Food

Austria Travel: Local Excursions In Styria}

Submitted by: Susanne Pacher

For several months now I had been planning another trip to Europe, to visit my family in my home town in Austria, as well as to spend eleven days on the beautiful island of Mallorca and three days in the fascinating Czech capital of Prague, both destinations I had long wanted to visit.

On May 15, 2009 I finally landed in Graz, after an uneventful flight from Toronto via Dsseldorf. The only notable detail was the inspection by the swine flu police in Dsseldorf since Canada has been affected by the swine flue epidemic all Lufthansa passengers had to fill out a health questionnaire and present themselves to two public health officials upon exiting the plane.

On this sunny yet cool morning I finally landed in my final destination. Graz, Austrias second largest city, is a wonderful destination; its late medieval and Renaissance-era city core have helped to make it a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My brother picked me up and we drove into my small provincial home town, and it was great to reconnect after almost a year.

I spent the first few days doing local excursions with my family. Styria, my home province in Austria, offers great travel opportunities, from active travel for hikers, bikers and skiers, to cultural attractions including many impressive castles, fortresses, monasteries and other architectural heritage sites.

Our first excursion took us to Wildon, a small rural town about 20 minutes south of Graz, that was first mentioned in historic records in the 13th century. The surrounding area has been inhabited since about 4000 B.C. Our destination was the Wildoner Berg, a mountain that is distinguished by a ruined fortress, the Hengistburg, whose original foundations date back to about 1000 BC.

Today there is not much left of the fortress other than a few walls and a relatively well preserved tower since the fortress was destroyed by lightning in 1810. Mountain goats were climbing around the medieval remnants of this once impressive fortification. The town of Wildon is well known for its legends, for the wild man who supposedly terrorized the local population, and the white lady, a ghost who is said to haunt many castles and fortresses in Styria.

We capped our trip to Wildon off with a visit to a Buschenschank, a local family owned wine restaurant that serves wine produced on the familys property. Styria is a popular wine growing area, with three separate regions that specialize in different types of wines. Sauvignon Blanc, Traminer and a truly local brand called Schilcher enchant knowledgeable wine enthusiasts. Eight wine routes allow travelers to explore the Styrian wine country in scenic drives, and hundreds of local wine restaurants and cozy bed and breakfasts cater to the travellers needs.

Our second excursion took us into the high Alpine pastures of Eastern Styria, the so-called Almenland region, the largest contiguous mountain pasture region in the Alps. The region is most well-known for its great hiking and skiing opportunities, and every year in early summer mountain cattle are driven up onto the mountain to start their long outdoor grazing season. The region has even developed its own brand of organically raised beef called ALMO. Various restaurants in the area dedicate themselves to serving local organic beef specialties in addition to providing traditional Austrian fare.

We went even higher than these Alpine meadows and started a hike up the Rote Wand (literally translated Red Wall), a 1,505 m high mountain whose characteristic is a vertical rock wall whose name is derived from the red-called limestone rock that gives it its unique colouring. Usually the Rote Wand offers a phenomenal mountain panorama, but today we had caught a foggy day and we had no scenic views at all.

After entering our name into the summit book we started our descent and came by a large herd of ibexes, large wild mountain goats that were grazing calmly beside a pond. Dozens of these large stocky animals with their impressive round horns were fascinating the hikers and my brothers dog admired them from afar.

After our equally foggy hike down from the summit we stopped at the Tyrnauer Almhtte, a typical rustic Austrian mountain hut that offers drinks and simple fare to hungry hikers. The sun was finally coming out and we enjoyed a nice hot Fritattensuppe (pancake strip soup) and rye bread with cheese.

In the early afternoon we headed down from the mountain and my brother, a gifted professional chef, cooked us a delicious rosemary chicken with vegetable rice and salad. To burn off some calories we went on a second hour and a half long hike from my home town of Weiz to the Kleine Raabklamm (the Small Raab River Gorge), a popular local hiking destination.Municipalities throughout Styria and Austria in general have invested great effort into expanding and signposting their system of hiking and biking trails. When I was a child, places like the Kleine Raabklamm were known mostly by local hiking enthusiasts with insider knowledge, while today all sorts of hiking paths are signposted and have been made accessible and are promoted to the wider population. Finally, after all this physical exertion we capped the day off with a delicious icecream at Gelateria Claudia, a popular Sunday hangout for icecream lovers in my home town of Weiz.

