Breakfast the next morning was another splendid affair, this time served in the ornate Venetian Room. Unfortunately we were unable to see Edward, my Granny Kate's brother, as he had had to fly to London on short notice, and his flight back to Salzburg got in at the exact time our first train of the day left :( the first train of the day, to Linz, was a little late and packed full of Austrian football fans from Innsbruck on their way to Vienna for the match against Germany. Sat opposite us was a man with an Austrian football shirt, lederhosen, long red socks and traditional-looking fringed shoes. On his knee was a Tyrolean mountain hat, which we had been tempted to buy in Innsbruck, with a huge pheasant feather sticking out of it. On our second train we picnicked and I sang about sweetcorn and insects to pass the time. Our passports were not checked as we left Austria and entered Slovenia, like they haven't been for the last few borders we have crossed. Our final train, from Maribor to Ormož, was brightly grafittied on the outside and full of students. We nearly missed the station, as each one has only a small sign informing you of where you are. When we got off the train it was completely empty apart from the two other people who got off the train when we did. The station appeared to be closed, there were no timetables and no staff. We got a taxi to our village, Lačaves, and were met by the neighbour's son, Jerry. The house is perched on a hillside with vineyards all around it and behind it down the sloped garden. We spent our first few days there getting ourselves used to the area and took walks between the vines where we later saw a young deer. Outside the house are two large cherry trees, one of which is home to a family of blue tits, who we watched with interest the whole time we were there.
We stayed at the house in Slovenia for 2 weeks, but had no access to the internet so you'll have to have the whole lot in one go...
After dusting off the bikes we found in the spare room we headed out for a ride, our first being a mere 5km, the second trip being over 15km! We were very impressed since it's been about ten years since either of us cycled! During these bike rides I taught John the names of all the flowers, birds, insects and butterflies and we made friends with a small grasshopper who hopped onto John's belly and from there onto my head! In a bit of a role switch, I also had to mend his bike chain twice during our rides, silly John!
We tried all the local wines, the ones from the vineyard outside the house and some from the neighbour's vineyards too. We had been given bottles of the stuff by the neighbours and been told to help ourselves to the cellar in the house, woop!
After a few days we decided to take a long ride to the nearest big supermarket, nearly ten kilometres away, but foolishly didn't think to take our backpack and were given only shoddy bags which broke after a couple of kilometres. What a sight I must have looked with a packet of Jaffa Cakes poking out of each of my side pockets and a huge tin of peach slices down my vest top! Cycling around here (preferably sans peaches) is just perfect - whizzing past vineyards and patchwork fields on either side of the roads, the air perfumed with sweet figs and rosehips.
The first few days at the house were thundery but the second week was crazy hot, and eventually became too hot to go for bike rides during the day and we had to resort to watching Adriatic MTV (it was awesome!) and a local channel which showed people playing the accordion no matter what time of the day or night. During the thunderstorm that night we watched tacky-looking Latin American soaps and read. In the time we were there I got through 9 books, including 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime', 'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress' and 'The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency' which had reviews on its front cover from, amongst others, my great aunt Shena and Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers, which was an odd combination to come across!
One of my favourite memories of the entire time we spent there was a warm, stormy evening (after the week of crazy sun when it was too hot to do anything except read) when we were entertained by the biggest and most beautiful storm either of us have ever seen. The lightning started just in the sky, volleying between the clouds, highlighting them in golds and pinks, then when it finally started raining it came down in silver streaks, lighting up the rain and making it look like glitter falling from the sky. The storm caused most of the TV channels to die so we stood on the balcony and watched the storm play out above us until the rain got too much and we retreated to watch it from the sofa. I have never seen a storm as pretty as that, the lightning wasn't like "normal" lightning, instead of heading down to the ground from the sky it moved between the clouds, zigzagging across the sky horizontally, in single streaks, in forked streaks and one time spread out like the veins of a leaf. The thunder rumbled for hours and the lightning struck pretty much constantly. After a number of hours it finally stopped and the silence was filled with the chirruping of a hundred grasshoppers.
