The colorful churches in the Graz region
On the second day of our visit we wanted to see the area around Graz.
As it is Pentecost Sunday, we assume that there will be masses in the churches in the morning. So we start with other destinations. Shortly after 8 a.m., immediately after the lift to the Schlossberg [↗] opens, we take it to the top.
We walk to the clock tower [↗] and then a little further across the plateau. Afterwards, we walk back to the hotel and drive to the Austrian Sculpture Park [↗] in Premstätten.
This is 7 km to the south and we are there in time for the opening at 10 am. After the end of the International Garden Show in 2000, a large number of mostly large-scale sculptures have been set up on 7 hectares since 2003. It was nice and empty at first, but after half an hour or so, the first people started walking across the grass to the sculptures.
But now we want to take a look at some churches and start with the most famous one, Rein Abbey [↗].
Unfortunately, we have planned our visit without the monastery management's time schedule. There is a big family festival in the courtyard and when we finally find a parking space and want to enter the church, the crowds pour in. It's not really clear why mass starts at 11:30, but we cannot change it anyway.
So I quickly take a few pictures over people's heads. The tours through the other rooms of the monastery are of course also suspended and so we are back at the car sooner than expected.
As Freya doesn't feel like walking, we head straight back to the outskirts of Graz. Our satnav guides us along some narrow mountain roads past small farms and we are glad that nothing comes our way here.
In Thal, we leave our car in the parking lot of the Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum, which we don't visit. Instead, we want to visit the parish church of St. Jakob [↗] where Arnold was baptized. However, it probably looked very different at the time. From 1992, the small existing church was completely redesigned and integrated into a much larger new building. The artist Ernst Fuchs [↗], a co-founder of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism, was responsible for this.
Finally, we want to take a look at the Josefikirche in Schwanberg, which is also colorfully painted. After a few wrong turns, we finally park at the hikers' parking lot near the Wirtschafthof in Schwanberg and walk to the church on the hilltop above the village - only to find that it is locked.
By now it is already late afternoon and as all the other destinations I have picked out are at least an hour's drive away, we decide to call it a day.
