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Published: August 21st 2008
Slovenia and Croatia.
Crossing the northeastern Italian border we drove into Slovenia, and the Julian Alps. From there we made our way to the beautiful Lake Bled, the iconic lake with a church on it’s central island; pretty cool. The differences we noticed in Slovenia are the people look like eastern Europeans, the houses all look Austrian (we are only a few kilometres from the border), the people are friendlier and far more hard working than the Italians and there is empty space and greenery again. After feeling the major culture shock in Italy, we felt we could breathe slightly easier here as things looked slightly more homely and the small population (2 million) meant people actually start to care about you again, just like home.
The cheapest accommodation here is private rooms in a local’s house, so we stayed three nights in a lovely old lady’s house with her and her grandchild. The room was more like an apartment, with shower, toilet and even kitchen facilities. This is pretty exciting, and Jane came running out with the pots, pans and utensils that we have been waiting months to use. Lake Bled is about as touristy as Slovenia gets,
but not even on the same scale as Italy. The area is home to the nation’s adventure sports; white water rafting, skydiving, hiking, skiing, etc so it really felt like home.
The first day of our stay here was Jane’s 24th birthday, so we decided to have our first bit of relaxation in weeks, and maybe even no driving. We took a nice 6km walk around the lake, with Matt stopping to indulge in his favourite pastime; swimming. The water was so clear, turquoise and warm for lake water, making the area popular with the locals - unfortunately more than a few of them were ‘naturalists.’ Sick (bad sick). A few chocolates later and a relaxing meal at ‘home’ and it was a birthday like no other.
Second day in the Alps, we headed to another lake; Lake Bohinj, a few kilometers away. This lake is less touristy and developed but just as beautiful as Lake Bled (although without the cute church). We walked around this lake as well, a good 10km in pleasant weather (and more naturalists). At the end we decided to drive up to a nearby waterfall and take a look. Turns out you have
to pay 3 Euro to park at the gate and 5 Euro to walk to the waterfall, which works out to be $16 NZD for a 10 minute walk. We decided to make a silent protest and leave, wondering if there is anything in Europe that is actually free. This turns out to be just the start of costly trips as we get lost driving south and end up on the motorway. No big deal we think, the motorway will be sweet and will take us straight to where we want to go. After no more than 5 minutes on the road there is a police stop and we confidently give the cop our International Drivers License. After debating the validity of this, he tells us we don’t have a vignette on our car window. After pleading sincere ignorance he explains because we haven’t paid to drive on the highways (45Euro for a 6 month pass) we will be subject to a 150 Euro fine. After arguing and telling him we will buy one now he finally agrees to let us go, but tells us to drive straight to the nearest petrol station (20km away) where his cop ‘mate’ will
be waiting for us. Of course we do what any Kiwi would do and take the next exit and hide out til we find a way to escape. Naughty but we didn’t really have another option (having 30 Euros on us). This all happens as we have taken to eating the same pasta and tomato cooked meal every day for 2 weeks and drinking tap water and bread for all other meals to save on costs. That night we sat down and worked out all our routes between cities for the next week, avoiding all motorways and their fines.
When we finally got out of Lake Bled we headed south to Ljubljana, the nation’s ‘mini-Prague’ capital. Driving into Ljubljana we wondered what we were doing here, and if it’s a ghost town (turns out it was their national holiday). After driving between hostels we found a cheap one, that is a high school dorm during semester - and looks and smells like it. We spent the half day we had here exploring the central ‘sights’ - a church, a couple of bridges, a castle, a river and some coloured houses. The town is small, and the sights look very
Eastern European, with orange roofed buildings and rundown infrastructure. Matt was less than enthused but picked up when we realized the hostel provides free breakfast. After a real school cafeteria breakfast in a huge hall, we head to Croatia (Hvarstka) to see how far we will get in one day. Getting ridiculously lost due to our incompetence at Slovene and our attempt to avoid toll roads led us to a small mountain town in the middle of nowhere. After spending 10 minutes listening to Slovene directions we felt hopeless until a local offers to ‘escort’ us to where we want to go, as he lives nearby. These people are seriously friendly!
After major detours we end up on the Croatian coast, driving south. The coast is quite similar to Greece; dry, dark blue water and sky, sunny, rocky and inhospitable (to all but swimmers). On the way down we realize we are close to having slight burnout and decide we will spend a few days here recovering. And relaxing on the Adriatic coast can’t be too bad, we theorise. We kept driving until we reach an area called Starigrad Paklenica, a few kilometres before Zadar on the coast. Pulling
up to a tourist information centre we ask for help finding a cheap room and the girl finds us one nearby where our super friendly host runs over to meet us and offers us a room for 25 Euro, which is the same price we were paying to stay in a tent in Italy! Craziness. She notices us looking at some bizarre green things growing on her tree and offers us some of the local fruit ‘smokva’ (type of fig), thanks we say and half an hour later we have a huge bowl of them delivered to our room, along with a bowl of homegrown tomatoes. Fantastic.
The next couple of days revolved around sleep, swimming and even eating a meal with meat in it. This came about after our nightly pasta dish somehow lost its appeal one evening and we wrote a list of our cravings; chocolate bars (Bounty, Milky Bar, Picnic, Flake, Snickers, Mars, Crunchies…), chips (Burger Rings, Munchos, Cheese Balls, Pringles), Coke, and basically anything fried with meat and fat. We had met an Australian couple who were biking around Europe and told us in Austria the food is very meaty and fatty, instead of fat
free produce, they promote their food based on meat and fat content. We start getting excited about this and decide to blow our low fat, low protein, low nutrient, low flavour diet for a day and buy meat. In Croatia that is far easier said than done. Local dishes are pizza, pasta and seafood, not too good when you are looking for something really cheap and nasty. After walking the length of ‘town’ we realize it’s not going to happen (for anything less than 40 Euro) so we buy some pork sausages, chocolate bars, chips, soft drink and a piece of fruit and have a decadant evening meal. We were so hungry that after eating for an hour we said we could eat it all again, but thought we should go to bed before we exceed the budget. Looking in the mirror verifies our restricted diet -we have both lost weight and recommend the (budget) travellers diet to anyone wanting to do the same!
After our stay in Starigrad, we headed south on a long journey to Dubrovnik, the southern most town of Croatia. On the way we passed through Split, Zadar and other cities, although the most beautiful
were sheltered little bays with turquoise water. Arriving in Dubrovnik we realized it was another mostly walled city and proceeded onto the next little village to find some accommodation. We found a nice ‘sobe’ with a local family and stayed there three nights, feeling right at home! We swam in the crystal clear water and explored the walled ‘old town’ at Dubrovnik. Unfortunately there is a 50 Kuna ($12NZD) fee (each) to enter the castles, but we still had fun walking around the streets. Dubrovnik is so cute, old and yet so busy and alive; although the steep stairs shortened our visit (kids today..)!
We are off to Montenegro tomorrow (world’s newest country), and unfortunately Matt got another brief bout of food poisoning after eating a few tablespoons of meat from a bakery. After weighing ourselves Matt found out he has dipped below 80kg, which has not happened since he was 16! Bring on a good pie!
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Marg
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Food
Robert tells me that the people you are staying with in Canada are the most wonderful hosts - he has never seen such an amazing breakfast. Am sending them your flight times and photo today. Pleased to hear you are slowing down a little- rest days are essential.