Blogs from Slovenia, Europe - page 59

After leaving the glorious Lake Bohinj, we made our way to Kranj to meet up with a guy we had befriended during our time in Vietnam at the beginning of the year. Zima (his nickname) met us with the same infectious smile that we remembered from all those months ago and drove us to his home, in the village of North Brnik (Zgornji Brnik in Slovenian). We first stopped off for a beer at a local pub before going to his house to meet his lovely wife and children for the first time. Zima is a stonemason and he showed us through his workshop before taking me along to meet the neighbours. The first guy I met was missing the top of his index finger due to a mishap at work and was currently limping around ... read more

We arrived in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana on (last) Tuesday morning. Slovenia is a a very small country---population just over 2 million---and Ljubljana is a city of just 254,000. I have heard it referred to as a mini-Prague, but since I haven't been to Prague I can't really say whether that's an accurate description or not! Slovenia in general is very green and Ljubljana was no exception. After spending some time here I think it would be a great place to study abroad. It had a very vibrant, bustling nightlife with packed cafes all along the Ljubljanica River. It was also safe and the locals were very accommodating, making it easy to get around. There aren't really a lot of sights, but I thought it was a great place to spend a couple days. We ... read more

With Peter's Happy Time just passed, we come to write our final installment of our adventure. Ljubljana is wonderful, it is very small, but has more character than the best parts of London. The riverside is packed with people drinking and laughing, but not throwing up and being rowdy as is usual back home. We have had a lovely couple of days here, and it is with heavy hearts that we start to think about returning home. Today was spent exploring the city on foot, starting with the castle. Every castle we've visited on this trip has been mostly a disappointment, and this was no exception. Although it is very pretty from the foot of the hill, it offers very little when you actually make the journey up to it. We caught the funicular (cable car) ... read more

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 ... read more

This will have to be a quick and photoless update, because I've only got 8 minutes left before my time on this computer runs out! (I also can't plug in my camera to add photos.) So last time I updated I was in Budapest. On the Pest side of the river, to be accurate, and I didn't want to hang around the city too long: there was some huge music festival going on, which means lots of rowdy drunk people at all hours of the day and very poor accomodation options. I ended up in some grungy hostel, which was much like the rest of the city in that it was really dirty. The only decent place that I managed to escape to for a while was the Buda side of the river, and particularly the ... read more