Spring comes early to this part of Austria.  By early April this year, the snow had melted and the vegetation, with its unmistakable chartreuse hue and resplendent flowering, appeared as if by magic.

By mid-April, children were picking and vendors hawking  the budding catkins for Palm Sunday festivities, another plus for the European ethic of using what it plentifully at hand.  In the US, it’s typical for churches simply to order palms in for this festival; if you exclude the southern tier of states where palms might grow anyway, where is the ethos in that?

By May, lilies of the valley sprang up in gardens. It is the ‘mutters tag’ flower.   

 

 

Aside from Mother’s day, May in Austria brings two other celebrations:  The raising of the May Pole (Maibaum) and May or Labor Day.

The Maibaum dates back to at least the 16^th century in Germany and Austria, and perhaps is older than that, if one considers Celtic festivals or Freudian theory.  We were lucky enough to see the former, being freshly installed, as we ate in a traditional rural restaurant with our friends Gernot and Christina following their performance of a Haydn Mass at Mariatrost Basilica the Sunday after Easter.  In Austria, each baum’s ribbons or other decoration reflects the region where it is installed:  green and blue for Styria, red and yellow for Burgenland.   As we travel the countryside now, we see maibaum erected in nearly every village and often by local bars and restaurants, such as the one in Kainbach bei Graz, below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is another, a little more than a month old, near the border of Austria and Hungary.

The other May Day celebration is a nod to the political process, and the ‘workers parties’.   It featured, in both Graz and Vienna, large parades.  We knew about them because they disrupted our normal route to the train station as we headed to Vienna! No trams were running.  Fortunately, we did get to the train station and on to Vienna for the week, a trip which will be featured in the next installment.

In early May, we also finally made it to the Schloss Eggenberg.  Besides being the terminus of our tram line in Graz, it’s one of the most impressive remnants of the baroque era in Austria.  It dates back to the late medieval period (1460) and was the property of advisors/financiers to Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor.

Because the weather was warm and sunny, we chose not to tour the palace itself but to remain outdoors in the lovely gardens.  Both the palace and the gardens reflect elements of cosmological theory:  for example, the palace has 365 windows, one for every day in the year; the bushes and shrubs are arranged as a planetary garden, with groupings of plants given names like “Mars”, “Jupiter”, the “Sun”, “Earth” and “Venus”.  We were intrigued and so glad we went!   Where we found the gardens of the big palaces in Vienna devoid of spring flowers (presumably because they are annuals and must be planted each year), the gardens at Eggenberg, with mostly perennials, were bursting with color and scent and sound!  Ahhh, spring!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone was enjoying the day!

 

 

 

 

 

 
the peacocks
Especially the peacocks!  (click on the link, above, to open video)  There was some kind of sporting event going on in the stadium adjacent to the schloss.  Every time the crowd would roar, the peacocks would answer!

We thought perhaps it was a soccer match, so we stopped by on our way to the bus stop, to see what was happening.  Here’s what it was!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Castles and football in the spring…who knew?  Just another day in Graz!

Thanks for reading!