Today was really the highlight of the week. Aufsteirern! You probably have seen the photos I’ve posted up already, so you have some idea. It’s an enormous festival celebrating the traditions of the Styrian province (Graz is the capital of Styria, or “Steiermark” in German). There’s lots of food and drink to try, from different kinds of –wursts (we tried Bratwurst mit Senf und Semmel – Bratwurst with mustard and a bun) to Sturm, a light alcoholic drink that has a dangerous reputation for being drunk far too fast. ;-) Many musicians and ensembles are playing in the street, and you have the chance to see traditional handiwork, from spinning and woodworking to metalworking.
But Aufsteirern was especially exciting for Tiny and me, because we got to dress up! ;-) Now that we had our new aprons, we could wear our dirndls into town to really participate. E and our Finnish friends A and M also had dirndls. E found a new one, and her plaid apron has the proper colours to match the rest of her dirndl. Apparently each region has a particular style of dirndl with specific colour schemes…much like Scottish tartans. Speaking of which, I saw a number of kilts - is this normal in Austria?? And while it’s fun to be in costume, I can now understand why women who wore corsets might have restrained their appetites. If you don’t have much room to breathe in the beginning, things will definitely feel even tighter after lunch…;-)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but were there about 100,000 people there? Pretty packed. Oh, and in addition to trying Bratwurst and Sturm, we got to try the legendary pumpkins seeds that Styria is famous for. Their salad dressing, pumpkin seed oil, is a regional specialty. So naturally there were flavoured pumpkin seeds, too…chocolate, curry, coffee, sea salt, lemon, chili, ginger…endless choices! I bought a packet of raspberry flavoured ones. They almost don’t taste like pumpkin seeds anymore, it’s really amazing. And we also got to try roasted chestnuts. They serve them hot in the fall as well as at Christmas.
 |
| Blutwurst - blood sausage! Roasted chestnuts are in the right pic. |
  |
| Tracten/dirndls |
|
| Kuchen! (Cakes, but there were lots of assorted baked goods.) |
 |
| These metal horses were on display at the blacksmith's booth. |
 |
| Spinning. Look at the little wool hats on the right side! |
 |
| Wood carvings. Such beautiful detail. |
No comments:
Post a Comment