Lst n Slvn
Monday was a day of traveling. We finally activated our Eurail Pass and are still unfamiliar with how exactly it is supposed to work (some officials seem puzzled as well). At one of our transfer points we only had 4 minutes between hopping off a train and onto another unknown train. Luckily for us everything has worked out so far, but we can already tell that the stress level can be significant during multiple-transfer trips.
In the afternoon we had a 5-hour layover in Zagreb. The good luck that has graced us since our arrival in Eastern Europe did not go away, and we discovered that the train station was situated right in the middle of the Croatian capital, allowing us to store our luggage and walk around the city for a while, and then lay on the grass, have a picnic, and relax at one of Zagreb’s parks. The city was vibrant and full of young people, many of which chose the parks to shamelessly make out with their significant others, imprinting Zagreb in my mind as Europe’s PDA capital until somewhere else tops it.
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After a gorgeous train ride through the mountains, rivers, and villages of the Slovenian countryside, we arrived at the capital city of Ljubljana. Over our first 24 hours here, it looked like our Eastern European luck had run out. While we had no trouble finding our couch surfing contact’s apartment building, her name was not listed by the ringing bell board and we were locked outside for 45 minutes, when a nice man who lived on the same building showed up and helped us reach her.
Natasha was a CS pro: based on the schedules posted on the doors in her apartment, there are couch surfers in her place more often than not. She was getting ready to go meet up with a couple of Serbian CS dudes who — we came to find out — had spent the previous day sending out couch requests to Ljubljana girls and rounding them up for a night out. We were exhausted (we had been up since 5:30am) but had just had some very strong coffee on the train, so we hastily decided to tag along with the random, large group.
We headed into the heart of Ljubljana’s alternative scene, which also happened to be rather shady (the bars sold beer without receipts and allowed indoor smoking despite it being strictly prohibited). After a while, we got sick of the smoke, loud techno music, and a couple of arrogant Slovenian girls who ignored Norika probably on the basis of her being American. Much to the disappointment of the blunt Serbian guys, Natasha called a cab and the three of us left to a different bar on the other side of town so we could experience the audio cancer that is turbo folk. A Serbian singer Natasha likes was performing accompanied by a keyboard player and a guitarist. What did it sound like? Equal parts standard heavy metal guitar, cheesy regional pop keyboards with pre-recorded drum beats, and awful lyrics (or so we were told, because we obviously couldn’t understand them), it would have been a lot more comical if it hadn’t been so incredibly loud — Norika is convinced that she has suffered irreversible ear damage. The Balkan version of “Jersey Shore” guidos sporting white jackets and absurd hairdos were loving it.
We slept in and woke up feeling subpar. Within minutes of walking our daytime exploring, we sat down to look at the map and I ended up with a massive piece of gum stuck in my behind. We did the best to remove it before lunch, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from trying to steal the chair cushion when I got up and started walking out of the restaurant — by the time Norika and I became aware of this embarrassing situation, I was already several feet from my seat.
In any case, Ljubljana is a remarkably functional city. It is rather small to be a country capital (about 280,000 people, a fifth of which are university students), with recycling bins all over the place and, at least near the city centre, way more bikers and rollerblades than drivers. The expression “environmentally friendly” could have been invented to describe this place. Unlike some of the other places we had visited where old historical sections have been turned into tourist camps, Ljubljana’s have been incorporated into newer buildings and business (e.g. different areas of the Ljubljana Castle have been turned into art gallery spaces). That said, we can’t quite claim that this city matches the charm of Budapest or Istanbul, nor that it can match our unforgettable experience in Pecs. In a way, it feels like a “hangover” stop, perhaps as Annecy would have felt after Amsterdam and Paris.
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Our host Natasha was busy most of the time, but she did provide us with some invaluable advice on food (Slovenian soups are both filling and delicious), wine (Slovenian wines are very good and cheap; they are mostly consumed within the country) and desserts, specifically cakes. Also significant was her suggestion that we check out the resort town of Bled on a day trip. After looking the place up online, we knew we wanted to spend way more than just a few hours there. We had found our next destination.
The Eastern Europe guidebook in our B&B describes Bled as so beautiful that it looks as if it was created by some “God of Tourism”. That description is accurate: Lake Bled is one of the most gorgeous places we’ve ever been to, period. We’re talking a beautiful thermal lake with a tiny island in the middle where a medieval church was built; above it, to the northeast, there is a 999-year-old castle perched on top of a steep hill. In the background, forests of light and dark green, and past them, the Julian Alps. It’s ludicrous, unbelievable eye candy.
