Crazy Graz

Last day here in Graz in southern Austria, the sun is shining brightly overhead and I've just passed the big blue octopus building (above) where modern art exhibitions are shown. It's stuck between buildings dating back to Napoleon's time and looks staggeringly out of place - you either love it or hate it with a vengeance. And I love it, because it stops you in your tracks and gets you thinking. Graz is like that - modern and old all thrown together in a delicious mess.

I could put lots of the pretty stuff up here, but where would be the fun in that? Much better to talk about exhibitions where the porcelain figures are shown upside down and one of the main fashion shops is called 'Infected'.

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Graz also has a massive selection of food and drink, all loosely linked to sausages or schnitzels and lager by the bucketful, of course. And it's not horribly expensive either. But... after experiencing a £17 pint of beer in Oslo last year, anything seems reasonable.

Then it's down the little alleyways of the old city and past shops selling bras in the most inspirational way I've ever seen (more like scoops of ice-cream stacked up) and churches with 'Science' written on their walls.

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As for the people - well, with four or five universities in this small city it is an educated bunch that strolls the streets. Even the graffiti is a tad more cerebral from what I'm used to back in Bromley.

On one wall, there's a quote from Orwell's 1984 and on another we're faced with 'FIGHT REPRESSION WITH HUMOR'. Well, I couldn't agree more - I would prefer 'humour' to be spelt the English way, but what the hell, I'm just been picky.

I then go to a supermarket and across BREXIT whiskey (produced in Austria and the perfect antidote to the most hated word of the year). So, after a bottle of that and a sausage full of cheese and pork and garnished with mustard and horseradish, I stagger to the top of the castle and... take the quick way down through the solid rock via one of these chutes you see at the fair. Twenty seconds of pure vomit-inducing terror... Then another beer at a bar, astutely placed by the exit to the chute.

Ready for the plane home now...