Thu, 11 Sep 2003

author Tim	location Camping Weisses, Schiefling-am-See, Karnten, Österreich
posted 08:59 CEST 12/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Graz, Pushing West ( 29 photos )
Waking in the mist and fog of the forested caravan park, we ended up driving over to the amenities block to do our washing up as the rain was so heavy. We paid the guy - the downside to knowing a little German is that people assume you know a lot and can understand it rapidly. It is certainly a good exercise in learning how people who can't speak your language must find it difficult to get by.
We headed south through the mountains, the wind and rain un-ceasing. There were some great views despite this, as we wound our way first up and then down one of the three mountain ranges which run from east-to-west across Österreich.
We stopped for some morning tea in a little bus stop perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley. We could see our road wind all the way down and then off into the distance.
However pretty this way of travelling is, it is quite slow, so eventually we re-joined the motorway and followed it into Graz. This is one of the towns which are interesting here and there around the place, but which we don't really have days and days to explore. We set ourselves the general task of exploring the World Heritage listed old town and finding the one place Lonely Planet mentioned which tickled our fancy.
We parked in the town (surrounded by plenty of roadworks) next to a tramline, paid a reasonable parking fee and then walked into the old town across the river Mur. Plenty of narrow streets fired out in all directions from the central Rathaus square, and we followed some of these, Murgasse then Hofgasse as the worked their way up hill. There were refreshingly few touristy shops, which for once was not what we wanted - we are yet to procure a fridge magnet from Österreich and will leave for Italy soon!
At the top of the hill, we found the city had approved, as many have, a weird modern art installation. In this case, a carpark had huge mirrors on walls all in it which we wandered in and around. This had the rather un-nerving effect of making the group of fifty Japanese tourists look more like five hundered, all taking their own photos in the mirrors. We did the same, however, but then hastilly headed off further up the road to our main target. In the Burg complex there is a double-winding staircase which plays tricks with your mind. We had it all to ourselves for a while, running around and generally being confused. However, we heard the Japanese tourist group approaching, covering the only way out. Even if there was only fifty of them, we still needed to get out somehow!
After that battle, we picked another random street to head back down into town. There were quite a lot of buildings and parks of interest, but not really enough to compete with Wien, a city far more worthy of your time.
We wandered up towards the entrances to Schlossberg, the castle on the hill. It is famous as the symbol of Graz for having the hour and minute hands reversed on its clock. You can get up there either by the attractive stairway, funicular railway or lift straight through the rock. We chose none of these options, all castled out recently and needing to get back before our parking ran out.
After a quick photocopying session to claim our insurance from the work on the van (which seems to have worked wonders, as it happens), we tried about four exits from the town before we found one with a signpost to the motorway, or indeed a signpost at all. Some towns really need to send their civil engineers on a tourism course - when you travel all over the place, good signs are important!
Eventually on the A2 motorway, the views were pretty amazing when we weren't in the tunnels along past Klagenfurt, through the outskirts of Villach then Velden to eventually find our selected caravan park (Camping Weisses) on the south side of the Wörther See. This pretty piece of the world is far enough from the motorway to be reasonably quiet, and is quite pretty with an accompanying high price tag (seems to be a very popular tourist destination).
As we drove in there was plenty of mist coming off the See - the weather is changing here fairly rapidly.
There's plenty of snow on the mountain tops around the place now, and it is quite cold overnight and in the mornings. It's only about two weeks out of summer!

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