While the town of Bled itself is rather touristy, we appreciated the bike/pedestrian path that goes all the way around the lake. Following a routine that started in Budapest, we’ve been buying sandwich supplies earlier in the day and eating most of our meals in our room; we are thus able to set some money aside to try out local desserts like the decadent Kremna Rezina, (“Cream Cake“), which consists of a tower of fresh whip cream on top of a layer of custard; there are thin layers of pastry on top and bottom which do little to dissuade one from the impression that you‘re about to consume a block of cream. Like all other desserts we tried in Bled (or Slovenia for that matter), it was amazing.
We stayed at a small B&B ran by a 61-year-old round man aptly named Bojan… and his 84-year-old mother who did not speak a word of English. Over the course of a few overlong conversations during our breakfast, Bojan told us about how controlling his mom was and how she wouldn’t let him change anything to improve the place. “Wait until I’m dead” was apparently her standard argument closer. She seemed very sweet to us, but not someone to be messed with, for sure. Bojan also ranted about his family, economics, the Slovenian judicial system, boats, doctors, real estate, and to my delight, life behind the Iron Curtain. It was fascinating to finally chat with somebody who lived most of his life on the “other” side of history, and hear about what is now better and what is now worse.
***
Though we hadn’t exactly planned it that way, our days in Bled were mostly occupied with hiking. We got very lucky with the weather and scored three sunny days in a row — just two weeks after a chilly time in Istanbul, we were back in shorts and t-shirts. On our first day, we climbed up to the castle to witness the jaw dropping view of Lake Bled and the church island; we then walked down and all way around the water, taking an obscene amount of pictures of all these things throughout the process.
The second day we took a bus to Lake Bohinj, which sits within the lines of Slovenia’s one and only national park.
We actually had no idea what there was to do there (we just heard it was a nice place to visit), so upon our arrival we got a travel map from the Tourist Information center and decided to climb one of the surrounding hills to reach a nice viewpoint for the area.
As I mentioned before, Slovenia seems like a fully functional country… up until you reach a poorly marked trail in the middle of nowhere. We had little trouble finding the awesome viewpoint, but on the way down — just seconds after I mentioned I was surprised that we had not got lost — our trail disappeared and we found ourselves… lost. At least we had a pretty good idea of the general direction we had to follow (that is, down) and eventually we found a rocky creek streaming down the hill. We thought of walking along it, but nature was quite stubborn and we had no choice but activate trooper mode and walk on the creek, stepping from rock to rock so as to not get our feet wet. We climbed over fallen trees from time to time, and aside from a single misstep (when 30 minutes later we did find our trail, I sank my right foot ankle-deep into mud) we came out of this adventure unscathed.
After our lunch picnic, we irresponsibly decided to walk the 10K trail around Lake Bohinj, throughout which we also got a bit confused (“lost” would be an overstatement compared to the earlier situation). Our setbacks made it seem like we were going to miss our bus back to Bled, so for the last few minutes we were sprinting past people in order to make it to the bus stop… and learn that we were actually an hour early (the bus we thought of getting only ran during high season).
On Saturday we hiked to a different part of the national park to visit the Vintgar Gorge. There were two trails right past the park entrance, one leading up and the other down. Once more, the lack of signs or information boards (or even maps, in this case) led us to gamble on our path, and up we went. Forty-five minutes into it, there was nothing to indicate that we were on the right way, and even after asking a couple of hikers about “Vintgar” and being told we were indeed on the right track, when we reached a village (not a gorge) Vintgar I felt like breaking things. When we finally turned to walk all the way back we realized we were not so lost after all — we simply didn’t know the path took a 300-degree turn right before reaching the village. Anyway, we did find the gorge and it was beautiful and worth our while and everything was fine. But Slovenian trails are emotional roller coasters.
***
Sunday morning Bojan dropped us off at the train station and we bid Bled adieu. Little over an hour (and another beautiful train ride) later, we reached the end of the line, walked out of the station in Nova Gorica and crossed the most unguarded border we have ever seen — getting into Italy required nothing more than crossing a road, no passport checks, no stamps, no nothing. That’sa motherland.
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