Graz–Jan. 9, 2025

I started the day with a visit to a city Service Center at 8:10 a.m., across from the train station. I gave them my residence registration form („Meldezettel“), and they registered it. Then I took the streetcar to the Steiermärkische Sparbank¹ at the Hauptplatz (main square) to open an account. This took about an hour, and was transacted 80% in German, so that seemed a good sign that my German is somewhat functional.

Here are some photos from the Hauptplatz. The last one shows the „Uhrturm“ (clock tower), which is one of Graz’s main landmarks.

CityPark/MediaMarkt

In the afternoon, I went to the CityPark shopping mall to look for a cell phone at MediaMarkt 🇦🇹 (the moral equivalent of a Best Buy in the US).

I didn’t buy the phone right away, but did confirm that most phones are dual SIM card. That means I can use both my US SIM card and buy one with a local number so that I don’t have to carry two phones around. The only drawback is that I can’t also put in an SD card for extra storage, but I haven’t really needed that before. I asked about copying my data from my current phone to the new one; they said it would cost 50€. It turns out that Samsung phones have an app for copying data, so I might just use that instead and save some money.

While I was there, I decided to look at microwave ovens (the apartment doesn’t have one). It turns out that there are combination microwave/convection/grill ovens 🇦🇹. I never knew such things existed. The oven isn’t very large, but then again I don’t have a lot of counter top room, so that should work out well. I’ll probably get one next week.

The mall is fairly nice; not much to say about it—if you’ve seen one shopping mall, you’ve seen them all. The mall has an Interspar 🇦🇹 hypermarket (very large grocery store). Here’s what I bought, for a total of about 20€ (such a deal!):

Signage

Sign outside a kebap restaurant; clever use of the “word balloon”. Text says: Why should we reserve precious city space for metal on four wheels? You should think for yourself rather than parroting the car lobby! I want to break up with you and hereby file for divorce. I am looking for a new neighbor from now on!

“1,373 streetcars depart from Jakominiplatz daily.” In Austria the decimal point is used as a comma, and the comma is used as a decimal point. Don’t ask me why; just go with it.

One minor annoyance that I have found when traveling in Germany and Austria is that, at least in the downtown areas, they don’t have large street signs at the corner. Instead, there’s a small placard on the side of the building at the corner—about half the time, so you sometimes have to walk down the street a way before you see another sign that has the street name on it. In this case, Fraktur script makes the process of figuring out the street name (here, Rosselmühlgasse), even more of an adventure.

Here are a couple of instances of the Stroop Effect. I have no idea why the second picture has the signs on the building as they are; the one labeled „Rechts“ (right) is on the left, and the one labeled „Links“ (left) is on the right.