Only two stops to Trieste

By Gernot Stangl

Styria has for a long time been a region at the very end of the western world. Although this dead-end-situation is gone for nearly 20 years it is still persistent in the local mind-set. Alas, it turns out that we are in a powerful region now and the linkage between cities like Graz, Ljubljana and Trieste has been reestablished. From a Graz perspective this also means going to the south where the climate is warmer and the temptations of mediterranean culture can be enjoyed.
The Zentralvereinigung der Architekten, Sektion Steiermark (ZV) has made a field trip to Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 2007 and hosted several events there in order to introduce Austrian architecture to Slovenia (and vice versa). This year the ZV moved to Trieste (Italy) to be host of a discussion and a gallery opening.

Every bus trip starts like this. In the foreground: Günter Koberg (far left), Maria Nievoll, Ulrike Bogensberger, Eugen Hein, Philipp Habsburg.
Günter Koberg deserves honorable mention becouse he forced the bus driver to stop for coffee twice.

This took place on Friday, Sep. 19th, 2008 and guests came from Darmstadt, Graz, Maribor and Trieste to have a day or two of discussion and celebration. At this point I wold like to emphasize that you can make it from Graz to Trieste in two and a half hours now (by car, thank you Hermi and Francesco) and therefore the Cafe degli Specchi (Trieste) is only as far away from Graz as the Cafe Tomaselli (Salzburg).

Structures along the highway in Slovenia.

Mutius Joseph Spiritus Ritter von Tommasini, or in Italian "Muzio de Tommasini" was a botanist and also mayor of Trieste. Our discussion took place in a park that was named after him. The gull seems to be a permanent feature of the portrait.

The first event of the day was a discussion forum that took place in a quiet park in the center of Trieste. I will write about this in the next post.

The park is full of statues of famous people who have a relationship to Trieste. So does James Joyce.

Joyce also has an animal for himself.