Hike along the Mur

After two hours I had 'done' Maribor. There was little else worth seeing. What to do with the rest of a spectacular summer day? No point in going back to Graz. Back at the station I enquired about a train to the town of Ptuj (pronounced pa-tooey). I had read in some guidebook that it was worth visiting. But the train did not run on Saturday, so pfooey to Ptuj. I thought a nice hike would be just the thing so I boarded the next train north and alit at the first station across the Austrian border, Spielfeld-Straß. I expected there would be marked hiking paths from there. Nearly every town has them. Walking down the hill from the station I found a Gaststätte (restaurant) in the sleepy town and enjoyed a lovely light lunch sitting under a chesnut tree. It was one of those 'life is good' moments. One has a lot of those in Europe. My speculation about hiking trails was confirmed in the fact that there were several. I chose the Murradweg (bike path along the River Mur) also called the Grenzweg (border path) beacuse it follows the river that separates Austria from Slovenia. The River Mur happens to be the stream that flows through Graz, so it is an old friend. I started off, happy as a lark. The asphalted trail is meant expressly for hikers and bikers. One finds a lot of trails of this sort in Europe. It followed the river for a while, passing lots of corn fields and fields of squash. The corn is not the sweet variety we prize so much; it is grown as feed for the pigs. Corn on the cob is still a rarity here (and it's expensive if you find it in a grocery store). The squash is used for making something called Kürbiskernöl (pumpkin seed oil). It's a Styrian specialty. They put it on everything. There were also stretches of forest, much appreciated as it was getting really hot. There were also a few sleepy villages along the way, like Unterschwarza and Oberschwarza. I walked until I got tired, had a rest, turned around and retraced my steps. I walked 12 km (8 miles), a little too much on a hot day. There were plenty of bikers, but these were people out for the fun of it, not the fanatical biking hordes I encountered in the Tyrol.