Carla is one of my closest friends here in Graz and she loves living here probably even more than me! She is from the Salzburg region in Austria and works in Marketing for a Startup based in Graz. She kindly agreed to talk to me about why she loves living here so much. 🙂
How did you come to Graz?
I came here when I finished school to study here. So I knew that I didn’t want to stay anywhere my hometown, neither Salzburg nor Innsbruck. I had to choose between Vienna and Graz and since I had family closeby, I decided to go for Graz.
How long have you been living here now?
For six years in September.
What do you like about Graz?
I like that it has a very southern flair. The rest of Austria is rather like the north of Europe, where people are rougher and more reserved. Graz is very mediterranean, for Austrian standards. You can also feel that when summer comes people live outside more, they go out in the evenings. That’s something you don’t have in other parts of Austria because it’s too cold. People are very nice, everybody is welcoming and it is very international for such a small city.
You can also go everywhere from here, it’s very close to the sea!
And I also love that Graz is very open to dogs. You can take your dog almost everywhere.
What do you think should be improved?
I sometimes don’t like the traffic. It’s a pity that cars can go almost everywhere in Graz. So for being such an open city where people go outside and live outside all the time, there’s just too much traffic in the city centre.
Also, at least for me as a student, there was not a great variety of degrees on offer. I am thinking about doing my master’s and there are not that many options here in Graz. There are more interesting universities in Vienna.
What is your favourite place in Graz?
It depends on what I want to do, but I love Parkhouse and the area around it. If you don’t want to go somewhere to really have drinks, you can also just go to the park and the area around is so nice. There’s a lot of people in summer and a lot of dogs.
I also love the markets, the Kaiser-Josef market and the Lendplatz market. You can really feel the city flair there.
What would you recommend to people who want to move to Austria?
One thing in Graz is that you need German almost everywhere. People speak English in shops, you won’t have a problem with that, but there are not a lot of international companies. But you can communicate with people and make friends in English. It’s just that in terms of worklife, you need German.