Where We're Going
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Sunday, 15 June 2008
Funk Taxi, Bar Flip & mermaid horses
A long overdue Salzburg catch-up...
We woke to sun streaming through our windows and excitedly went to breakfast in the Great Hall. We were not disappointed: breads, jams, yoghurt, cereal, fruit, nuts, chesse, cold meats, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs and cake! Guests from the wedding trickled in, but we had a table to ourselves. I drank Assam tea and multivitamin juice and devoured an entire plate of eggs on toast, and John was as happy as Larry with all the meat he was now able to have.
We took a stroll around the lake after breakfasting, where we saw dozens of pretty blue dragonflies, lots of geese and a coot family with a couple of ducklings who followed us up the road for a good 10m, as though we were coot pied pipers. I was amused to see other "grown-ups" making goose and duck sounds at the birds, and relieved that it wasn't just us. We walked the circumference of the lake then past wild strawberry-lined hedges towards the Festung Hohensalzburg. Typically, part of the fortress had scaffolding on - that stuff seems to follow us! Regardless, it was a really awesome castle, there were rooms full of weaponary, armour and medals, a Golden Chamber, a gallery of torture devices and a museum called 'Welt der Marionetten' which was fairly freakish. During our walk around the fortress we saw a woman dressed all in Burberry, shoes and all, and learned about Archbishop Leonardus whose coat of arms has a turnip on it. We walked up to the highest point of the fortress, the viewing platform, and giggled as an angry Japanese man was being told off by a tour guide for not smiling in his photos.
We walked to the main part of town through the Fan Zone and saw a poster advertising bands who were due to be playing there later in the week. Our favourite band was Pond Pirates who were apparently an amalgamation of rock, jazz, ska, reggae and polka. We walked past a lovely shop called 'Christmas in Salzburg' and got all excited about it, despite it being 191 days away and passed YET ANOTHER Hotel Bristol, the swankiest we have seen so far. Heading towards the train station we passed Elmo Cafe, a sign saying 'Space Invaders Against Sexism' and a woman on a bike wearing what used to be a floppy straw hat but had been cut into a baseball cap.
After reserving our seats we walked through the city, now almost empty of fans, and saw a baby bluetit, a hoover shop with the "Vampyr Power" hoover in the window and a Hotel Sacher van with a pun on the numberplate. Having had such a nice day we rewarded ourselves with some warm food (more falafel for me!) and wondered why English takeaways don't also wrap the food in foil to keep it warm. We saw two nuns, neither singing, one of whom was dashing somewhere at great speed. We took a shortcut back to the Palace, and on the way saw a horse with an emo hairstyle and a foal, a pond full of flamingoes, some baby goats and piglets, and two ducks with blue beaks (they are called ruddy ducks)! We took a final walk around the Palace grounds and met another family of ducks, this time with ELEVEN tiny ducklings!
We woke to sun streaming through our windows and excitedly went to breakfast in the Great Hall. We were not disappointed: breads, jams, yoghurt, cereal, fruit, nuts, chesse, cold meats, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs and cake! Guests from the wedding trickled in, but we had a table to ourselves. I drank Assam tea and multivitamin juice and devoured an entire plate of eggs on toast, and John was as happy as Larry with all the meat he was now able to have.
We took a stroll around the lake after breakfasting, where we saw dozens of pretty blue dragonflies, lots of geese and a coot family with a couple of ducklings who followed us up the road for a good 10m, as though we were coot pied pipers. I was amused to see other "grown-ups" making goose and duck sounds at the birds, and relieved that it wasn't just us. We walked the circumference of the lake then past wild strawberry-lined hedges towards the Festung Hohensalzburg. Typically, part of the fortress had scaffolding on - that stuff seems to follow us! Regardless, it was a really awesome castle, there were rooms full of weaponary, armour and medals, a Golden Chamber, a gallery of torture devices and a museum called 'Welt der Marionetten' which was fairly freakish. During our walk around the fortress we saw a woman dressed all in Burberry, shoes and all, and learned about Archbishop Leonardus whose coat of arms has a turnip on it. We walked up to the highest point of the fortress, the viewing platform, and giggled as an angry Japanese man was being told off by a tour guide for not smiling in his photos.
