Justin McCandless

I have already been in Austria for almost 3 weeks so it is long due that I write someting about it.  I am here in Graz, Austria, working a computer engineering job at the Graz University of Technology that I got through AIESEC.  I'll be here until the very beginning of September.  I live in an apartment downtown with two roommates, one of which is an AIESECer.  I'm having an awesome time.

First about the city, Graz is the second largest city in Austria next to Vienna, and it's located in Styria.  It's not too big though, somewhere between Las Vegas and Ann Arbor on my scale.  It has great public transportation, a nice park in the center, and tons of old historic buildings.  A big river called the Mür runs through the center of it.  One big hill with a clocktower called the Schloßberg is in the center, with a few other hills around the city.  It has an interesting unique style (compared to my experience in the US and Ecuador) that gives the city a really nice feel.  I'll try to get to the attractions, where I've been, and what I think later, but first impressions are I really like Graz.

I've been pretty busy since I arrived, so I'll try to catch up with what I've been doing.  The day after I arrived in Graz, I headed on my first trip to go see another Austrian city called Salzburg.  One of the AIESECers I met here invited me along, and I decided to take up the opportunity even though I hadn't even come close to settling into Graz yet.  We took the train out, which was very cheap and convenient and we really need something like this out West in the US. 

Salzburg is a very historic 'fairy tale' type of town.  It has a lot of historic buildings, streets, and churches.  One of the biggest attractions is a huge medieval fortress on top of a hill in the center of town.  This was the main thing that we got to see while there, and it was very interesting for me.  It took until the time that I was actually up there in the castle checking out all the awesome medieval stuff that I finally realized I was in Europe.  I always thought of Europe as that place to the East, where I will probably go at one point for a vacation when I'm like 50, but don't get too excited till then.  Now all of a sudden I find a job in Austria and I'm standing in a castle a few weeks later.  After spending most of my childhood (ok and college) playing games involving kings and knights, seeing the castle at Salzburg was a huge 'whoa I'm in Austria' moment for me.

My first week of work was short for me, since the research group that I work for had been planning a hiking trip that Thursday and Friday.  Luckily I was just in time to tag along, and after three days of getting to know people and being introduced to my projects we all left to go hiking.  We went to Dachstein, the tallest mountain in Styria at 2997m I believe.  I was kind of expecting a nice leisurely hike around on the mountain, but it wound up being pretty intense.  Most of the hiking took place on a glacier, as in ice and snow, there was even a ski lift still open in the middle of summer where we left from.  First we climbed up to the peak by hiking a bit through the snow then actually rock climbing with ropes and all to the top (and we actually made it to a full 3000 meters by climbing up a big metal cross at the peak).  After that we hiked back down and out across the glacier with ropes tied between all of us for crevasse protection, so if one person were to fall in the others can pull him out.  We reached the cabin we would be staying in for the night, which was out in the middle of nowhere next to a cool old monastery.  There we slept all in one room with other campers in really wide bunk beds that fit about 7 people per bed.  In the morning we started our hike back a slightly different way but were overtaken by fog about halfway, and finished the last leg hiking with hardly any visibility across the glacier.  Overall it was really fun, it was a crazy hike across a landscape I had never even seen before.

We got back on Friday night and went straight to sleep, but I had more fun things to do for the rest of the weekend.  Two more AIESEC interns from Linz came in the morning, and me and a couple other locals toured around Graz.  I hadn't really seen a lot of the city yet so it was all new for me.  We saw the famous Schloßberg tower mentioned before, which actually used to be part of a larger fortress defending Graz that was previously destroyed.  The history is that Napoleon invaded Austria and layed siege to Graz, trying to conquer the fortress but never succeeding. 

Unfortunately he did succeed in Vienna, and in the peace treaty they signed the Austrians agreed to demolish the fortress in Graz since Napoleon didn't want to have to fight against it again in the case of another war.  The proud Graz people negotiated a deal to keep the clocktower standing as a symbol however, so it still exists today.  That night we stayed at an Austrian AIESECer's parents' house outside of Graz, which was really nice to get a taste of how local familes live.  In the morning we continued our tour of the Graz area, seeing the oddly shaped Kunsthaus modern art museum as well as a palace called Schloss Eggenberg.  We ate dinner at a buschenschank, which is a restaurant/farm that grows a lot of the food that it serves.  After seeing everything I finally had a much better idea of the city I was living in, though even now I feel like I don't know half of it.

Now that we're catching up to current times, this past weekend I was able to travel again.  I went with the Austrian AIESECers to the Central European Congress, an international AIESEC conference in Györ, Hungary.  I didn't get to see too much of Györ or Hungary in my short time there, but I did manage to get a lot out of the conference.  I was the only American there, but I met a ton of people from all over.  I unexpecedly had to represent the US in a cultural 'global village' we had, but I managed to throw together a decent USA booth using random things from my suitcase and a coke bottle from the bar next door.

So, that is what I have been up to in my time here in Austria.  I will try to stay on top of writing here now that I'm all caught up.  Tomorrow it's back to work on my second project since I've been here.