Hike to Mariazell

Gruß euch!

Friday morning I began my AMAZING hike to Mariazell from Graz, which lasted until Monday night. I met the other 5 members of our hiking group (Peter & Sabine (husband and wife, leaders of the trip), Maria, Andrea (two very nice women) and Lisa (Peter's 19 year old daughter)). I took a bus out to Fuß der Leber which is about 35 minutes outside of the center of Graz at the foot of a hill which was the beginning of our hike.

The hike to Mariazell is a very common hike that people in Austria do. Many people make it a point to undertake this hike at least once in their lives. (peter has done it 22 times!). It is also an important pilgrimage for many people, where they pray along the way. So we saw many many crosses along the trail. In german this pilgrimage is called a "Wallfahrt".

The first day was pretty intense. We started our hike at 7am and hiked all day until about 7:30 pm when we reached our guest house. Needless to say, the hike was beautiful and we hiked a bit with head lamps for the last couple of hours since it was dark, which was a new and fun experience. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

We passed by a lot of cows because in Austria it seems like there are a lot more small local farms that provide mostly milk to nearby villages. Cows are cuuuuutee!! These small farms are called Bio Farms.

We also passed by this house which was crazy about garden gnomes.

We also crossed over a water fall by way of quite a few little bridges. It was called Kessel Fall. I do not understand this picture.

On the first day we also saw quite a few of these sweet salamanders.

The only times we stopped were once in the morning for a small snack and drink, once in the afternoon for a drink, and once for lunch where we had soup. This was a cute little sheep near the window where we ate.

Those nuts in front of the sheep are called "Kastanien" which are very very very popular in austria. There are so many street vendors here in Graz that sell these roasted chestnuts ( i have yet to try them though, but i hear they are delicious.)

The trail was marked with the Austrian Flag.

This structure was pretty interesting to me. Hunters climb up to the top to have better aim.

By the time we got to the guest house I was quite exhausted. I am sure that this is the longest day of hiking I have ever undertaken. It made the down time that much more relaxing though. We had an amazing meal of delicious austrian salad (potato salad, lentils, tomatoes, garlic, beets, lettuce, and the traditional pumpkin seed oil dressing) and everyone else had wiener schnitzel, but I had some zucchini pasta. I learned an austrian song that you sing when you toast each other before you drink"

"Ein Prost, ein Prost, ein Prösterchen Prost

Wir leben nur einmal.

Ein Prost, ein Prost, ein Prösterchen Prost

Wir leben nur einmal.

Wir leben nur ein einziges Mal,

vielleicht ist es das letztes Mal.

Ein Prost, ein Prost, ein Prösterchen Prost

Wir leben nur einmal."

If you translated this it would be:

"a cheers, a cheers, a little cheers,

we only live once.

a cheers, a cheers, a little cheers,

we only live once.

We live only one time,

maybe it is the last time,

a cheers, a cheers, a little cheers,

we only live once."

The owner of the guest house was soooo nice and talkative with us. He also plays the styrian accordion, which is different from a normal accordion with keys.

He was really good. He had quite a heavy styrian accent thought, which made him hard to understand. It seemed like the further we went into the mountains, the thicker peoples' accents were. It was really fun to listen to though and try to understand. The people I traveled with also had thicker styrian dialects than the teachers that I work with (who speak more of the german variant that I learned in school). I definitely picked up on some of their pronunciations, like saying "yo" instead of "ja" and "na" instead of "nein". also, I spent my whole life thinking that the song where they sing "Danke Shaane" was wrong, since in high german it's pronounced shoon (sp. schön), but actually in the styrian dialect (at least the styrians i was traveling with) said shaane! Blew my mind.

Anywho the guest house was really decorated. Here is one of the walls.

Those pictures still crack me up. Here is the bar room:

Peter started playing the washboard with Rudi (the owner/accordian player)

And I even joined in with this weird clapper instrument thing!

Heres a video of rudi playing a traditional styrian song on the accordian.

The next day we woke up and had breakfast and started our hike about 9am. We walked through more beautiful countryside and forests.

