highlight of the city of course is the Schlossberg and the symbol of the city, the Uhrturm clock tower on the mountain. I don’t think I have mentioned Uhrturm since some of my first posts, but it has grown a loving symbol for the city for us too, and I always feel happy when I get a glimpse of it from a new angle anywhere in town. The old town is great fun as well and it is very compact and snuggling against the Schlossberg, keeping the centre feeling really nice and tight. The river Mur is also very close to the mountain and the old town and by the river you have the modern art museum or “friendly alien” as the locals call it (or “the nipple building” as I call it) and the interesting bridge café Murinsel. All this centre of Graz is fairly easy to go through in two days if you are planning a visit.

Other points in Graz I recommend is the Eggenberg castle, which is on the edge of the city only 15-minute tram ride from the centre. Other recommendable place might be little biased and that is our neighbour church the Herz Jesu Kirche. I think it is the prettiest church in Graz both in and out. 

Few weeks ago, after going to the movies we went up the mountain for some drinks

Uhrturm was looking good in the night lights, as did the city

After looking at our neighbor church for months we finally visited inside

We also visited this large church in southern Graz. We've seen it many times from tram and bus windows, but wanted to visit.

Impressive, but inside was closed due to a local holiday

There was this impressive memorial for the Second World War

"Defend freedom and peace, we have died for them"

Cinema in Graz

I don’t remember if I’ve talked much about movies in this blog, but we have gone to many while we’ve been here. In Europe it is rarely a guarantee that you can see the bigger Hollywood movies in English. Luckily Graz being a student town has a few movie theatres that show movies in their original language. When we were in Italy, I really wanted to go see the new Avengers movie, but in none of the cities we were did they show the movie in English. Good thing I managed to navigate the internet without being spoiled and managed to see it here in Graz, once we got back. 

In Graz, Cineplex is the largest theatre chain around, and they show movies in English in some of their theatres, but not all. On top of this some of the theatres don’t properly show the spoken language of each movie so earlier in the year we went to a showing that turned out to be in German even with it being marked otherwise online. Turned out that the theatre only shows movies in German and it was just mistake online, luckily we got out money back for that movie. The best Cineplex in town for English movies is in Annenhof near the train station. They have plenty of showings every day and we went there many times over the spring. Second Cineplexx theatre we used is in Puntigam, where they have a massive theatre complex with modern Imax screens. Only problem is that they show movies in English maybe one day a week, but it still was great when we went to see one movie. Second theatre is the KIZ RoyalKino, where they show most of the movies in English, but they don’t get every movie into their catalogue - still, most of the big new releases. They also sponsor a movie night with ESN every month at the University, where they show an older movie for students for free and they raffle some free tickets to KIZ. We managed to win some and used them a couple weeks ago when we went to see the Rocketman. Last theatre we used was a really small independent theatre near our apartment called Film Center, where we visited more in the winter to see the Oscar type smaller movies. They don’t get any of the larger movies, so it is a quiet place to go see the more artsy movies.

Nom of the city

There has been plenty of good eatin in Graz, even thou we haven’t eaten out extremely often, but I think we still got a good sample size. Our favourite restaurant has been Der Steirer, which specializes in Austrian and especially Styrian cooking and is located near the modern art museum. We have been there three times total and every time has been really good. Another great, but a bit more expensive place is El Pescador, which is a great seafood restaurant. We’ve been there twice first with my parents when we could eat a little over our price range, but it was so good that we went back for some of the cheaper dishes just because it was so good. 

One special place is Gelateria Italiana by Luis, and I really want to recommend it to all the people visiting Graz. It is a good ice cream or gelato place, but the thing that we have been loving is its milkshakes. You get to pick the ice cream that they use in the milkshake and you can mix flavours if you choose. Anne has had many variations of chocolate and different nuts and my absolute favourite has been strawberry cheesecake. So flippin good especially in these heat levels.

Couple of honourable mentions are: a cafeteria called Cosimo in old town. They sell great bread rolls with a good variety of fillings, our favourite has been salmon-wasabi. Near the main University there is a great Thai restaurant called Pad Thai. We went there maybe too often earlier in the year when we had our German course at the University. 

In general, the food has been good in here and all the grocery stores have been good too. There is one slight disappointment we’ve had in Graz and that is the pizzas. I don’t think we’ve had a satisfying pizza in Graz and at some point, we kinda gave up on them. Finland, I think, has one of the highest amount of pizza places per capita in the world and our pizza culture is little different from the ones in here. Back home in Oulu, my hometown, the speciality is to put mayo or some other sauce on the pizza. It doesn’t work with every pizza, but its great. Pizzas in Italy were great, but the ones in Graz just feel like very pale clones of the classic Italian styles pizzas. It could be that we only tried the crappier ones and were unlucky, but that was still a small disappointment with the city’s otherwise fine culinary scene.

