Graz

Turns out Graz is an incredible city. I didnt know anything about it previously, but Im so glad we stopped there. Its a pretty big city and sprawls for a while, but the city center around the river is really nice and walkable. The city has a lot of quirky things about it, like a funicular (similar to Pittsburgh's) but also a glass elevator that will take you up and down through the middle of the same mountain. Then there's some crazy architecture there too like the new art museum.

In the art museum(nicknamed the friendly alien) there was an exhibit of current Chinese artists, and it was one of the best exhibits I've seen in a while. A lot of the pieces were very spacial and 3 dimensional so it was very interesting to experience it all.

Then we went to a cafe in the middle of the river that had a playground and amphitheater as part of the island, it was designed be Vito Acconci and was very cool. I really had no knowledge of Graz before I went there, and Im so glad I did. And when we caught the train back Friday night, it was at just about the same time we would have been getting off from work. Time well spent.

Some other pictures of the city are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/acadiak/Graz

Go Gunners!

Last week I took Friday off of work to see a professional soccer team play in Austria, and it was soooo much fun. I went with 2 other interns, John and Jon, Jon is a HUGE fan of the team we saw, Arsenal. So he knew all the players and just about peed his pants being so close to the players. I couldnt believe that most of the players on the team are under 20. One guy was born in 1989! What have I done with my life? I think my chances of becoming a professional athlete are long gone... It was just a training game and it didnt count for anything, so not all the best players were playing, but it was still so much fun to watch. Arsenal was playing a Turkish team, I cant remember their name in Turkish, but the translation is 'Union of Jueveniles.'






After the game, we waited for the players by the team bus and Jon got autographs and pictures with them. It was us and screaming 12 year-olds.


We werent really sure what to do since our plan had been to just go out to a bar for the rest of the night and catch the first train back at 6am, but this town was dead. It was a tiny little village anyways, and even though the third biggest football team in the world was playing there, nothing was open. We finally found a bar and pizza place just on the way out of town. We went and were able to find all the Arsenal fans so that was a step in the right direction. We realized that it was already 11 pm and there were no lights on in any B&B or hotel in the town, so we were preparing ourselves for finding a bed in the cornfields which filled the town.


We went in for one more beer and as we were at the bar, Jon recognized a guy that had just walked in. This guy, Frank Stubbs, apparently writes the team blog on the Arsenal website and he's never missed a home game in 20 years, so he's quite well known among the die hard fans. Jon starts talking to him, telling him how much he loves his articles, and this guy was obviously a little weirded out, but really nice about the whole thing. Then other people start coming over to talk to us and before we know it he's buying us a round of drinks. Frank turns out to be incredibly fun and since everyone knows him and he was talking to us, suddenly everyone in the bar is our best friend.
We ended up having an amazing night with all these folks, felt like I was a true and true Arsenal fan. At one point Frank asked Jon where we were staying, and when he replied a cornfield, Frank insisted we stay the night in his hotel room, and the floor of a 4 star hotel room is far better than any cornfield.
We got up the next morning, showered, put our clothes that smelled of beer and smoke back on, and got on the train back to Maribor. And since we had to change trains in Graz anyways, we decided to just spend the afternoon there.

Croatia

This past weekend all the IAESTE interns and Slovenian students in Maribor went just over the Slovenian border to the coast of Croatia. Saša's family has a house there that we stayed in, about 500 feet from the water's edge. Having a weekend to just relax in the sun and go swimming was fantastic. All of my preconceived notions of Croatia were completely false. Granted, I only saw a very limited part of the country, but its beautiful and everyone says that you really cant see any of the effects of the war anymore. Im really excited to see the southern most parts of the country in August when Stu comes to visit.

As it turns out, the beaches in Croatia aren't actually beaches, they're more of rocks by the water. This is why all the visitors who know what they're doing bring lounge chairs and 2 inch thick beach mats. We managed to find reasonably comfortable spots on the 'beach' but spent most of our time in the water jumping off a fishing pier because who doesnt like to jump off high things into the water?

We got up way too early one morning to catch the sunrise and got to watch some fishing boats get ready and leave the pier. Check out the name of this boat, if you can't see it, its KRAP. And the city that its from, Pula, is quite a nasty word in Romania (so Im told).

