Market excursions..

Follow me around..

Alright guys, today I want to share one of my most favourite places in Graz with you. The farmers market on Kaiser-Josef-Square. I really love that market, especially now in spring. The sweet scent of freshly cut flowers is always lingering in the air, while you can hear all different kind of people gossiping and laughing at ever corner in the morning sun light. This atmosphere simply makes me happy.

However the main reason I go there nearly every Wednesday morning is FOOD. I know it is a little bit more expensive than in the supermarket and as students we are living on a budget, but in my opinion nowadays you have to let quality outweigh quantity. Most of the time I’m not even sure WHAT I’m eating whenever I heat myself one of those microwave meals. Granted, it’s a cheap and convenient dish, but – as we all know – not good for your body.

Plus it is not only healthier and more sustainable to eat locally grown food, it also helps to build community in your city or neighborhood and instead of giving your money to large corporations, you get the opportunity to supporting local farmers and small business owners.

But let’s cut to the topic here: What can you get at a farmers market?

Kaiser-Josef-Market opens daily from Monday to Saturday from 6:00 am till 1:00 pm and is located opposite the opera house.

Nearly everything you can buy there is a product of organic farming. The offer is extremely diverse:

Fresh fruits and vegetables..

Different types of meat: bacon, beef, sausages, steak…

Raw, minced, salted and smoked..

Big varieties of cheese..

Rich, green lettuce..

Bread and pastries..

But also self-made jam and booze..

Along with a huge rage of traditional, Styrian products like horseradish, runner beans, mushrooms and of course pumpkin seed oil..

I also want to take this opportunity to show you my two stalls, which I visit frequently. The first is the whole-food shop, located at the very back of the market.   

It offers a great range of dried fruits ad nuts, but also vegan/vegetarian products..

My second favourite place is the juice stall. The owners of the little kiosk offer to make you fresh smoothies and juices. You can choose from various ingredients and create your own personal drink.

I hope I could whet your interest. So that next time you have some time on your hands, maybe you will check one of those places out and even buy some flowers in the process :)

Who am I?

"Please allow me to introduce myself

 I'm a man of wealth and taste"

Call me crazy but this song got stuck in my head ever since I heard that we have to write an introduction post. But now that I think about it, it is probably not a good idea to start a text about myself with a song called “Sympathy For The Devil”..

Ok, can we reset please?!

Hi guys! My name is Simone, but everybody calls me Simi, so feel free to do the same – I never really identified with my real name anyway. I am 20 years old and I was born and raised as the last of four children, in the middle of Carinthia’s countryside. Sound idyllic, right? But boy, let me tell you, idyllic can be SO boring! Luckily my parents were always endeavored to show us kids as many places around the globe, as they possibly could.

So, I guess the first thing I can tell you about myself is that I am infected with wanderlust. I really love to travel and I know many of you share that hobby. My last journey took me to Tanzania, where I taught at an elementary school for nine months. It was an eventful, unpredictable and incredibly formative experience.

Besides exploring our mad world, I am crazy passionate about any kind of art. Whenever I need to relax and escape from my currently very stressful life, I start to draw… or edit a video… or decorating and rearranging my room – pretty much anything that lets me be creative.

To me artistry is a great way to unwind and relax. It allows me to gather new energy and recharge my batteries. Others meditate – I start painting my walls.

Now in order to let out all the energy I am gaining while tapping on my creative vein, I introduced something quite contrasting into my life. Boxing has been my go-to sport ever since I was 15. It gives me the perfect opportunity to vent and burn off all my energy. I know some people think, that this sport is all about aggression, brutality and mercilessness, but to me it combines strategy, accuracy and subtlety with a lot of exercise and hard training.

So there you go, these are my three great passions (minus rock music, because I don’t want to bore you with a paragraph full of cheesy love declarations for AC/DC and the Ramones) and I think, those say an awful lot about me.

To be honest, I don't really know who I am jet. But I am figuring it out, every day :) I guess at the bottom line I am just boringly normal..

At the bottom line, I am just a goofy, chaotic fool who makes a lot of really bad jokes and screams at her TV during Ice Hockey matches…