About the Author: Susanne Pacher is a Travel Journalist specializing in

Unconventional Travel

you can get tons of great unconventional and unique travel information and tips if you

Click Here

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=613551&ca=Travel}

Uncategorized

GNOME to be Ubuntu’s default desktop environment, Canonical to stop investing in Ubuntu Phone

Saturday, April 8, 2017

On Wednesday, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu operating system, announced the open source OS will end its ties with the Unity8 desktop environment and that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Long Term Service) will be shipped with the GNOME desktop environment by default. Unity has been Ubuntu’s default desktop environment since it was released six years ago in 2011.

In his blog post, Shuttleworth explained growth of products are decided by the market and the community. Canonical, Ltd., the software company behind Ubuntu, could not gain investors from Unity8, Ubuntu Phone and the convergence shell. Instead, they are shifting their Ubuntu focus on to cloud and IoT (Internet of Things), which Shuttleworth notes finds application in “auto, robotics, networking, and machine learning”.

Canonical — after making controversial desktop environment Unity the default — launched their own smartphone in 2013, called Ubuntu Edge, with a crowd funding campaign target of US$32 million but could not cross the US$13 million mark. A couple of years later, Canonical partnered with bq, Fairphone and Meizu to launch Ubuntu phones. Unity worked for Ubuntu phones but did not perform well in the global market. “I’m not giving up! I will do my best to keep Ubuntu touch and Unity8 standing on both it’s[sic] legs!”, Ubports’ developer Marius Gripsgård posted on his Google+ profile on Wednesday.

“The choice, ultimately, is to invest in the areas which are contributing to the growth of the company”, Shuttleworth wrote in the blog. Following this announcement, GNOME tweeted, “Welcome back Canonical! Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to ship with GNOME by default!”.

Currently, Ubuntu is available in various desktop environments like Ubuntu GNOME (GNOME), Ubuntu MATE (MATE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Kubuntu (KDE Plasma), Lubuntu (LXDE) and Ubuntu Budgie (Budgie), though Unity remains the default for the upcoming version, 17.04 (Zesty Zapus).

Uncategorized

Australian treasurer attacks opposition leader’s tax question error

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

File:AUS$20 John Flynn.jpg

The ability of Australian opposition leader, Kevin Rudd to run the country’s economy has been questioned by the Government after he made an error responding to a question on Australia’s current tax system today. Speaking in Queanbeyan, New South Wales earlier today, Mr Rudd was asked if he could name the current tax rates and the thresholds at which they kick in.

Mr Rudd said that he thought the top tax rate started at AUD$175,000. In fact, Australia’s top taxation rate begins at $150,000. “Well, as of July 1, if you went through the four thresholds, I think the high threshold kicks in I think at $175,000, then I think it cascades down the spectrum,” Mr Rudd told reporters.

Australian treasurer Peter Costello, who introduced the tax threshold changes, has seized on the opposition leader’s uncertainty, claiming that “he has never cared about economic policy, he has no interest in it,” he said.

Treasurer Costello claimed: “He was exposed as a fraud on productivity and we don’t hear him talking about productivity very much anymore.

“Now he has been exposed as being naked when it comes to understanding the tax system.”

Mr Costello demanded that the opposition release their taxation policy. “Since the Labor Party demands an election to be called on a daily basis, you would think they might have the decency of releasing a policy so that people can know what it is,” said Costello.

A Federal election is expected in Australia in the next three months and the Coalition Government is trailing the Opposition by ten percentage points on a two-party preferred basis.

Uncategorized

China loans Ethiopia US$349 million for construction of expressway

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

China has loaned Ethiopia US$349 million worth of funds for the construction of the the country’s first modern expressway, making Ethiopia among the first beneficiaries of the recently implemented China-Africa development funding plan.

The road is to be close to 80 kilometres long, and will connect Nazaret (also called Adama), the country’s second-largest city, with the capital, Addis Ababa.

