Your German word for the day “Landeszeughaus”! Now say that five times real fast.

So what is the Landeszeughaus? Well it just so happens to be the largest historical armory in Europe! The armory of Syria, which is the province that Graz resides, was founded in the early 1500’s. The current Landeshaus building was built in 1642and is the political centre for Styria or in German, Steiermark. “Landeshaus”is the “land’s house” “Zeug” is the word for “things”. So it’s literally “the house of the land’s things”!

The armory contains over 32,000 items, which include swords, shields, guns, pikes, cannons, suits of armor for infantry, cavalry, and some specialty armor belonging to the aristocracy. Their crowning piece is a full suit of decorative armor for a horse that is from 1510. There are four floors packed with Heavy Metal!

We took the English tour with Christophe, our wonderful guide. He was very witty and told us many unique stories about the Styrian army and various rulers over history. The most interesting fact was that until 1848 Styria was still under a feudal system!The average farmer was not a freeman and if his Lord called him to fight he had to go. Another interesting story was that in the early 1800’s there was a farmer’s revolt about a new tax being levied on Styria’s wine. The region is known for its wine. The 120 famers came to the Landeshaus and demanded the tax be removed. The local administrator appealed to the higher authority of the king. The king said that he would remove the wine tax, but that the men still couldn’t vote and had to stay under feudal law. The farmers agreed and all was resolved peacefully.

After visiting the Landeszeughaus, we found a nice little Greek gyro café and then headed over to Hofbäckerei Edegger. This bakery is located in central Graz and has been in the same family for 8 generations. The chocolate pastries with marzipan and raspberry jam were very tasty!