Beer halls of the mountain king

Beer is a big thing in Austria and also in Graz. Even with the large vineyards towards the southern Styria, people do love their beer here. People mostly drink their lagers and the three by far most popular brands are lagers. I visited the Puntigamer brewery earlier in the year and I think that one is still the best one out of the locals. The other two are Gösser and Muraurer. To my taste Gösser is the second best and Muraurer is just not good. On top of this I am a big fan of wheat beer that is highly popular in Germany. There is an Austrian wheat beer that I grew attached to and it is called Edelweiss and it turned into my go-to beer when we are going out. 

Last thoughts

Graz truly has felt like a home for these past months. It is little funny to think that I picked Graz as my exchange target solely based on the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is from the neighbourhood. The city truly has grown into a lot more special than just the hometown of my muscle-bound action hero. Speaking of Arnold, we visited his home village of Thal for the second time and I will add some pics from that day to the end. As I mentioned in the beginning: its going to be a break before I post again from back home and close this exchange chapter of my life. So, until those posts, enjoy the summer and keep safe my peeps.

We revisited Thal just outside Graz. Last time the Thalersee lake was still frozen

There was this Arnold monument at the shore

We went to the Arnold Schwarzenegger museum again

My man

In this weather it was much nicer to spend time around the Transformer statues

This local found my shoes interesting

Friday evening, our last visit to the top of the Schlossberg

Stübing - Our last day trip from Graz

Hello people. As our time is coming to an end, here´s how I plan the rest of the blog to go. This will be my final blog about our little adventures in Graz. Over the weekend I will post a larger post about Graz and overall thoughts of the city. I think I will make one post about our trip back through Germany, but probably that will be short on text and mostly just pictures. After that I will probably make one or two posts about the general experience of exchange student life after I get a few days to reflect on. That’s what I’m currently planning on, but let’s get to today’s post.

During our last week in Graz we have mostly been around the city visiting our favourite spots and just relaxing. The weather has been absolutely blasting these past few days with heat in around 35c during the day. This is nice and feels like summer, but damn it does take a lot out of you and need to be really careful with having enough water at hand. Still the other day we made our last little trip outside Graz to another one of the suggested places from our “things to do near Graz” guide. This time we travelled to an open-air museum in Stübing. The museum was about the lifestyle and housing in Austria in the olden times. The museum is large spread in a valley with a hundred old houses from log houses to saw and water mills. The museum’s size was impressive as the valley was something like two kilometres long from the entrance and it took a good two to three hours to walk around with a stop for drinks. The museum was well done with plenty of modern restroom around the route and an interesting gift shop with all the ye olden gifts and trinkets. There have been some museums that have been lacklustre in these essentials, but it was great to see a well-run place.

Idyllic landscapes started quickly

Water wheel was satisfying to watch

Not so massive bell tower

Some saw equipment

Old time general store was not open for business

Great view from inside the house

Some kind of celebration pole in the middle

Hmm... yeh... i don't know

With a super-hot day, it was great to walk around the valley, where you could find plenty of shadow from the trees or step into one of the houses where it was cool. The houses reminded me a lot of Eastern Finland where my family spends most of our summers and there you see plenty of hundred-year-old houses and they all share a similar vibe. Pleasure it still was to see these new houses and to spend a summer day strolling in these idyllic sights. Think that’s enough for this time, see you over the weekend with my massive Graz post. 

 

School’s Out for Summer

Hey everybody. Hope you had a good Juhannus back home in Finland and for those not familiar with Juhannus it’s a midsummer festival celebration and a big deal in Finland. Anyway, this is my post about how my studies have gone here in Graz. On Friday I had my last exam and now we can focus on just enjoying Graz for our last week here. Originally, I had three courses that I was doing, but quite early I dropped my Mobile Application course. The course seemed interesting, but it was a massive course with over 200 students and that being split into many smaller working groups and in the end I just felt it was too much of a mess with all the work being done on one day in a large around eight hour span and at different schools. On top of this I was confused with the groups and assignments early on and I couldn’t get any answers from the professors or the tutor students assigned for the course, so I just decided to F it and not waste my time with worrying about a course like that. Two other courses I managed to finish so I’ll go over them. Sorry not too many pictures etc for this post.

First of the other courses is the Simulation and Animation course. This is a bit of an interesting one. I posted earlier about how I planned my game Moomin Kart as a 2D web-based driving game. In the game I was supposed to implement two animation techniques for which I selected Motion Blur and Path Interpolation. Motion Blur is an effect to give the sense of something moving super-fast by blurring the image, and Path Interpolation is pathing an object along a curve with a steady speed and certain points the object needs to hit. I got the basic structure of the game going fairly well, but the animation techniques were a real pain in the end. The course material was basically all theory and didn’t offer much help with the code and there wasn’t a great amount of helpful material online either, so it ended up being a bit of a mess. I’ll add a few gifs of how my trials failed when I was testing my methods.

