Eggenberg

On Wednesday, we went to Schloss Eggenberg. Schloss means castle or palace. Parts of Eggenberg date back to the Middle Ages. It boasted 365 windows throughout the entire castle, rooms for each hour of the day and night, 31 windows just in the staterooms. It was a very mathematical castle, and really beautiful.

Walking up to Eggenberg

Schloss Eggenberg

This is how Eggenberg looks from the air - photo by University

A peacock met us by the door

  

The bell tower as seen from the courtyard

The oldest part of Eggenberg, the Gothic Chapel of Our Lady dating from the Middle Ages

The planet room - the 4 seasons were portrayed in each corner and the room boasted images for each month as well as the planets

One of the corners - fall, I believe

A picture of the Pisces painting

The next pictures are all of Eggenberg as we walked through. There were over 300 Italian painters who painted these pictures, but proper credit cannot be given because they didn't sign their names. Sign your names, people! My pictures don't do these justice, but it's all I have.

This is a pic representing all the planets

The painters didn't know what an Indian looked like, so they painted a European in a parrot costume

The whole room

Looking outside from Eggenberg

The workroom where paintings are lightened (they darken due to age)

Looking back through all the rooms we've walked through - notice the doors are now blue - the 12 night rooms have blue doors

This is the only bed that survived Russian occupation after WWII. 

Notice the white doors now - these are daytime rooms

Chinese porcelain

Outside, we got to spend a little more time with the peacocks:

Ever wondered what the back of a peacock looks like? Wonder no more.

The garden was beautiful. They had many peonies in bloom:

And of course, dessert: eis schokolade:

Sunday already.

Time goes so fast. We arrived in Graz on Monday and have been going pretty  much nonstop until 10 or 11 at night, which makes Melinda very tired and not keep up on the blog.

On the 14th, we took a pretty steep hike up to 12th century ruins at Goesting. The students thought John was trying to kill them because of how steep it was. But once we all got to the top, we realized the climb was well worth it.

 This is what Goesting used to look like. 

This is how it looks today.

The next photos are all from the view of Goesting:

Hello, little guy. You're up high. 

Looking down on the neighbors

Us with the foothills of the Alps behind us.

Look! Graz!

My shadow taking a pic

 

Technically Goesting was closed, but they allowed us to go up and in anyway. 

We met this guy a couple of times on the road up to Goesting.

After Goesting, we walked around Graz some more and then had some dinner.

This is the Franciscan and Paris church near the river.

This is spaetzle, which are homemade noodles. This dish had cheese in it and was very tasty.

This was schweinschnitzel, which is pig schnitzel.

And one of the students had trout.

Raspberry cake

Dessert was plentiful this day but sometimes I forget to take a picture before I inhale.