Blogs from Slovenia, Europe - page 77

I have a little home! I moved out of Simona's beautiful little house yesterday... very hard to leave such a wonderful family I must tell you... and into my new appartment! It's very close to the faculty.,.. about a 5 minute walk if I don't get lost! I will be sharing a room, but right now its just me because the place was just renovated and I was the first to move in. Its a bit farther to downtown, but only like 7 minutes by bus so not to bad... (ps the buses here are wonderful... they don't really have a schedule, but guaranteed if you miss yours there will be another in like 10 minutes max... usually more like 5). I've already put up some decorations to make it feel like home a little more, ... read more

Took the train from Zagreb, the capital of Croatia to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia in the morning. Bought the train ticket at the train station just before departure. Wasn't a problem. Found the platform and boarded the train minutes before it pulled away. Shortly moving, the train stopped. It was time for an exit stamp courtesy of the Croatian Customs. We stayed on the train and a custom agent came by to check out and stamp our passports. Then moving again to the no-man's land (between the borders of the two countries) and the train stopped again. This time was more "serious" from the Slovenia Customs. There was even a police K-9 dog accompanied the agents. It was all courteous. We arrived in Vibriant Ljubljana few hours later. The train station was not too far ... read more

What can I say but I love Slovenia. I have had the most wonderful 24 hours, first with the party last night and then an amazing, culture-experiencing, death-defying, leg-burning hike today. Last night, after spending the day touring (see Beautiful Day entry) the city and doing a few errands, Simona took me out to a going away party for a student leaving for France for a year. The party was out at this little cabin/barn thing, and apparently the guy who was leaving invited everybody from his cell phone… even people he couldn’t remember who they were! Needless to say, there were a ton of people there, all getting pretty drunk and all waiting on this enormous stewing pot of traditional Slovenian Goulash. We drank good wine (they make excellent wines here mom!), and danced… even ... read more

So today just got better and better... I spent the afternoon by myself wandering around the city. I started out in the main park again, and found out it is actually more like 25x the size of city park in Kelowna. That, and it includes a huge, lushly forested mountain that compares to Knox in size and has great walking trails all over it! So I hiked around for about half an hour, of course in my skirt and crappy shoes... but it was too nice to not go! Every hundred metres along the trail, there are signs that have different stretches on them for you to do... Of course I had to stop and do them! And when you get to the top, there is kind of like a gym made of mostly wood set ... read more

Before booking our trip to Slovenia, we didn’t actually know too much about it. As it turned out, it was one of our favorite trips. The people were super-friendly and everyone we spoke to was fluent in English (many Slovenes spoke German and Italian as well.) We rented a car, which we did not originally plan to do, but it turned out to be a good decision because the roads were great and we were able to do day trips into Austria and Croatia, and to drive by a few extra castles and other sights along the way. The capital, Ljubljana (loo-blee-on-a), had a great downtown historic area, interesting architecture, and fun cafes and restaurants. The town is set up with kind of a medieval layout with a castle overlooking the city, a river flowing through ... read more