We walked to the main part of town through the Fan Zone and saw a poster advertising bands who were due to be playing there later in the week. Our favourite band was Pond Pirates who were apparently an amalgamation of rock, jazz, ska, reggae and polka. We walked past a lovely shop called 'Christmas in Salzburg' and got all excited about it, despite it being 191 days away and passed YET ANOTHER Hotel Bristol, the swankiest we have seen so far. Heading towards the train station we passed Elmo Cafe, a sign saying 'Space Invaders Against Sexism' and a woman on a bike wearing what used to be a floppy straw hat but had been cut into a baseball cap.
After reserving our seats we walked through the city, now almost empty of fans, and saw a baby bluetit, a hoover shop with the "Vampyr Power" hoover in the window and a Hotel Sacher van with a pun on the numberplate. Having had such a nice day we rewarded ourselves with some warm food (more falafel for me!) and wondered why English takeaways don't also wrap the food in foil to keep it warm. We saw two nuns, neither singing, one of whom was dashing somewhere at great speed. We took a shortcut back to the Palace, and on the way saw a horse with an emo hairstyle and a foal, a pond full of flamingoes, some baby goats and piglets, and two ducks with blue beaks (they are called ruddy ducks)! We took a final walk around the Palace grounds and met another family of ducks, this time with ELEVEN tiny ducklings!
The Cow of Music, Fingerlos Cafe & brooms with glasses
We caught an early train to Salzburg and arrived to beautiful blue skies and sunshine. Despite having looked for a hostel months in advance we were unable to find anywhere to stay (unaware at this time that the football was on) and it had looked for a while as though we would have to remove Salzburg from our itinerary, until I was reminded that my Granny Kate's brother and wife live here. We contacted him and arranged to stay with him here, at Schloss Leopoldskron. Some of you might recognise the Palace, as it was used in the filming of The Sound of Music! It is a really beautiful building. We knew we would enjoy Salzburg, but having somewhere so magnificent to stay really does help!
The palace is only 15 minutes away from town so we checked in and headed straight back out again. The streets were flooded with Russian and Greek football fans and it was impossible to get a real sense of the city when it was so full. We walked through the old part of town, over one of the bridges and through the Mirabellgarten, which was also filmed at, and found ourselves in a dwarf-filled garden. It wasn't so much a garden as a patch of grass with a path lined with stone dwarves circling it. There were lots of people taking "wacky" pictures of themselves with the dwarves but we refrained from doing so. I could not resist, however, having my photo taken with one of the huge stone unicorns we later spotted. I expected that picture to be my favourite of the trip, little knowing that the actual best picture of the trip was waiting for me just around the corner... Sat on a bench were not one, not two, but THREE NUNS! I know some of you will no doubt shudder with embarrassment at what I am about to tell you, but I simply couldn't walk past them without asking to have my photo taken with them. Even with my poor German I was able to ask them and they laughed, I think in disbelief that I would want to have my photo taken with them. They shuffled up, I sat down and we chatted in broken German/English about our trip and they chuckled when we told them England weren't in the football because they are rubbish. I wanted to hug them to say thank you as we left, but wasn't sure how appropriate that would be. If only they had sung to me, my Nun Quest would be complete.
Skipping through the streets, as only a nun-obsessed Vixie can, we reached a fairly dull looking modern area of town which we would have walked straight past had we not noticed what looked like the Crystal Dome from The Crystal Maze. Never wanting to miss a good photo opportunity, and obviously not having had enough excitement so far, we stepped into the "art" and had obligatory photos taken. Thinking things could not get any better we walked up a street where two women were playing badminton, right in the middle of the road. Salzburg is an odd place.
