Stainz
8/26/2025
We did a day trip to Stainz which was about an hour southwest of Graz by train. It was meh. But hey, not every destination is going to be amazing.
The main (only) attraction is the Stainz castle. First of all, it is NOT a castle… it’s a palace. Which is ok, we like palaces almost as much as castles. It was originally an Augustinian monastery founded in 1229. In 1840 it was purchased by Archduke Johann and his descendants, the Counts of Meran, have owned it ever since. To date, the Counts of Meran use part of it as their residence. It all sounded good on paper… the main problem was that it was completely converted into 3 (fairly boring) museums that had very little to do with the origins of the actual palace and there was very little information available in English. We made the best of it and wandered through all three museums. We read what little was in English and used google translate to read some additional info here and there.
We took very few photos… we were pretty uninspired.
One of the museums was a hunting museum. Lots of stuffed dead animals, but it was admittedly the most interesting of the three museums. The other 2 were about the Archduke and about agriculture (snooze!).
The hunting museum talked a lot about the hunting regulations that are in place in Austria. Sustainability is top priority and in order to own a gun and to hunt, you must go through pretty extensive training first. They track animal populations closely and ensure hunters know which animals to kill (or not) in terms of population, breed, health, maturity, etc. It was very responsible and made a lot of sense. Mr. Doug would have totally loved this museum… well, he would have liked it a lot, and would have loved it if he could read German! 😊 Some of the displays were very cool!
The cathedral at the palace was prettier than we expected.
After the Stainz Castle (aka palace!), we walked about 20 minutes to our first Buschenschank of the trip. What’s a Buschenschank you ask? It’s a winery! 😊
Buschenschank’s pay lower taxes, but must adhere to specific regulations. They must cultivate their own vineyard and serve only self-produced items, such as wine, juices, and cold dishes like cold cuts, cheeses, ceviche, sandwiches, homemade pastries and bread. They cannot serve any warm dishes (even coffee or tea). The establishment itself must be located at the farm where the products are all made.
The tradition dates back to an imperial decree in 1784 by Emperor Joseph II, which allowed vintners to serve their own wine and cold food on their premises.
So literally everything is farm to table and made on the premises. The menus were actually much more extensive than we expected (once we actually learned what a buschenschank was a couple days later!). Of course, we didn’t understand all this when we visited this first Buschenschank, so we totally failed to appreciate it. In fact, we failed to take ANY pictures except of all the huge beans that were in each of our meals that we didn’t like. (we are such morons!)
On the walk back to the bus stop, we snapped a photo in front of a field of dead sunflowers! We were feeling nostalgic from when we visited the sunflowers with Erin and Colleen at Dix Campus (and they were mostly dead!) 😊
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