Fladi.at

Following two weeks of brainstorming and creative moments, I’m proud to announce on behalf of our team of students: QRAZ.AT

The idea behind it is to place stickers and posters with only QR codes on them across the city of Graz. People with smartphones will be able to scan them and will get an URL which redirects them to various webpages, based on logic which turns them into playing stones for games like a scavenger hunt or give them coupons and advertisements.

I’ll provide more information once the first batch of QR codes has been deployed in the city.

Today the sales for the “Frischluft-Ticket” of the local public transport (GVB) started. It’s a ticket valid for 6 months and it’s priced 99,00 €, which is half the price of a regular ticket for this time span. The number of tickets sold is limited to 5000.

The sale was announced to start today at 08:00 am. There should also be an online registration form for those who do not want or cannot go to the ticket sales point at the GVB customer center. At 07:45 am their webserver at http://www.gvb.at/, where the registration form should be available, was already overwhelemd by the sheer number of visitors looking to get their ticket.

As I rely on public transport for my work commute I was eager to get such a ticket, so I decided to go directly to the point of sales at Jakominiplatz. I arrived there by bike and was presented with this sight:

Waiting queue one block away from the point of sales

There was this huge waiting queue (I was there at approximately 08:30 am) of people waiting for a ticket.

I think this clearly shows that there is a huge demand for reasonably priced tickets among the people of Graz. The way this sale was planned was in no way sufficient for the demand, neither by preparing and testing their online presence (which is still unresponsive at this time) nor by providing only one point of sales.

The limited amount of tickets does not comply with the intention behind this idea, getting people onto the public transport instead of using their cars to reduce air pollution during the autumn/winter time.

To those who are responsible for planing this whole mess: Next time, don’t create such artificial bottlenecks!

Update: The tickets are already sold out. Too bad I didn’t get one

Today we spent all of our time in the city of Galway. No need for driving to the next B&B just strolling through the historic center. The weather was the the best we ever had by now here in Ireland. After the fog was gone at about 9am we could see a clear blue sky and we regretted not taking shorts and skirts with us. It felt like being somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea as we walked along the beach before entering the city center. Not much to say, we behaved like typical tourists, shopping through the city and searching for a good place for lunch. A short visit to the Irish National Aquarium next to our B&B was our last activity for today.

Tomorrow morning we will drive back to Dublin.

As we had this wonderful experience of watching the sunset at the Cliffs Of Moher yesterday, we decided to visit them again today first by boat and then by walking along the cliff side. We took the first boat in Doolin pier heading to the cliffs. The view up to those towering walls of stone above one was impressive but the boat took a rather quick round, only approaching the northern part of the cliffs before returning to Doolin to pick up the next group of tourists. As it was 10:30 by now we decided that we could visit the Doolin caves before going back up the cliffs for a short walk.

The cave is just 3 kilometers outside of Doolin and is accessible through a modern building. There is a staircase going straight down before one can enter the first cave through a low-ceilinged tunnel. The famous stalactite is really impressive and can easily be watched from nearly every direction.

Once we were back at the Cliffs Of Moher it was about 12:30 and it was crowded, really crowded. There was an emigration of nations going on. From the visitors center we walked south alongside the cliffs but there were “traffic jams” at every narrow passage. And there were people with Flip-Flops walking less then a meter away from the abyss, and those kids with large earphones on … crazy and crowded as I said.

Then we drove up to Galway through a typically Irish landscape. Once in Galway we found out at the tourist information that there was a Greyhound race to begin just a short walk away from the town center, so we headed there and left  four races later in a completely confused state of mind. We could not figure out how to read their programme and statistics about the partaking race dogs.

It’s already late and I’m tired after today’s trip, so I’ll keep it short. We went to Dingle … got screamed at by loads of little children during the boat trip to see the dolphin: “There he is!!!!” (while pointing at a bird swimming on the waves)

Dingle is okay if you are going there with your own family but for a young couple it’s definitely a bit to much screaming, whining and pushing. The drive up to Connors Pass was a quite pleasant one. The scenic view up there is fantastic but heavy winds made it hard to stay out of the car for more than a few minutes. Our next stop was at the ferry across Shannon. We drove up to Doolin to get our luggage into our room at the B&B there and then left for the Cliffs Of Moher to see the sunset. Just look at the last pictures of this post, they were taken during the sunset (around 9pm). Tomorrow we will go and see the cliffs by boat and then visit the Doolin Cave. Our next B&B is in Galway and it’s out last stop before returning to Dublin.