Austria

Graz

Built around the Schlossberg, an ancient hilltop castle, Graz is home to scores of shops, restaurants and museums, many housed in restored Baroque-era buildings in the city’s well-preserved Old Town and it's only two hours from our previous stop - Ljubljana, Slovenia.

We arrived in Graz about noon and had a great lunch at the Grosse beer restaurant. I had a wonderful goulash soup and the best breads I'd had so far. And, of course, a large Grosser beer.

Our city tour was with a guide who was a rather "artsy" guy with a lisp. He "loved" every building and sight he mentioned. A rather amusing presentation. He said that in
1938 Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany annexed Graz. The thriving Jewish community there was destroyed by the Nazis, and their grand synagogue was burnt. A small group of Graz Jews returned despite everything after the war. In 2000, on the anniversary of the "Reichskristallnacht", the Graz city council presented the Jewish community with a new synagogue as a gesture of reconciliation. Hitler promised the people of Graz 1,000 years of prosperity and an end to mass unemployment: only seven years later the Graz resistance surrendered the city to Soviet troops, sparing Graz any further destruction. By then about 16% of the buildings had been destroyed by Allied bombing - luckily the Old Town was not seriously hit.

Later, after checking into our nice 4 star hotel, we had dinner at a very nice restaurant across the street. A fine meal of Wiener schnitzel and beer. What could be better in Austria? Later, some of us got together to try "strum", a sparkling grape drink not fully fermented. I followed that with a martini while most others had wine.

The following morning we had pretty much the same breakfast fare offered at most of our hotels (scrambled eggs, some kind of marginal sausage, cheeses, etc), but the coffee was good for the first time on the trip, and the croissants were excellent.

Now - on our way to Bratislava Slovakia.