I’ve got a bit behind on the blogging, but am currently travelling Back to Budapest from Ljubljana, which is a 7.5 hour journey, so plenty of time to catch up. I’m on what looks like a small suburban train, but have been assured it’s the right one. No announcement, nothing on the display in the train, so we’ll see… No buffet either, so glad I stocked up on supplies last night.
Budapest is going to be my last stop on this trip. I fly back to the UK on Tuesday. I’ve been feeling increasingly homesick and, since stopping the cycling, rather lonely. I met interesting people on similar trips at the campsites when I was cycling. It’s been rather harder to meet people since switching to “regular” backpacking mode.
The heat hasn’t helped. As it’s forecast to get even hotter I’m not keen to go back to cycling.
So… back to Graz
The journey over the Semmering pass was lovely. It was rather difficult to take photos from the train (which had rather grubby windows), but the scenery was very dramatic. The route twists and turns through the mountains – rarely getting above 60km/h. The train had come from Prague and was Czech.
Graz itself was OK. It was the European Capital of Cuture in 2003, and so had several interesting buildings as a result of that.
I’d been persuaded to buy a 24 hour museum ticket,which covered most of the city’s museums. Next up was the Neue Galerie, which had a mix of modern and older art. The building itself was rather old. I guess it’s the New Gallery in a similar vein to the New Forest.
There was an exhibition on an Alpine Painter, which was all very nice, but rather samey. Then an exhibition of more modern pieces, some of which I really liked
The final exhibition was about An[n]a and Gunter Brus. He was an Austrian “actionist” artist in the 60s. She was his wife and model. It wasn’t really my thing. After lots of rooms of her covered in paint, him pissing in glasses and that sort of thing, the exhibition ended rather incongruously with a display of her embroidered cushions!
Final stop was the history museum.. A lot of this was very text heavy (and no translation), but there were some interesting rooms and artefacts
And finally… on the walk to the Flixbus stop (which was miles out of town – I should’ve got a bus with hindsight), I went past a shop of vending machines.. including ones like the one from my last visit to Austria. (as well as food, drinks, toiletries, usb cables etc). I think some of it might be to dodge the Sunday trading rules, as pretty much everything is shut then.