Funds from the Export-Import Bank of China are to be used to give the loans, according to the agreement. The deal was signed by Li Ruogu, the president of China’s Export-Import Bank, and Ahmed Shide, the Ethiopian state minister of finance and economic development.

According to the Ethiopian News Agency, the motorway is to be completed by 2014. The country has also agreed to other financial deals with China, mainly in the telecommunications and energy sectors.

Uncategorized

Gunman kills self and hostage in Texas NASA building

Friday, April 20, 2007

Around 1:40 p.m. CDT, NASA employees reported that two shots were fired in the NASA Building 44 in the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. A SWAT team later reported that Bill Phillips, a contract engineer with Jacobs Engineering, had killed David Beverly as well as himself, leaving a female hostage physically unharmed.

Phillips entered a conference room with gun drawn and ordered all but one person out. Phillips barricaded himself on the second floor of the two-story building, with David Beverly and another female hostage. The building was evacuated and police were summoned. NASA security, Houston police and a SWAT team were on the scene.

Houston news reported at 5:22 p.m. CDT that Bill Phillips, the gunman, and David Beverly, the hostage, were both dead. Police reported that the SWAT team heard one shot and decided to engage, but before they reached the room they heard another shot. When SWAT reached the scene, the male hostage was dead from a bullet to the chest, the gunman was dead from a bullet to the head, and the female hostage, Fran Cranshaw, was gagged and bound to a chair with duct tape, but was otherwise unharmed.

All NASA employees had first been warned to stay in their buildings but were later told by NASA they were free to go home if their working day was over. Mission Control locked its doors during this incident, as this is a standard procedure in such situations. No NASA Mission has been affected by this incident, according to NASA.

In the first press conference, police said that communication to the gunman had not yet been established, but that negotiators had already tried it two times unsuccessfully.

The motive of the hostage-taking, and whether the three people had any connection to each other, is currently under investigation.

The Houston Chronicle reports that last month Phillips had received one e-mail from his employer, Jacob engineering Inc., “describing problems with his work and offering suggestions on improvement.” Jacobs printed that e-mail on March 18, the same day he bought the 38-caliber gun that police suspect was used in the shooting.

Despite reassurances by Cranshaw and Beverly, Phillips would not believe that management was not going to fire him, according to Cranshaw. During the 3-hour standoff, Phillips used a dry-erase board in the room indicating he was tired of being called “stupid,” police said last Saturday.

Michael Sampson, the co-manager of the space agency’s Electronic Parts and Packaging Program, who had known Beverly for ten years, described him as friendly, peaceful person, with a positive attitude to his co-workers.

Relatives describe Phillips as a loner who always kept to himself. He had lost his father in 2003, but had decided not to return to his hometown in Tennessee. Smith, a cousin of Phillips, remarked that in the Christmas card he had received from him last year, Phillips said that he was feeling lonely and without family, but nothing in the card suggested anything so tragic.

Uncategorized

Category:Jewellery

This is the category for jewellery.

Refresh this list to see the latest articles.

  • 8 April 2014: Scottish artist Alan Davie dies at age 93
  • 12 August 2011: Three killed amongst Birmingham, England riots
  • 13 July 2011: 21 people killed and 113 reported injured in three blasts in Mumbai
  • 4 July 2011: Hidden treasure worth billions of dollars discovered in Indian temple
  • 26 November 2010: Bernie Ecclestone attacked outside London headquarters; no arrests made
  • 6 September 2009: Man charged with attempted murder in £40 million London jewel heist
  • 13 August 2009: British gemstone expert killed by mob in Voi, Kenya
  • 11 August 2009: Thieves steal £40 million from London jeweller
  • 31 May 2009: Thief steals over €6 million worth of jewels from Paris store
  • 18 March 2009: Madoff prosecutors want assets from wife and children
?Category:Jewellery

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write.