Because of all the football fans it was hard to get through town and see it properly, so we walked back to the Palace we'll be calling home for the next couple of days. When we got back we saw lots of people in wedding attire. Wondering how awesome it would be to have your wedding in a palace, we remembered how perfect our own wedding was (even sans palace) and went to bed happy and content.
The palace is only 15 minutes away from town so we checked in and headed straight back out again. The streets were flooded with Russian and Greek football fans and it was impossible to get a real sense of the city when it was so full. We walked through the old part of town, over one of the bridges and through the Mirabellgarten, which was also filmed at, and found ourselves in a dwarf-filled garden. It wasn't so much a garden as a patch of grass with a path lined with stone dwarves circling it. There were lots of people taking "wacky" pictures of themselves with the dwarves but we refrained from doing so. I could not resist, however, having my photo taken with one of the huge stone unicorns we later spotted. I expected that picture to be my favourite of the trip, little knowing that the actual best picture of the trip was waiting for me just around the corner... Sat on a bench were not one, not two, but THREE NUNS! I know some of you will no doubt shudder with embarrassment at what I am about to tell you, but I simply couldn't walk past them without asking to have my photo taken with them. Even with my poor German I was able to ask them and they laughed, I think in disbelief that I would want to have my photo taken with them. They shuffled up, I sat down and we chatted in broken German/English about our trip and they chuckled when we told them England weren't in the football because they are rubbish. I wanted to hug them to say thank you as we left, but wasn't sure how appropriate that would be. If only they had sung to me, my Nun Quest would be complete.
Skipping through the streets, as only a nun-obsessed Vixie can, we reached a fairly dull looking modern area of town which we would have walked straight past had we not noticed what looked like the Crystal Dome from The Crystal Maze. Never wanting to miss a good photo opportunity, and obviously not having had enough excitement so far, we stepped into the "art" and had obligatory photos taken. Thinking things could not get any better we walked up a street where two women were playing badminton, right in the middle of the road. Salzburg is an odd place.
Because of all the football fans it was hard to get through town and see it properly, so we walked back to the Palace we'll be calling home for the next couple of days. When we got back we saw lots of people in wedding attire. Wondering how awesome it would be to have your wedding in a palace, we remembered how perfect our own wedding was (even sans palace) and went to bed happy and content.
Saturday, 14 June 2008
Ich habe nur meine lederhosen vergessen!
On the way to the station to catch our train to Munich we passed, for the last time, my favourite shop in Innsbruck: 'Feeling Fashion - Trendy clothes for Trendy people'. The shop contains my favourite t-shirt slogan of the entire trip...
Secret Service Days
55 Days
Eddie Tigger
Secret Service
...written in silver on a turquoise t-shirt. Had it not been €35 I would have bought one for everyone I know.
Seeing another nun on the way to the station brought the Innsbruck Nun Count to an abysmal 2. She did not board the train, and instead we were joined by a dozen German football fans. As they sat down we noticed one had an enormous gash in his head, one had underpants on his head and one had an incredibly rude (but I don't think he knew that) slogan on his t-shirt. They ate sausages from a jar during the two hour journey.
We pulled into Munich earlier than scheduled, dumped our bags at the hostel (fifth floor with no working lift, gah) and set off to explore. The first shop of note was called 'Wormland' so we knew we'd like it here. Further down the street we walked past a Muslim woman whose headscarf was interesting to say the least, there were four motifs printed repeatedly on the scarf fabric and these were: a pair of lips with a big cross through them, an envelope with the words 'love letter' on it with a big cross through it, the word 'love' with a big cross through it, and a telephone with a big cross through it. I was desperate to ask where she had got it, but was distracted when we walked past a chocolate shop with chocolate ladybirds in the window. We went in and it was incredible! We bought what looked like a dark chocolate Colorado beetle decorated with milk and white chocolate, the size of my palm. Thinking it would be hollow, imagine our delight when we bit his tail off and found two little individual chocolates nestled inside! One was a fudge and one was a pistachio/marzipan affair - both were delicious.
