Graz meet up wrap up

It's been 3 days since the Hive Creator Days meetup at Graz finished, and everything is back to normal again. I don't know about everyone else, but I feel a little deflated now, after the great time during those few days. Here's my recap, and you can read more about the others in the Buzz Party Meet Hive community here

This is one of the things I always look forward to at each meetup. There were a bunch laid out on the table during the last day shouting "Take me home!" I obliged of course, and will show you the goodie contents at the end of the post.

I was so busy chatting to people during the meet up that I didn't take many photos. There were 8 presentations in total, 4 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, with lunch in between. My biggest takeaway was the announcement that the next HiveFest is in Malaysia in October. I actually found out the evening before from The Wizard, so was very pleased that they announced it officially in case I let slip the big secret!

Lunch was freshly prepared for us, and @akipponn also made us some onigiri ie rice balls. She bought all the ingredients with her from Germany, including a mini rice cooker!! I love Japanese food.

I was due to present in the afternoon, and whilst waiting nervously, I took this really cute photo of @asia-pl's kid, Bombla and his baby sister. I first saw Bombla in the Hive BeeCon in Krakow in 2023, he was a little older than his baby sister is now, and now he's a big brother. Time flies!!

Finally, it was time for my presentation. I just watched back the live stream yesterday, and was mortified to see that I babbled on for half an hour 😱. Anyway, the audience was very kind to me, I didn't see anyone fall to sleep and got a few interesting questions in the end 😃. Thanks to everyone who listened to my presentation and special thanks to @mipiano for taking these photos for me.

After all the presentations were done, we went to visit Schloss Eggenberg. We were very lucky to have our very own guide @elmirabear to lead the tour. Did you know that this house is 400 years old this year, and has 365 windows in total? It also has a very large park. After a whizz around the house, we joined the others for a beer in the park, and played around taking some cheesy photos 😍

On Saturday, we started with a Clean Planet walk in the morning. I'll be posting about that separately because I've never done a Clean Planet post before, and the whole event deserves its own post. You can see we're armed with gloves and a claw ready to pick up the trash.

After that, lunch, and a bit of free time, we reconvened for a guided tour around Graz. I felt I didn't get to see enough of Graz because I didn't spend that much time here. The guided tour was a great way to learn a bit more about the city. We were taken to this quaint little courtyard, I can't remember why the guide said this courtyard was so special, it might have been something to do with them being typical pretty courtyard in the middle of the city.

For dinner, we were taken to place called Genussplatz. We had to take a tram and change a bus to get there. It sounds far away, but it's walkable, more on that in a minute. The view was great, and we all sat outside. Luckily the weather was great, as was throughout all the time we were in town.

The cold plate was a nice change to the schnitzel we've been having 2 days in a row 😅

After dinner, @elmirabear said we could walk back to the city center, it was only take half an hour. That sounded like a great idea to see more of Graz and to walk off the food. We went down some side roads, through a residential area, it was interesting to see the local side of the city. We seemed to be walking for ages, and like little kids, we kept on asking are we there yet😀. She always said yes, we're nearly there. One thing I noticed after a while, @elmirabear is tall, she's at the front on the left and is as tall as, if not taller than @elmirabear She also told us this is her jogging route. It started to dawn on me when she said that, perhaps her 30 minutes applies to her jogging with her long legs, and for us walking with short legs, it would take much longer 😭😭

Finally, we reached the last day of the meetup. Quite a few people had already left by now, and a smaller group of us met up for breakfast at the train station. There was still about 15 of us. It was lovely to see them for a last time before I was due to leave. As I was drinking my coffee, suddenly the waitress came round and said she had to ask us to leave. I was a bit taken back and thought she asked us to leave because we were a big crowd and had been there for a while. It turns out there was a bomb alert and everyone had to evacuate! Multiple police cars had arrived and I could see a lot of policemen standing around.

I quickly finished my coffee, then we all walked off to one side, and hung around for a while watching the activity with @honeydue, @honeydue and @honeydue

With our breakfast meeting cut short, @elmirabear suggested we go to a park for a picnic. She is very resourceful, and got some picnic mats from a friend who lived nearby, and also got her son to bring us a table tennis set to play ping pong. @elmirabear's van was parked nearby, he went to grab his guitar to play some music for us. The impromptu event turned out to be quite a success, till we finally had to leave.

And finally for the contents of the goodie bag. I love it!! I have always wanted a Hive mug, and now I finally got one!! There's a mouse pad on the left, perfect, my old one is falling to pieces. The notepad on the right and Hive pen is very useful as is a Hive umbrella!!! And finally, we get lots of stickers! I bought two stickers (on the left), they were created by Hiveans exclusively for this event. Now I bet you are jeolous of my goodie bag and the great time we had 😄

And finally, a massive thank you to @tibfox and @tibfox for organising this wonderful event for us. You guys rock!!