We even saw the mountain that we were going to hike to the next day from afar. Behold:

Yes, we hiked up that mountain on the third day. It is called the "hohe Veitsch".

We also saw more crosses, like this one.

Notice the snow! It was around the second day that we got up high enough to see a lot of snow. We didn't hike through much snow until the third day though, when we went up the hohe veitsch.

The second day was the only day where the weather wasn't that great. It rained a bit, but not too much and was kind of cold. But i was prepared clothing-wise so it didn't really matter.

That night we stayed in another guest house. We had good austrian food and good austrian hospitality once again. The whole fire department from neighboring Wartburg was there too celebrating one of the members' 70th birthday. That was a trip! They were so talkative and jolly. There were 3 at our table and 2 of them just kept telling joke after joke after joke for hours.

Everyone was laughing really hard but I couldn't really understand the jokes. Mostly because I couldn't understand what they were saying most of the time, and even when I did understand part of the joke, thats not enough because you really need to understand everything to get a joke. But I still had fun (even though at times I felt really left out and frustrated). I could tell everyone else was having a good time, though and that made me happy. Peter even ordered me a birthday cake, which was so nice. We all shared it. More accordian was played (by many different people actually, it is a common traditional styrian instrument to play)

and there was lots of dancing. This is Andrea dancing with one of the fire men.

It was really nice that Lisa (the 19 year old) was on the trip. I enjoyed talking to her and it was nice to have someone my age around.

The third day was when the hike started getting really really beautiful, as if it wasn't beautiful already. We hiked much higher up and stopped and had lunch here. It was so pretty.

Then we began our long ascent up the hohe veitsch which was strenuous, but well worth it. Here is a sign that looked so small from where we had lunch but from the top was obviously huge.

I am pretty sure its some sort of ski marker for the ski season (we passed through a few ski areas that don't have snow yet).

When we got to the top we were at the lodge that we stayed overnight in. We had a drink and then hiked further up the mountain to the highest point in the veitsch right when the sun was setting. This was my favorite part of our hike. It was seriously so amazing to see the sun setting in the alps here with the snow and the clear clear sky that you could see sooo far away in over so many mountain tops. Awesome...

Here is a short video I took of the surrounding area.

Here is the "Gipfel Kreuz" the cross at the peak of the mountain.

And here's a group photo in front of it.

From left to right: Andrea, Lisa, Maria, Peter, Sabine, Me

At the top of the mountain I learned an Austrian tradition. When you get to the top of the mountain you say "Berg Sieg" (mountain triumph!) and kiss each other on the cheeks as a sign of well wishes and success.

We were lucky to stay in this lodge because usually they close their doors to overnight guests around the beginning of October since it starts getting too cold, but they let us stay there since we made a reservation a month ago. It was a bit more rustic than the other 2 guest houses we stayed in. There was no running water for example.

The next day we hiked down the mountain which was also beautiful.

There was quite a bit of snow on the way down though and this made it hard to walk down, since it was so icy and slippery. I definitely fell a few times, even though I had my hiking poles with me.

Towards the end of the day we were all the way out of the mountains and back down in the valley. We saw more cows! Here is the cow sign & some cute cows:

We had a late lunch at a restaurant and hiked really really fast up a hill to get to Mariazell. We had to get there fast because it was already 4 and the last bus was leaving at 6:15 back to Graz.

We got there and walked through this archway which apparently cleanses you of your sins if you walk through it:

Here is the entrance to Mariazell.

We went into a room where you light a candle in remembrance of loved ones ( I thought of someone special tee hee!)

It was quite hot in that room. Heres peter and sabine lighting their candles from the main candle in the center of the room that you use to light all the little candles.

We also walked into the Basilica which is beautiful. Here's a pic from the internetz.

And one from the inside:

I would definitely like to come back to Mariazelle some time just for a day trip to explore it for longer, but we didn't have much time this trip.

Overall, my hike was just as awesome as i expected and more! I knew it was going to be naturally beautiful, but i didn't expect how much austrian culture i would experience along the way by way of the guesthouses and my hiking mates, who were also great to be with and were very friendly and accepting of me.