my name is john and i'm 22 years old...

---

first of all, thank you very much to everyone who deemed me loved enough to waste 40p by texting me happy birthday, very much appreciated. thank you to everyone who emailed, facebooked, myspaced, yadda yadda too, lovely stuff. i had a brilliant day, and was considerably happier than all of you (fast show moment there), so woo, great stuff.

i've gotta go back to monday night! gah! anyway, monday night, went for a quiet drink with sonja and jerneja, which was great. jerneja is sonja's friend that i met in summer, and she is great, so it was ace to see her again and have some sort of catch up, although the conversation got a little strange. i'm not gonna explain that, i'll just leave it out there. it involved sheep, i say no more.

woke up early yesterday (slovenian time) as sonja had to go to work, got a lift into ljubljana and got my bum on a train to bled, aka my favourite place on the planet. got to lesce bled, and got a bus to the lake itself. it's still a wonderful moment when you go over the little hill and the lake just appears in your eyeline, beautiful stuff. got to the lake, and it really is the most beautiful thing. i know i ram on and on about this place, but there really is good reason for it. it's just immense. i ended up walking around the whole thing, stopping on the way for a birthday drink, which i miraciously managed to order in slovene. minor, gareth and danny, we really muffed up by not walking around it, from the other side the church is just immense. so yeah, i walked around bled, stopping quite a lot to sit down and laugh at how happy i was and how beautiful everything in front of me was. immense.

avoided a language problem with a bus driver by uttering the only slovenian words i seem to know (postaja?), got back to ljubljana where i was going to buy some trousers but alas no, i'm not sure how much money i have. i had to ring up 2 call centres yesterday, hsbc and orange, and both of them wished me a happy birthday. the orange callc entre person was especially excited, which was pretty nice. maybe it's because i'm here, everyone is just instantly ace.

went out for a few quiet pivos last night in kranj's premier rock bar, and just had a nice evening of chattage with sonja and jerry. had me some pizaa burek on the way home, even slovenia's post-drinking food is better than britain. brilliant. stayed at jerrys last night, and had my own little cabin type room, which was great. that man is a king i tell you.

anyway, sorry this is rushed, i'm getting a train to koper in about 5 minutes and wanted to get this done before i go. once in koper i need to get a bus to piran, or i might just stay in koper. it's the seaside! at winter! wow! oh, and the sun came out today, and the mountains were super visible, and yeah, wow.

slovenian music is awesome.

---