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Published: October 18th 2006
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That's right folks! You are currently reading the blog of a newly appointed official temporary resident of the Republic of Slovenia! Me and Elise rented a car Monday to drive down to Trieste, just across the Slovenian-Italian border. There, we headed straight for the Slovenian embassy, and, after so much time and frustration, finally recieved our Visa's!! It was quite an exciting moment I must tell you... when we left the office we let out a little celebratory 'WOOHOO!'.... We didn't spend to much time in Trieste, just had lunch and walked around for a bit before getting totally lost trying to drive out of the city!
We took the back roads home, which were so much nicer (and cheaper) than taking the toll-highway. The Slovenian countryside is indescribably beautiful... rolling hills covered in lush green, gold and red fall colors spotted with tiny red-roofed villages always over-looked by at least two small, but beautiful, churches. Unfortunately, I ran out of batteries for my camera so no pictures from the beautiful drive home... you will all just have to come and see the amazing unknown beauty of Slovenia for yourselves!
The day before Trieste, Sunday, I went on a
Stalactites? Stalagmites?
Does anyone without a degree in the things ever remember which is which?? day trip to Postojna - a little town in the South of Slovenia - with a group of 6 other students. We got off to a slow start (partly due to my lack of navigation skills... why would they let the blonde have the map??), but eventually found the caves we were looking for. Oh, I should explain... along with the beautiful countryside, Slovenia is also characterized by an immense amount of BEAUTIFUL caves. I think there are something like 4000 caves in this tiny little country that have been carved out by rivers and pools. We went to the most touristy of the caves, complete with railcar to transport you to the inner depths of the cave, and guided tours in English, Italian, German, Spanish, French and Slovene! My camera was dying, so the photos are a little blurry, but the size of some of these caves is astounding. The tallest one was 40 meters high, and the stallactites and stallagmites were beautiful. Some of them were so thin they seemed to be sheets of cloth hanging from the roof. We came to this one part and I heard music down below, so me and Linda wandered away from
Male Chorus
Amazing... such a little treat! the group, and we came to this one cave where a group of 8 or 9 men were signing beautiful beautiful traditional slovenian songs in harmonies that echoed off the enormous cave walls to become the most soul-melting tones I've heard in my life. We listened to two songs before heading back to try to find our group (and getting chastized by a tour guide along the way for not staying with our group! i felt like i was in elementary school again!).
After the caves, the group of us took a long lunch consisting of a massive table FULL of mediocre pizza, then took a taxi (because the busses are horrible on Sundays) to Predjamski Grad - a fairytale castle built into the side of an immense rock face. It was by far the best castle I've been to yet, complete with most of the things I always assumed all castles to have: a million different random rooms, caves and caverns extending into blackness where there must be dragons lying in wait for their next curious-tourist-lunch, secret rooms behind velvet curtains, friars performing daily chores in tiny rooms behind the chapel, battered men hanging in dungeons (don't worry
it was a dummy), and secret lookout points high up in the rocky walls. I loved it! We only had about 45 minutes there on Sunday due to the taxi only waiting that long for us, but Elise and I did go back on Monday so I got to spend a little more time enjoying the beauty of it.
As for today, after an 8am class (see, I AM going to school here too!), I spent the day with my friend and fellow exchange student Patrick from Poland wandering around and discovering new places in Tivoli Park (See "Beautiful Day" and "More Beautiful" entries for info about Tivoli Park). The photo's here are all Patrick's doing... he's an amazing photographer, which is great because I FINALLY have some nice pictures of myself instead of ones with my head cut off or that are tilted from asking other random tourists to take pictures of me along my travels! It was a beautiful and very relaxing day, which I needed after the weekend's excitement!
Well, that's all for now. Love you all,
Mel.
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Congratulations!
Congratulation on your official temporary residency! You continue to amaze me with the sites and stories. I am so glad you are having such a fabulous and unique adventure (and that you are finally in classes). Love you, miss you, Mumsy