Graz–Jul. 5, 2025

Public Transit

Yes, I’m still semi-obsessed with this. The entrance to the underground station at the Hauptbahnhof re-opened today. The streetcars aren’t using it, but the substitute buses will go through the tunnel. This will speed things up a bit. September 8, when the streetcars start running again, can’t come soon enough.

Augartenfest

Pretty much a generic community fair thing with the usual food booths, booths selling all sorts of kitsch-y stuff, and local sports clubs.

Reininghaus

The Reininghaus district also had a public event. No pictures from that, however, because it wasn’t all that impressive. On the bike ride over there, I got lost and ended up following some signs to the Kunstgarten 🇦🇹 (art garden) just because it seemed interesting.

Another working sundial!

The only thing of note at Reininghaus was that I was staring at a map, and asked the woman standing next to me where we were relative to the map. She told me, and then we struck up a conversation. It turns out she was a Mormon originally from Germany who is currently living in Graz.

Yugo Fešta

Then I rode over to the Volkshaus for the Yugo Fešta, a small festival organized by people who were former Yugoslavians (and sponsored by the local Communist party KPÖ). I had a vegan sarma using cabbage leaves as the wrap. It tasted good. Given a choice, I’d prefer the Greek version (dolmas) using grape leaves.

My jaw dropped when I saw this T-shirt. Then I laughed. Just to make sure, I asked the person who was selling them, “That’s Josip Broz Tito, right?”

“Yes,” they said. It’s sort of wild that they’re selling him as a good guy. Yeah, he was a leader of the resistance in WWII, and he did keep a set of pretty much incompatible regions together as a country, but he did it with a cult of personality and by ruling as a dictator.