The Logistics Nightmare

---

One of the more interesting challenges that a person has to deal with when they arrive in a foreign country is logistics—the movement of yourself from one place to another. There a few factors that make this difficult: one, you usually know nothing about the city in which you have just arrived; two, the maps that you get at tourist offices are almost ALWAYS ridiculously inaccurate, hard to read, and maybe a little better than the map that you might have from the travel guidebook that you purchased before leaving; three, language makes any type of communication and understanding exponentially more difficult. Then if you’re attempting to use the public transportation; forget about it! You’re in for an adventure every time you step out the door. The product of this logistics nightmare usually means that your boots had better be made for walkin’ because that’s just what they’re gonna do!

For me, upon arrival in Ljubljana, instead of trying to decipher the bus system, I would walk where I needed to go; you just have more control of where you're going that way. I didn’t walk from the airport, mind you, but once I got settled in my dormitory I was walking all over the city getting my life organized and taking care of the university paperwork that is inevitably involved at every step of the process. I know many of you have spent hours walking from administrative office to administrative office on the OU campus only to be sent to yet another administrative office to find out that this last office that you have to visit to get your paperwork in order is closed for the day. What I had to do when I got here was very similar to that; however, there is one little catch—the offices of the University of Ljubljana are spread out all over the city. That meant that I was probably averaging about 10 miles of walking per day for the first week or two that I had been here. Now I would consider myself to be in pretty good shape; I’m young and healthy. No problem right? Except that the most walking I normally do, as is the same with most Americans, is from my front door to my car, and then from my car to the destination of wherever I’m going. And that is very little walking with an inordinate amount of sedentary activity in between. Needless to say my body, or more accurately my feet, were not used to this kind of punishment, and I developed a pain in the arch of my foot which I can only compare to a pain that I had after running a marathon. It was a sharp, absolutely crippling pain that resulted in a small limp. I know, I'm a big baby.

Since then though I am happy to inform you that I have become a professional bus chaser and have been known to tail a bus to the next stop at top speed for a kilometer or more as opposed to waiting 20-30 minutes for the next one in the blistering cold. I’m really waiting for the LJ track coach to recruit me for the team here since I have yet to fail in one of my pursuits.

Additionally, somehow, I have miraculously figured out the public transportation system here in Ljubljana. So, no more walking, and it will soon be nice enough outside to buy a bike (A very cheap, stylishly junky one). That will be nice since the city is small enough that you can really ride anywhere you need to go in 15-20 minutes. In fact, Ljubljana retains much of the feel of a quaint European city while somehow being cosmopolitan enough to keep life quite varied and interesting.

---