We sat eating him on some steps where we also saw a priest with a briefcase and a man with a hat, beard AND pipe! I don't know if anyone else is familiar with the game 'hat, beard, pipe' but basically one receives points for men with hats, beards or pipes, double points if they have two of the above and bonus points for three of the above. It is a rarity, and you can only imagine how hard it was for me to contain my excitement. We also saw a man with a motorised push-bike sailing up a hill while other people were pedalling furiously, a van with a picture of a "rapper" and the slogan 'Pimp Juice' and a poster advertising 'pheromone clubbing'.
We saw lots of pretty buildings, the Theater Kirche, Staatskanzlei, Haus der Kunst and various other things before deciding to cross the river and head towards the Maximilianeum. The hedges that lined the road across the river were swarming with pretty yellow ladybirds and while looking at them we noticed a tramp washing his feet in the river below us.
We walked back to town through the Englischer Garten and stopped off at a supermarket which had cool shopping-trolley-basket contraptions, where we noticed that the eggs come painted fun colours, they sell McDonalds brand ketchup and you can buy chocolate katzenzungens (kitten tongues!)
We watched the Croatia - Germany match in the bar below the hostel and as soon as it had finished there was an enormous thunderstorm. The other bar opened shortly after the match finished and we went there for a free beer tasting. The guy running it, Pete, is awesome. He has a degree in the history of beer, and man does he know his beer. He explained to us all about the Bavarian monks who were the ones who made the beer and how all the peasants were starving to death because the monks were using all the best barley and yeast for beer-making. During Lent the monks had to fast, but they invented a "fasting beer" and they were permitted to drink 3 litres of it a day, and one litre of water. We met an Australian girl called Elise (and her huge stuffed crocodile, Barry) at the bar and we sat and watched Austria - Poland and drank with them until bedtime.
After having the best nights sleep I have had this entire trip, we wandered into a very grey looking Munich. We passed a shop we hadn't noticed the day before called 'Christ'. I wondered what it would sell, but was disappointed to find it was only rubbishy jewellery and I'm not entirely sure the Son of God would put his name to that. We ate chocolate beetles for lunch and continued wandering around in the rain.
We had another fun time that night with Elise, Pete and more beer tasting. We met the old man who lives across the road and comes in for a drink every night without fail. We saw him briefly last night, but he was in high spirits tonight and wanted to join us. For some reason he singled me out of the group, and decided to show me pictures from his wallet of various "sexy" ladies, and some very old newspaper articles along the same theme.
After the beer tasting had finished and the old man had gone home, conversation naturally turned to unicorns, and we were able to show Elise the wonder that is Planet Unicorn. She came to the conclusion that we were insane and I had to remind her that she wouldn't have had as much fun in Munich had it not been for us. We drank and ate pizza into the night, and had a grand old time.
Secret Service Days
55 Days
Eddie Tigger
Secret Service
...written in silver on a turquoise t-shirt. Had it not been €35 I would have bought one for everyone I know.
Seeing another nun on the way to the station brought the Innsbruck Nun Count to an abysmal 2. She did not board the train, and instead we were joined by a dozen German football fans. As they sat down we noticed one had an enormous gash in his head, one had underpants on his head and one had an incredibly rude (but I don't think he knew that) slogan on his t-shirt. They ate sausages from a jar during the two hour journey.
We pulled into Munich earlier than scheduled, dumped our bags at the hostel (fifth floor with no working lift, gah) and set off to explore. The first shop of note was called 'Wormland' so we knew we'd like it here. Further down the street we walked past a Muslim woman whose headscarf was interesting to say the least, there were four motifs printed repeatedly on the scarf fabric and these were: a pair of lips with a big cross through them, an envelope with the words 'love letter' on it with a big cross through it, the word 'love' with a big cross through it, and a telephone with a big cross through it. I was desperate to ask where she had got it, but was distracted when we walked past a chocolate shop with chocolate ladybirds in the window. We went in and it was incredible! We bought what looked like a dark chocolate Colorado beetle decorated with milk and white chocolate, the size of my palm. Thinking it would be hollow, imagine our delight when we bit his tail off and found two little individual chocolates nestled inside! One was a fudge and one was a pistachio/marzipan affair - both were delicious.
