Austria | Graz | Terminator Terminated

Downtown Graz, with the famous clock tower above

Schwarzenegger Tells Hometown to Take His Name Off Stadium. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his offical hometown of Graz, Austria (actually he was born in Thal, about a ten minute drive from Graz) are having a spat:

“Politicians in the city of Graz had begun a petition drive to rename the stadium following Schwarzenegger's decision to allow the execution last week of Stanley Tookie Williams. The governor's refusal to grant clemency to the convicted murderer of four sparked outrage across Europe and revived an on-again, off-again effort in Graz to drop his name from the stadium.”

Shopping thoroughfare in ever-stylish Graz

Graz was the site of the Dalai Lama's 2002 Kalachakra Initiation. Besides the Terminator, other luminaries born in Graz include Arch-Duke Franz-Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 touched off World War 1; the “Bloody Baron” Ungern von Sternberg, a psychopath who raised havoc in Ulaan Baatar back in the early 1920s, and Heinrich " Seven Years in Tibet” Harrer.

Entrance to the townhouse of Arch-Duke Franz-Ferdinand. If only he had stayed home and not gone to Sarajevo that fateful day of June 28, 1914 when both he and his wife Sophia were assassinated on their 14th wedding anniversary. His last words were: "Sophie dear, Sophie dear, don't die! Stay alive for our children."

Palatial home of the Eggenbergs, to whom the Bloody Baron Ungern von Sternberg was related on this mother's side.