Once a month, the cleaning women (they are all women) of Priesterseminar, in their blue aprons and white pants, cleaned the bathrooms of all the residents. The allotted time was about two and a half hours. If you wanted your bathroom sanitized, you had to be sure to take your keys out of the lock in your door. I considered filming these women in order to make visual Joachim’s claim of the immigrants who clean their bathrooms, but I was fairly certain that these women were locals, and very certain that they were not refugees.

ESC MedienKunst had a small holiday party with cookies and glühwein. Essentially mottled wine that is traditionally consumed outdoors in the freezing cold evening, glühwein facilitated these nachtmarkt stands that popped up near the historic center of Graz, making my walk from my apartment to Hauptplatz almost unbearable. Hundreds of local tourist hung out near the Glockenspiel, laughing and having a good time, swinging their arms, or worse, not moving at all. It made me borderline suicidal. Bah, humbug.

ESC’s party took the best of orange-infused wine with other spices like cinnamon, and paired it with the no-nonsense reality that indoor heating was more comfortable than tradition.

Austrian Recipe

Ingredients

2 bottles of good quality red wine
2 cups of water
juice of 2 lemons
5 oz sugar
6 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
2 oranges - cut into bitesize pieces

oranges for decoration

How to make it:

Put all ingredients in a pot and bring it close to boil

For additional taste cut 2 oranges into bite size pieces and add to the wine

Let simmer

Remove clove, cinnamon stick before serving it into lightly pre-warmed glasses

Decorate glasses with a slice of orange

Stand outside to clutter up the public space and bring the holiday cheer.