We sat eating him on some steps where we also saw a priest with a briefcase and a man with a hat, beard AND pipe! I don't know if anyone else is familiar with the game 'hat, beard, pipe' but basically one receives points for men with hats, beards or pipes, double points if they have two of the above and bonus points for three of the above. It is a rarity, and you can only imagine how hard it was for me to contain my excitement. We also saw a man with a motorised push-bike sailing up a hill while other people were pedalling furiously, a van with a picture of a "rapper" and the slogan 'Pimp Juice' and a poster advertising 'pheromone clubbing'.
We saw lots of pretty buildings, the Theater Kirche, Staatskanzlei, Haus der Kunst and various other things before deciding to cross the river and head towards the Maximilianeum. The hedges that lined the road across the river were swarming with pretty yellow ladybirds and while looking at them we noticed a tramp washing his feet in the river below us.
We walked back to town through the Englischer Garten and stopped off at a supermarket which had cool shopping-trolley-basket contraptions, where we noticed that the eggs come painted fun colours, they sell McDonalds brand ketchup and you can buy chocolate katzenzungens (kitten tongues!)
We watched the Croatia - Germany match in the bar below the hostel and as soon as it had finished there was an enormous thunderstorm. The other bar opened shortly after the match finished and we went there for a free beer tasting. The guy running it, Pete, is awesome. He has a degree in the history of beer, and man does he know his beer. He explained to us all about the Bavarian monks who were the ones who made the beer and how all the peasants were starving to death because the monks were using all the best barley and yeast for beer-making. During Lent the monks had to fast, but they invented a "fasting beer" and they were permitted to drink 3 litres of it a day, and one litre of water. We met an Australian girl called Elise (and her huge stuffed crocodile, Barry) at the bar and we sat and watched Austria - Poland and drank with them until bedtime.
After having the best nights sleep I have had this entire trip, we wandered into a very grey looking Munich. We passed a shop we hadn't noticed the day before called 'Christ'. I wondered what it would sell, but was disappointed to find it was only rubbishy jewellery and I'm not entirely sure the Son of God would put his name to that. We ate chocolate beetles for lunch and continued wandering around in the rain.
We had another fun time that night with Elise, Pete and more beer tasting. We met the old man who lives across the road and comes in for a drink every night without fail. We saw him briefly last night, but he was in high spirits tonight and wanted to join us. For some reason he singled me out of the group, and decided to show me pictures from his wallet of various "sexy" ladies, and some very old newspaper articles along the same theme.
After the beer tasting had finished and the old man had gone home, conversation naturally turned to unicorns, and we were able to show Elise the wonder that is Planet Unicorn. She came to the conclusion that we were insane and I had to remind her that she wouldn't have had as much fun in Munich had it not been for us. We drank and ate pizza into the night, and had a grand old time.
Flying Power & number "0" buses
Breakfast at the hotel was the biggest luxury we have had so far: croissants, jam, nice bread, yoghurt, multivitamin juice, eggs for me and ham for John. We ate as much as we could manage, it was free after all, then set off to catch our train to Austria.
The first thing we came across on the train was a topless fat man with a tattoo on his huge upper arm saying simply, "SPACE BEER". This train terminated at Brenner, which is 45 minutes away from Innsbruck. All the signs in the station were in both Italian and German so we had no idea which country we were actually in. We had had no passport checks during the entire journey and everyone there looked bewildered when we attempted to speak Italian to them, so we assumed we were in Austria. The second train was more like a London bus than a train, it had bendy bits, handles coming from the ceiling and fold down seats, but unlike London buses it was full of people dressed in lederhosen! What more could I have asked for? It was like an Austrian dream come true.
