Blogs from Styria, Slovenia, Europe
October 3rd 2009
(Excerpts from my book OUR SUMMER IN SLOVENIA, Amazon.com) As I have noted before, a major factor in Elysee and I deciding to spend a summer in Slovenia, is it being excellently situated to enable side trips to other countries. It is possible to easily drive from Bled to Budapest in six or seven hours. In our case, being in no hurry, we took several days stopping overnight at Celje, Slovenia, visiting Maribor, Slovenia's second largest city (110 thousand) and then stopping overnight again in the Lake Balaton region of Hungary. From there we drove on into Budapest. The following day we met up with our friends from Florida, Char and Al Love, for several days of adventure. First things first. We did not begin with the intention of staying in Celje. But, as is our ... read more
June 3rd 2009
We arrived in Slovenia via train from Graz. While there is no border crossing as both Austria and Slovenia are members of the EU, there was one thing we noticed immediately - the change of language! Suddenly we noticed that we had no idea of what people were saying or what the simplest of signs meant. When we arrived at Maribor railway station I had to give in to a call of nature and found myself standing at two doors, one labeled "Zenski" and the other "Moski" - luckily I could understand the pictures below the names! From that moment on Lorenza and I suddenly invented a whole new language between us, with every word ending in "ski" - for example "do you want a drinkski?" or "do you want to take a walkski" and to ... read more
May 8th 2009
Next morning D & J popped in to say goodbye as we were having breakfast - they were heading for the coast and we were off to Lake Bled. The drive to the town of Bled and the lake was only about 30km, which highlights one of the great things about Slovenia, it’s so compact. You could drive to just about anywhere from the centre at Ljubljana in couple of hours, unless you wanted to take the backroads of course which is what we often did. Lake Bled was beautiful and the Planet sums it up thus; “With its emerald-green lake, picture-postcard church on an islet, medieval castle clinging to a rocky cliff and some of the country’s highest peaks as backdrops, Bled seems too good to be true.” I’m not sure about the ‘too good ... read more
September 21st 2008
Die heutige Fahrt hab ich mir mit Step geteilt, wobei ich den Anfang gemacht hab. Nach wie vor müssen wir uns ja an die StVO halten, weshalb wir dann doch weitestgehend sehr gesittet gefahren sind. Denn schließlich will man(n), nicht kurz vor Schluss aus dem Verkehr gezogen und dann auch noch mit Touristengebühren abgezockt werden. Aber wir wären nicht die fantastischen 3, wenn wir nicht auch dafür ne Lösung hätten. Die ist nun mittlerweile auch schon zum Patent angemeldet, also nicht einfach nach machen!!! So nun zur Lösung, wir haben einfach die Ösis vorfahren lassen. Einfach und genial! Solang man selbst die Wagenkolonne anführt fährt man immer schön artig nach StVO und irgendwann, wird schon einer die Nerven verlieren und vorbei ziehen, das so genannte Opfer! In unserem Fall waren es zwei mal Ösis in ... read more
July 9th 2008
Hello from beautiful Aurora; last week we arrived home after an uneventful trip from Vienna. I like uneventful trips, especially on planes. We had a fun last few days in Europe let me tell you about them. We were traveling with the Atwood’s, Mark and MG. Luke’s parents. We drove south from Vienna and turned east at Graz and found ourselves driving through rolling hills not unlike we see in east Multnomah county heading towards the Cascade range. In fact the terrain is nearly the same. If Mt. Hood suddenly emerged behind the hills to the east we would be in Estacada. It’s very, very green and come to think of it if we substituted rock walls for grapes we would be in Ireland…beautiful. We found a nice Zimmer (hotel) on a hill overlooking all this ... read more
May 27th 2007
Yesterday I took a little drive with Reini to the border of Croatia. We had planned to drive at least 3 hours, and weren't very excited about that. The weather was really hot and humid, and Reini's air conditioner decided to poop out on us a week ago. Oh well, we said, for we needed to take the trip in order for me to be allowed to stay in Europe for another 3 months. The stamp in my passport from Croatia would be proof that I would be there for touristic reasons. I don't know if you'd call me a tourist of Austria, but if that's the way things must work here, well, then I guess I am, legally speaking. We packed a bag full of sandwiches and brought a bottle of sparkling water with ... read more
