Pace yourself...

Is it possible to have extreme blog ridden guilt?  If it is in fact possible to be so negligent in ones blogging life, that one feels like every experience accrued is another drop of water in the overflowing bucket of blogable goods...then it's time to man up...find a computer and start to empty that bucket!  So bear with me, I hope to gracefully release the flow of adventures, instead of dumping the whole thing on your heads from behind, like football players do to the coach after they win a big game.

Drip...drip...drip...here we go...

I spoke to you last in Salzburg.  Refined, perfect (at least on the surface) and sweet Salzburg.  I was not prepared to like this place like I did.  It in the beginning was a necessary layover between Czech Republic and Slovenia.  Soon after getting there, we realized the Austrian way, was one we needed.  Here's a briefing  of what we saw.  First of all, it is so droll of me to continuously remind you of how cold it was.  That is a given.  Just assume at all times we are as cold as we have ever been.  Moving on...

People:  The people were amazing.  Seriously.  We hadn't stepped out of our hostel for 10 minutes before we had been approached by a lovely person about how they could help us.  Anywhere we wandered, the locals could sense that we were lost little lambs, and come up and talk to us.  These were the kind of people who remind me of how good it feels to be treated kindly while you're out of your comfort zone...as I try to stock that knowledge away for my summer job in tourism (which I sometimes (always) lose sight of).

Place:  Best Christmas market ever. Every one of the hundreds of booths were different...and beautiful.  Sparkly ornaments, waffle stands, OYSTERS!  Everything this girl loves (especially the oysters).

Pivo (beer):  We also had the extreme  luck of meeting two beautiful Aussie girls in the hostel bar one night...Hannah and Rachel.  We ended up getting along splendidly, and had quite a time of meeting up in the hostel bar, enjoying the first happy hour...which always quickly bled into the last.  We actually found ourselves without a bedroom to stay in our last night, and these two girls insisted we stay in their private room with them.

The oyster shack at Christmas Market.  Love those oysters.

The scene of the crime.

Our station at the hostel bar with Rachel, Hannah and our tasty friends.

Biggest Loser Salzurg?

Highlights:  Cory saw a frozen over fountain on one of our frosty excursions out with the girls.  Obviously, he had to test the limits of said ice.  He put one foot on...felt good...put a little more pressure on and CRACK!  He fell into the fountain, and managed to pull himself out before his body reached the slushy waters. We laughed, I mocked, and we headed into town to buy him socks to change into.  Back at the hostel that night, we talked to a girl who was on the "Sound Of Music" tour, who told us at the famous fountain in the movie...the one with the Pegasus, they noticed it had looked like someone had fallen through the ice, and the whole tour had all rallied together in laughter and speculation at what status of oblivious tourist it would take to test the ice and fall through.  Guilty as charged I suppose.  Yet another chance to humbly evaluate the stance I take on foolish acting tourists in my little tourist town of Skagway.  We are not so different, in the end...I hate to admit.

After we said our goodbye to the hilarious duo we had befriended, we headed off to Lake Bled, Slovenia.  Upon arrival we noticed the snow had finally caught up with us.  About three to four feet of snow sat heavily on the ground.  There is not much to do in Bled, except for enjoy the quaint beauty of Lake Bled and the fairytale island that sits amid it, with a tiny chapel perched atop.  We took the 2 hour walk around the lake, admiring the simple beauty of all.  Found our favorite pizza place and ate 3 meals there in 2 days.  Played an absurd amount of Buck Hunter on our iTouch (THANK YOU ERIK!!!).  Walking around at night proved scary, as there are no sidewalks and 6 feet of snow piled up on either side of the road...and Slovenians don't have the same safety bubble while driving with pedestrians that we Americans do.  That is...No.  Bubble.

Chapel on the island in the lake.

I officially turned into an ice witch.

After two full days there, we bussed our frost bitten booties to Ljubljana, Slovenia.  How can I convey the ways I love this city?  All I can say, is that you just have to go.  There is no way to properly describe is charm.  The willow trees weeping over the river, the cafe lined promenade, the Art Deco architecture...it is truly one of a kind.  We went on a tour of Slovenian architectural hero, Joze Plecnik.  He designed most of Ljubljana during the turn of the century, and made it the unique place that it is.  We toured his home, and learned that he was a sort of renegade in his field.  While Art Deco was the standard at the time, he infused classicism into his architecture, which really set him apart.  I am currently reading the Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, and it is all about architecture and the complicated webs of personalities and ideas that create buildings. This being said, it was very timely to visit this house where I had the privilege to investigate the private life of such a creative rogue.

All this said, we did stay in a wretched hostel.  It felt haunted, not with ghosts, but with the ultimate tackiness of communism.  Our room was drowning in the stench of other people's cigarettes.  Ugh.  We watched really bad TV there..  It seems Europeans know how to focus in on the worst of the worst in American television, and revere it as genius. To name a few highlights, "CSI Miami", "Bay Watch Nights," and the worst-worst-worst-might-not-ever-be-the-same movie ever, called "Long Weekend."  Promise me under any circumstances other than being stranded in another country, not able to understand any other shows, you will NEVER watch this movie.  Good. Thank you.

