Road trippin Part two: Hochosterwitz

Fine day ladies and gents. Second stop on our road trips was to a larger Austrian castle called Hochosterwitz. This is a castle a little bit out of nowhere, but near the city of Klagenfurt. The castle has been on our list for a long time. I remember we found the castle after we saw the latest “Fantastic Beasts: How to make more money with Harry Potter franchise” movie. At the end of that boring movie the bad guys are setting up in some Austrian castle and as we were heading here shortly after seeing that movie, we wanted to do some research into Austrian castles. I don’t remember if we found the castle they use in the movie, but the Hochosterwitz castle stood out and ended up on our list. 

Lets roll

A good spot for a break and a little snack or watermelon

Little peek of the castle

The castle is about 130 kilometres from Graz, so it was a good road trip length without getting overly numbing. The castle is perched on 160-metre-high cliff or mountain and it has a road spiralling down the cliffs with 14 different gates to protect the entrance. We took the funicular up to the mountain and walked down. The views from the top were great and it was just a pleasure to walk the grounds and gaze into the distance. At the top there was a small museum, but all the information was only in German, so we didn’t get all the historical info. Quick googling brought that it was mainly used during the Ottoman wars as a safe space for civilians and didn’t serve as a large military garrison. During the castles history it was never captured so I guess it succeeded in protecting the people during those times.

I can’t think of much more to say about the castle. It was beautiful up on its cliff so I just might as well share the pics. Enjoy.

 

We stopped by the road to take a picture

Views were great

Big ol pan to cook with

I like this picture with the flowers sprouting outside the wall and there is a little lizard in the middle of the picture

Not a bad view from the windows

Flowers were sproutiin

The castle had a little church in one of the levels

There were 14 of these gates

Castle in different light when we were leaving, thank you

Tunnels are something new to me here in the mountains

Renting a car and a day trip to meet some horses

Hello friends. It has been a few days since the last post, and this is because the courses are coming to a close and I have needed to put more time into them. I will write a post about how the courses ended up going at some point once they are all done, but for now I have adventures to share from last weekend. 

Last weekend we rented a car for the first time here in Austria. We had been planning it for a good while as we had a few trips planned around Graz that had poor bus connections. We asked our local friend on what’s the best site to rent a car in Graz and he gave us this: https://www.billiger-mietwagen.de. The prices are good and renting through there you get insurances included so you avoid too many steps when picking up the car. We ended up renting for three days and it costed us around 70 euros plus gas. There were some cheaper cars available, but we wanted one with air conditioning since it has been really hot in Austria for over a week now. We made three day trips so I guess that makes three posts for this week, let’s get started.

The car we got was a large Citroen with all the modern treats. Only problem I had with the car was that it was very big and many of the side roads in the country side were tiiny tiny and that scared me a bit. Still, we picked up the car and headed to Piber, a small town about 50 kilometres away from Graz and home to the Piber Lipizzaner Stud Farm. Here they raise the famous Lipizzan horses and especially the stallions for the prestigious Spanish Riding School in Vienna. This was one of the first things that we encountered when we researched Styria and what places to visit. Especially for Anne this was a big thing as she is a big horse lover.

Our ride for the weekend

The farm was a nice compound in the countryside with plenty of pastures around the surrounding hills where the horses could graze. In the compound on top of all the horse related buildings there was a small castle or mansion and a small church, but we did not feel like going in as the day was so pretty and we preferred to stay outside. In the horse buildings we got to meet some of the mares in the central training ring and they were just chilling and socializing by scratching each other’s necks. We got to scratch these ones too. Next to the mares was some stables for the stallions. In there we found Neapolitano, a 40-year-old stallion. This is a remarkably high age for a horse who usually reach around 25-30 years. You could see the age in the old Neapolitano, but he still seemed to be in good spirits and turned his head to say hello to us when we stopped by his place. 

The Piber Castle in the same yard and a horse cart

Horses socializing

Yey i got to pet some of these beauties

They seemed to like it too

Good shot of the church and horsies

Old boy looks thin, but seemed to be in good spirits

Some history and a picture from his glory days

Next, we found the baby horses. The farm was full of mare with their foals. Fun thing with Lipizzan horses is that they are born dark and they turn white with age. There was one special foal who had born almost white and this was the first time it had happened in the farm’s hundred year history. Following our touring of the farm we stopped at the farm’s restaurant for dinner, I got some really good Styrian fried chicken with salad served with the Styrian speciality pumpkinseed oil. The farm was a super beautiful and relaxed place to visit and was clearly popular with families, totally would recommend the trip on a nice summer day. There are some training exhibitions earlier in the day, which we just missed for being lazy.
 

White foal

Normal colored baby

They were moving some of the mares and their foals

They were running in such a pretty group one after another

There was some carriage rides we wanted to try too, but it was little on the expensive side again

Views of some of the pastures

On our way back we stopped by the Piber town church, St. Barbara Church. It was mentioned in our things to do near Graz leaflet for its unique look and style. It truly was a different look to a church than anything we’ve seen in Austria. In the churchyard there was many gateway arches that symbolised different pilgrimage trips people have done from the church. The inside of the church wasn’t special, but there was a local choir practising, so we got to hear them sing a few songs. From the church we drove home to rest for our next day’s road trip. See you in the next one folks.

 

Interesting lookin church it was