On top of this programming task at the end we had an oral exam on the theory and on the game. This is where I got little lost. I never had an oral exam in a course that was not a language course. Also, a lot of the course material dealt with physics that impact animations an I am god awful with physics. I understood the basic methods and tools of the animations and was totally satisfied with what I had learned during the classes, but the oral exam questions were just too detailed and heavy on the physics. Part of the difficulty I had was that the course description doesn’t have prerequired courses or knowledge other than some coding, but the course is mandatory to some engineer programming students at the school and their degree is heavy on physics. With all this I failed the oral exam twice and the thought was that I would not get an accepted grade on the course. Luckily the professor was willing to give me additional tasks to make up for my failed tests. This is one occasion where I think my profile as an Erasmus student helped me, as it sounded like it was highly irregular to be allowed this. I will finish my extra report once I get back to Finland and I will get my grade little later than the other participants.

Me going to the oral exam

Second course that I finished was Social Media Technologies. This course didn’t have as special of a story as the previous one. Objective of the course was to do a scientific research on some chosen subject by using Social Media as a dataset. This was done in groups and I ended up in a specially large group of 6. The group was a gang of good girls and boys, but in the end, we took the course too laid back and had to rush the research at the end. I tried to get us started earlier but crawling social media data was something I had no knowledge of. I still was interested in it and I tried getting the gang to start on it so I could participate. In the end we kind of rushed the whole thing and spread tasks to pairs, so I didn’t get to be a part of the crawling and that bummed me out a bit. Our research was on popular holiday destinations, but we did not have a clear idea on that either. The team wanted to just crawl data with hashtags from Twitter and see what beach in the world gets most mentions and make a list on that. I would have wanted to do a more in-depth look at a better research question and do more searching around with our dataset, but in the end it was so last minute that I didn’t even see our results until the day before our presentation to the whole class. I still think we had a good presentation and a good research document so we should pass with an ok-ish grade. We’ll see when that comes in after a couple of days. 

That was a long post, or long in text at least. I did enjoy both my courses and I feel like I learned from both of them. Still, the course selection at the beginning was a bit of a hassle since many courses had language marked as English or German and the actual language was confirmed when the course started so this made selecting the courses before arriving a little hard and I missed two that I had planned on taking. In the end I’m happy with the amount I took as it gave me time to enjoy the other sides of exchange student life.

Last road trip: Walking with Llamas

Time for the last little road trip we did when we rented the car, we went walking with llamas. This is another one we had been planning on for a long time. We have a traveling guidebook to Austria, and it had mentions of llama walks. Trekking and otherwise walking in the nature are very popular in Austria. We do enjoy walking, but to a certain extent, so we did not want to go for too long treks. When we read about these llama walks where you get to walk around in nature while leading a llama as you companion sounded like fun. They were recommended for families with children so we figured the walks would not be too difficult or draining. Booking the walk needed a little more work as Anne had contacted the organizers by email, but they didn’t speak great English, so they asked us to get a German speaker to call them and set it all up. Luckily our landlord helped us with it and called for us and booked the time. Once there they spoke good enough English to at least give us the instructions to handle the llamas. 

When we got to the llama farm which was about 50 kilometres away from Graz, we were assigned to our partner llamas. Anne’s llama was Willi and he was a calm no drama llama and the two got well along. I was given a llama named Moritz and they warned me that he is quite strong and sometimes a little stubborn. Mainly this showed in that he didn’t want to walk behind some of the other llamas so he would just stop and let the ones behind us go by. In the end we ended up walking at the back of the group, which was ok for me. Only little incident we had was that I once didn’t notice that Moritz stood face to face with another llama and there was some clear tension and our guide had to step in and pull Moritz to the side, but after that it went well.

The walk itself wasn’t extremely long, about two hours all and all. We mainly walked on a forest path up a hill next to the farm and on top of the hill we walked some way by some beautiful fields. The original plan I think was to walk down a separate route, but due to the heat and burning sun the guide decided that it was best to walk back down the forest road where we had some shade. That was probably for the best as some of the llamas had not been sheared lately and they still had heavy coats of fur. Still walking in the forest was fun, stopping now and then to let the llamas eat or do their other business and for the humans to take a sip of water. Then we got back to the farm and said goodbye to our partners for the day and went back home. 

Here's a bunch of llamas

Some instructions on the llama handling

hello

The llama farm was in a valley

Me and my new buddy Moritz

Here's Willi, Anne's llama

Moritz wanting to snack on the trees

Happy boys

Reaching the top of the hill

View of the valley was great form the top of the hill

The group was about 15 people and 9 llamas

Road sign ahead

Some teepee tents on the farm land

After we got back to the farm couple of the llamas decided for a little wrestiling

"Good bye"

Llama walk was a good time and a little different way of doing trekking. They also offered longer walks that could be interesting, but I don’t think there will be time as it is the second to last week before we’re leaving Graz. I still have a little bit of schoolwork to finish this week, but next week will be all about saying goodbye to our dear Graz.