Sister projects
  • Commons
  • Wikipedia
  • Wikisource
  • Wiktionary

Pages in category “Jewellery”

Uncategorized

Colorado College Tigers win 41st annual Great Lakes Invitational tournament

Friday, December 30, 2005

The Colorado College Tigers beat the Spartans of Michigan State University in men’s ice hockey on Friday, for the title of champions of the 41st annual Great Lakes Invitational ice hockey tournament at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

The Tigers, the team chosen to be invited into the tournament and appearing for the first time since 1965 in the tournament, led with a 5-0 lead during the second period, after which Michigan State switched goalies. The Spartans put freshmen Jeff Lerg into net, replacing Dominic Vicari, who was earlier given a penalty for his contact with a member of Colorado’s team in front of the net. Michigan State junior Tyler Howells scored two goals during the second period, and Colorado student Brett Sterling made the Tiger’s final goal for the night.

Colorado College took first place in the invitational, and Michigan State ended in second place, after their previous win over Michigan Tech at a score of 3-2. The Tigers previously beat the University of Michigan on Thursday, at a score of 6-1.

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan beat GLI co-sponsor Michigan Tech University with a score of 5-3 for a third place finish in the invitational earlier in the day.

With 2 minutes remaining in the third period, the University of Michigan went one up over Michigan Tech, breaking the 3-3 tie. Michigan Tech pulled their goalie with one minute remaining to gain a man advantage, but the strategy failed and allowed the University of Michigan to get another goal resulting in the final 5-3 score.

The game secured the third place position in the invitational for University of Michigan, and fourth place for Michigan Tech.

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.
This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

The final standings in the tournament are:

  1. Colorado College
  2. Michigan State University
  3. University of Michigan
  4. Michigan Tech
Uncategorized

Woman finds human finger in bowl of chili at Wendy’s restaurant

Thursday, March 24, 2005

San Jose, California — A woman eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant bit into a chewy bit that turned out to be a human finger. She immediately spat it out, warned other patrons to stop eating, and upon recognizing the object as a finger, vomited.

“I’m more of a Carl’s Jr. person,” the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman, Anna Ayala, told Knight Ridder. She said this incident was her first visit to a Wendy’s restaurant. Ayala described how she found the finger, “Suddenly something crunchy was in my mouth,” she continued, “and I spit it out.”

According to Devina Cordero, 20, after Ayala found the finger, she ran up to her and Cordero’s boyfriend and said, “Don’t eat it! Look, there’s a human finger in our chili.”

“We went up to the counter and they told us it was a vegetable,” Cordero continued. “The people from Wendy’s were poking it with a spoon.”

The restaurant is located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

Wikinews reporter David Vasquez drove his car up to the drive-thru menu and found that chili was still on the menu, at a price of US$1.19 for a small serving. He also witnessed workers unloading supplies from a semi-trailer truck in the restaurant’s parking lot, and carting them into the back door of the establishment.

According to Ben Gale, director of environmental health for Santa Clara County, the finger did not come from any of the employees at the restaurant. “We asked everybody to show us they have 10 fingers and everything is OK there,” he said. The found portion of the finger likely belonged to a woman because of its long and manicured fingernail, also found in the food.

Officials seized the food supply at the restaurant and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, where they believe the finger may have gotten mixed in with the raw ingredients used to prepare the chili. The restaurant’s operators were later permitted to re-open after preparing new chili prepared from fresh ingredients.

As this story was filed, there was no mention of the incident on the Wendy’s corporate web site. Wendy’s issued a statement through a spokesman.

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us,” said Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond. He referred to the incident as an “unsubstantiated claim.”

“We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers,” Desmond said.

According to county health officials, the unfortunate woman who bit into the finger is doing fine, despite her initial reaction. Officials also noted that the finger would have been cooked at a high enough temperature to destroy any viruses.

The Santa Clara county medical examiner reported that the finger had a solid fingerprint, although investigators did not say if a search of fingerprint databases would be performed to find the owner of the finger.

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.
This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.
Uncategorized

Edmund White on writing, incest, life and Larry Kramer

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Contents

  • 1 On literature
  • 2 On work as a gay writer
  • 3 On sex
  • 4 On incest in his family
  • 5 On American politics
  • 6 On his intimate relationships
  • 7 On Edmund White
  • 8 On Larry Kramer
  • 9 Source