Come with me if you want to live: 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.