Where the Graz is always greener

We're in the south-eastern city of Graz, where the tour guide who has been showing a colleague around has invited us to join his friends for the Eurovision screening. Austria has not made the finals and the crowd at the party this evening has coalesced their support around Italy and Spain... with a token nod to Australia, for my sake.

The cheers for these southern European countries is not unusual.

While Austria can sometimes have a reputation for Germanic reservedness, Graz embraces its southern geography, with its warmer weather and Mediterranean influences. Outdoor drinks, late dinners, festivals in the squares. In my mind, I can almost smell the salt of the nearby Adriatic.

During the day (before I crash the Eurovision party), I head out into the countryside around Graz. You would hardly know this was Austria's second-largest city, it's so easy to drive through the suburbs and into the rolling green hills. Relatively flat compared to the mountainous west of the country, there are certainly none of those dramatic white-tipped peaks in the scenery around the city. This is a land of abundance, the food bowl of Austria, where small producers are just as common as industrial agriculture.

I drop into Imkerei Rosenzopf to meet beekeepers Gisela and Siegmund Rosenzopf, who manage 140 beehives and offer me a taste of the three distinct flavours of honey they're able to produce - from flowers, from the forest, and from chestnut trees. I visit Rupert Tax, who runs a small dairy called Hofmolkerei Tax, where the sheep grazing peacefully on the hill provide the milk for cheeses like camembert, feta, and Manchego. And I finish the culinary exploration at Kremser Greitbauer, one of the region's buschenschanks.

What is a buschenschank, you ask? Well, I'm glad you did, because it's one of the highlights here. A buschenschank is the name used in the Styria region to describe the tavern attached to a small vineyard. They first emerged in the 1780s when Austrian Emperor Joseph II allowed wineries to sell their own "new wine" on site, but to protect nearby restaurants, they weren't allowed to sell food. More than two centuries later, the ethos of that original decree has not changed much. They can sell cold food from nearby producers, but not hot food or pre-packaged drinks like coffee or cola.

Sitting at a wooden table, looking out over the rows of vines that climb up the hillsides around us as the sun heads toward the horizon, owner Bernhard Kremser pours me a glass of sparkling Schilcher, a grape variety grown only in Styria that produces a strawberry-evoking rosé. A platter of cold meats and cheeses appears in front of me, and I settle in for an afternoon surrounded by the laughter of locals enjoying the Mediterranean lifestyle of the Austrian countryside.

This is my second visit to Graz and it's wonderful to have the opportunity to discover the more rural parts of the region because, as is often the case, this is where you find the more relaxed and lesser-known gems. But the city itself is also full of treasure and, perhaps to the average Australian, is also lesser known than tourist hotspots like Vienna or Salzburg.

The historic centre of Graz is a World Heritage Site, where the wealth of the Habsburgs and artistic support of aristocratic families has left a beautiful ensemble of grand buildings and colourful painted facades. Special mention must go to the Styrian Armoury museum which has a collection of more than 13,000 historic weapons arranged on racks like they could be grabbed to mount a defence at any moment, as well as the glorious 19th-century Town Hall adorned with allegorical statues around its entrance.

But you see a lot of heritage in Europe. What grabs me in particular are the quirkier modern parts of Graz like the Murinsel, which functions as a bridge across the river but is in reality a large steel artwork that creates an artificial island with a café and performance space in the centre. It leads to the city's modern art gallery, a large bulbous green building that looks like it could have grown from the ground - or been dropped from the sky (hence its local nickname, "The Friendly Alien").

Nearby trendy neighbourhoods like Gries and Lend have street art, live music and cool bars. There are also several new vegetarian restaurants that aren't just catering to non-meat eaters, but are trying to create a special experience for anyone - such as Gerchtekche, where there's no menu and chef Michael Wankerl creates a unique six-course degustation nightly with techniques like fermentation and foaming.

Wandering the streets, I smile when I see a small vending machine selling a range of quirky vintage sunglasses - more street art than a commercial venture. And I smile again another day when I'm walking down a suburban street and spot a basket of fruit outside someone's house with a sign reading, "Apfel: Fallobst, ungespritzt, gratis!", which translates roughly as "Apples: Fallen from the tree, organic, free!"

The kind of people who would give away the apples from their garden are the same kind who would invite strangers into their home for a Eurovision party. It's a genuine generosity from a city that loves life and loves itself, and that any visitor would have trouble not falling in love with.

Michael Turtle was a guest of the Graz Tourist Office. You can see more things to do in Graz on his Time Travel Turtle website.