An adventurous day in the South of Styria

 Wildon

Yesterday my friends and I felt the need to leave Graz for half a day and go see something completely new. Following advice of my flat mates, we decided to take a train to Wildon, a small town near Leibnitz. The town surrounds the "Schloßberg"...yes, same name as the hill here in Graz. On the top of the "Wildoner Schloßberg" are super old ruins. They are the remains of castles built in the 13th century. Although we thought it was such a cool thing to see, the Wildoner decided not to use it to attract tourists. So the path up there is not really a path. You can only guess where to go and after a while it seemed like we chose wrongly. So we were standing there, trees everywhere, not knowing where to go. So we chose the fastest way up there, which basically means we climbed to the top. There were piles of leaves on the ground, which prevented us from having a good grip and caused our feed to lose easily. We had to make use of the utensils the forest offered- trees, roots, and stones (which were covered with gossamers). After having fought our way up to the ruins and getting a first glimpse of what there was to see, we were mesmerized. Huge walls of stones covered with leaves and parts of trees marked the landscape. We used the opportunity to take some really cool pictures.




On our way up and down we got to see a chamois. We'd never seen such an animal from this close, so we  were all so impressed that we couldn't stop taking pictures. The interesting thing was that the animal didn't even seem to bother. It just stood there, looking at us. On the way down we also saw some deer. But they were far to scared to come closer. Instead they jumped up the hill...the exact way we used beforehand. It seemed slightly unfair that we had to work so hard to get up there, while it took them just a few jumps to reach the top. Well, well..that's nature.
Having arrived back in town, we decided that we deserved a delicious meal. So we went to a restaurant and enjoyed pizza. Since we had walked some hours (I think it was 3-4) wthout any breakes, we were all rather exhausted afterwards.
But it was definetely worth it. My 5 friends and I had an aaawesome trip, and even got to see something new.







(Unfortunately : P) we saw this warning sign far too late. In our opinion, however, there was nothing dangerous about visiting the ruins. They looked pretty solid.