Austrian city finds room for icy nativity scene

	INTERACTIVE GALLERY

GRAZ, Austria (Reuters) -- For five years now, Gert Hoedl and his international team of ice sculptors have been heading to the city of Graz to build something out of ice.

The city fathers of Graz, which is 155 miles (250 kilometers) south of Vienna, wanted something to draw the people back to the inner city during the festive season.

Hoedl, an artist, came up with the idea of ice sculptures and got his friends to help out.

This year, they decided to build an ice crib with all the traditional figures from the Christian Nativity scene. The 98,000 pounds (44.5 tonnes) of ice was prepared specially in Belgium and brought to Austria by truck.

The whole construction took the team of Americans, Norwegians and Japanese six days to complete.

"It was an idea to bring tourism into the city and for me, nothing else but fulfilling a dream to build a crib out of ice," Hoedl said. "There is no other ice crib in the world. There are wooden and plastic ones, but none in ice."

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