Main square in Ljubljana.

Street food=happiness.

That pink building was designed by Joze Plecnik.  I love it.

Dragon Bridge also designed by Mr. Plecnik.

Hot wine fuels all chilly adventures.

This woman on a large Asian tour wanted to steal Cory's smooshed penny at the castle.

 

Little Plecnik details like this grace Ljubljana.

Favorite Doner Kebaps ever..(Mary, recognize this?)

We really enjoyed our nights in Ljubljana, sitting in an outdoor cafe with heat lamps and blankets, drinking hot white mulled wine (Car, white is even better than red!), and watching the fabulously beautiful and fashionable students parade by.  I love that girlfriends are out together everywhere there.  They are arm in arm, enjoying each other, smoking many cigarettes and just being content with each other's friendship.  It makes me miss my good girlfriends (and mama) terribly however.

After we had enough of our magical Ljubljana, we headed for a respite in Novo Mesto.  We stayed with a wonderful woman named Suzana, who had taken my sister in through Couchsurfing back in 2006.  She has a great apartment where we experienced the luxuries of home.  Bath...kitchen...non-horrendous American TV...it was divine.  Just what we needed to recharge and charge ahead.  We can not say enough about the wonderful, humbling, hospitality of people like Suzana.  She was and is our travel angel.

After we had sufficiently relaxed, we took a deep breath and headed onward.  To Zagreb, Croatia.  Well, to be honest we had planned of making it to Plitvice Lakes, Croatia that night, but due to me misreading many train schedules, we ended up not making it past Zagreb that night.  Oops!  Oh well, you can not hold on too tightly to your travel ego, because after searching for transport and lodging every night, I've learned things can go wrong.  Very wrong.  So forgiveness and flexibility are necessary.  This being said, we stayed in Zagreb one night, and then headed out to Plitvice Lakes, for which the 16 interconnected lakes are notorious for their rambling beauty.  We found out...that is...not in the winter.  I had read there is no bad time to visit Plitvice.  That is a horrible lie. I have a very hard time admitting that there are just some things that should not be done as a winter traveler.  Visiting Plitvice is one of them.  The day as a whole is almost too exhausting to recall here, and I've already stated I'm going to avoid lamenting about '"how coooolllddd" it is and was, but this stop needs reinforcement.  It was traumatically cold.  The huge snow flakes blinded us.  We could not see.  We could not function.  Luckily, the lovely woman who's home we stayed at, had her brother bring us and her husband pick us up...or else we would have frozen and maybe died waiting for the unreliable bus.  I look forward to visiting this beautiful place in a time that does not kill me a little on the inside.

This trip took things too far...

I'm willing to admit my mistakes.  Sorry Cory!

The next day we got out of there so fast...and headed the 2.5 hours back to Zagreb.  Zagreb really exceeded my expectations.  We sat in outdoor cafes, under the heat lamps, watching soccer...just up my alley.  We spent one full day there, and around 2 pm on that day, we were walking by a small bar.  Cory just stopped outside to take necessary note of the low price of beer there, as we see a small man burst out of the door, and drag us inside.  He sat us down, poured us two beers, and from that point on...we were hospitality hostages.  My good friend Julie told me an amazing story about when her and her husband Joey were kept hostage by people who were almost overly hospitable.  Her story (which took place in central Asia) was extreme and involved bears...but ours was a little more tame.  He spoke no English, but we managed to sit and "talk" until 10 pm.  We tried to leave at least 4 times.  Every time we would put on our coats and say..."we better go..." someone would come in and buy us a drink.  It was magical really.  Plates of sheep cheese and loaves of bread and sliced peppers would appear on our table and not on our bill.  The bar owner offered to take us to a thermal hot springs after he got off work, and then showed me how I could wrap my scarf around to make a bathing suit.  His coverage configurations didn't quite fly for me, so we declined...but when he left for the springs, his son Aty came in and kept us company.  The same drunk man at the bar kept buying us beers, so we kept sitting.  It was really good time.  When we got back to our hostel that night, the Slovenian girls listened to our tale of generosity with awe, telling us that kind of hospitality would never be extended to anyone other than Americans in Croatia...that Americans are very well taken care of there.  Works for us!

The next day we boarded a 7 hour train to Belgrade, Serbia.  I was so excited to go to a country I hadn't been to.  It had proved to be quite interesting. Today we wandered around the city and fortress.  I have a cold, so am feeling less than energetic, but we have managed to get a good feel for this complicated city.  Right now we are sitting in our hostel, drinking Serbian wine, listening to the noises of life here, go on below us.  Tomorrow we will board a train to Thessaloniki, Greece.  There we will shake of the chills of the past, and look towards the warm and tolerable future.  Ahhh, I'm relaxed just thinking about it.

We have decided to cut our Balkan journey short for obvious reasons.  Everyone we talk to here, after they tell us how crazy we are for coming here in the winter, tell us that this is the coldest winter they can remember in their lifetime.  When an alternative is just a 16 hour train ride away, it feel crazy to resist.  So in 24 hours, we will be Greece bound.  We could not be happier about this.  Talk to you soon from Greece!