Foreign 4th of July

In an attempt to gain popularity for and leave a good impression of America with all the foreign interns here, I decided to bribe them with food to like my country and forget about Bush.

It worked!

They were so excited about celebrating the USA's independence day (even though it was independence from England and they're all from the UK) that they even found sparklers to contribute to the event. They offered to get Budweiser too, but I thought that it would be ok to stick with Slovene beer. So after stuffing ourselves with potato salad, bean salad, bbq chicken, cheesecake, fondue (made by Helena and Catherine) and beer, everyone thought that the 4th of July was a pretty good holiday to have.

We enjoyed our 4th of July picnic indoors with pouring rain outside and were still able to use the sparklers on the balcony.

Mountains

There are lots of mountains in Slovenia.

































This is Logarska Dolina, looking at the Kamnik-Savinja Alps. And lunch.

Summer Houses

Friday night I went with Andreja to her friend's summer home out in the hills beyond Maribor.

The 'house' is actually just a wine barrel with a roof surrounded by vineyards.

Just a Day in Slovenia

Andreja and I started off the morning with Predjamski Grad, a castle that was built into a cave in the hills of Slovenia about an hour south of Maribor.

Some duke built it for defense in the 15th century and in the past 20 years it has been restored. It was crazy to see how the building and cave interact and support each other. There were all sorts of hidden caves in the castle itself then there was the cave part of the castle where the castle ended and there were just stairs and furniture in the cave. We walked around the castle and also to see the caves in the rock face below it and the stream that ran through it. The whole place was pretty amazing. Its just at the end of a tiny road going through these quaint villages, no big signs or billboards or parking lots or even 2 lane roads. Just an amazing castle in the middle of Slovenia.

The next place we went was the Skocjan Caves, a UNESCO world heritage site which is a series of caves up to 170 meters underground. I didnt really know what to expect, and you're not allowed to take pictures inside (I found these pictures on the internet), but this was definately one of the most amazing places I've ever been in my entire life.You cant even begin to imagine how huge these caves are and the incredible stalactities and stalagmites and the columns and spaces they have created in the 2 million years that these caves have been around. There were a few different caverns, each with its own style of what looked like dripping rock. The caverns were huge, some were over 100 meters tall (this is what Im told, I cant judge in meters yet) and there were stalactites bigger than cars. I wish I had words to describe this place. There were 2 caverns where when I first turned the corner to enter them, Iwas just awestruck by the beauty and size of the space. Think of the biggest, coolest looking drip castle you ever made at the beach as a kid, then think of what it would be like if those sand castles were actually the size of real castles.

One really fascinating part of the place was how people have created the paths and stairs and bridges that gothrough the place. There's an old staircase that was just carved into the side of the rock and a bridge that is 45m above the river that runs through the cave. We walked 3 km through and I think we got as deep as 120 m underground. It was absolutely amazing.

After the caves, we went to see Slovenia's famous Lipica (pronounced Lipizza) horses. The breed is very famous, I think they're used as show horses a lot. The horses were beautiful and one thing thats pretty interesting about the horses is that as foals they are black and they turn perfectly white when they are adults.

Then, since we were pretty close to the coast, we went to a castle on top of a hill to get a view of the Slovene coast. Since the country's coastline is so tiny, you could see the entire thing.
We were only 8km from Italy, so we could see part of the Italian coast too.

Then we went down to the coast to go swimming at a beach that was reccomended, but Slovenia doesnt really have beaches. Its just rocks and concrete on the water's edge, so thats where we swam. I cant complain about being on the ocean, even if the beach isnt a beach. There were still people laying out (on concrete) and there was a beach volleyball court set up.

We walked along a stone path on the water's edge down to the town of Piran that juts out like a mini Florida on the coast. It is such a nice little village. It feels like a Tuscan hill town but its on the ocean and has lots of fishing and sailing.

Yeah, I would live there. So thats where we had dinner, sitting outside, 20 feet from the ocean's edge. The seafood was incredible of course and a great end to the day. The table next to us got a Croatian lobster and it was so funny looking. Instead of having 2 big claws and 8 little legs like

Maine lobster, It had 8 big legs, 2 of which were a little bit bigger and had claws. Next time Im at the coast here with an extra 65 euros to spend, maybe I'll try the lobster.

All of my pictures are at: http://picasaweb.google.com/acadiak/1BusyWeekend