The change in temperature hit us immediately, and we were helpfully notified by an LED display outside the station that it was 23 degrees. Walking through Innsbruck we noticed crowds of people wearing red and yellow, and were curious until we realised that the football was actually being played there that night. Our hostel (technically a B&B) was in the old part of the city, above a café. We dropped our bags, grabbed a map and made our way out for a wander. We had been told by the ladies at the hostel to help ourselves to anything we could find in the kitchen, and spying some chocolate milkshake powder we couldn't help but go out to get milk. In the supermarket queue ahead of us was a guy around our age wearing a t-shirt saying "Best of Pork".
As soon as we left the supermarket, milk in hand, the rain started. All the fans watching the big screens must have been drenched, it was a pretty big downpour. We didn't sit to watch either of the matches, but we walked past lots of people huddled under umbrellas watching it, including a large group of Spanish fans outside a café next door to our hostel. As we walked past we noticed two old ladies walk slowly between them and the screen, and they must have thought the funnily-dressed people with flags were waving at them because they stopped, laughed and waved back, staying there for a good minute or two before realising that they weren't waving but telling them to get out of the way of the screen! Old ladies are funny everywhere in Europe!
People in the streets were singing various chants and we felt a little left out, so we decided to join in, shouting and singing the word "milk" (for it was still in our hands) in as many tunes as we could think of. I think it made us fit in :)
As you'd expect there were scores of street vendors, all the usual suspects, but it was the first time I have ever seen a street stall serving champagne by the glass. Austria is so civilized, even the football fans who came into the hostel late that night were sure to be quiet, as they knew we were tucked up for the night.
Breakfast the next morning was yet another treat: bread rolls, delicious homemade jam, creamy hot chocolate, cereal and CAKE! The morning had started so well, until some Scousers came down for breakfast - even the brash American girls shut up when they boisterously entered the room. Listening to them grunting and snorting their food made me think I should pretend to be from Sweden in future. It was like they were speaking in another language, and as they belched their way through breakfast the café quickly emptied.
We did the usual tourist shop expedition, finding only ridiculously over-priced snowstorms. Again, my little heart fell until John suggested that we buy a tiny, kitsch little cuckoo clock instead! I love the man more every day, and I am now the very proud owner of possibly the tackiest, and yet somehow cutest, plastic cuckoo clock ever! It is so awful that it is actually, in fact, sans cuckoo. But I think that adds to the charm and I love it! After dropping it off at the hostel (I don't want it to get damaged now, do I?) we went for another wander, steering clear of the tourists as best we could. We saw yet more signs of how civilized a place this is: the youth spit not on the floor but into bins, and the silhouette men on the roadsigns are wearing hats!
Our nun count was a very disappointing 1, but we did see a fat priest chatting with some football fans and a priest dressed all in white who looked like the Angel Islington from "Neverwhere". We have also seen some Christmas themed graffiti so I think it makes up for it.
Remembering the demand to eat the food in the kitchen, we dutifully responded by eating almost our own weight in free pasta. Lacking any kind of sauce, we headed to the Aldi up the road (they call them 'Hofer' here) where we saw chess piece shaped biscuits and dragon shaped crisps and were served by an A. Unterberger, the fastest checkout girl I have ever seen. It was as though she was possessed - she ran through the items at crazy speed then, inevitably, had to wait ages for people to fiddle with their change, but she even predicted with which coins they would pay and had their change ready before they had even opened their purses. We fooled her by paying for something costing €1.99 with a €10 note.
We also bought some chocolate (the first for ages) and took it with us when we visited Schloss Ambras, the castle just outside the city. We had one of most fun days there: we watched a peacock eat an entire lawn of buttercups, saw a goose chalet, met a hyper-intelligent duck with an enormous head, cheered on a duck dance-off, saw a tiny woodpecker and fed a duckling. Not all of our fun was bird-related, but the majority was. After feeding the duckling and a couple of dancing geese we sat down on a nearby bench to have our chocolate. A squawking sound stopped us mid-bite and we looked around to see another peacock marching towards us. I think he must have been annoyed about not being given any seeds, as he came over and snatched the chocolate out of my hand with his beak! Luckily, it was only a couple of squares, but he swallowed it in one go and then ran off! We finished the remaining chocolate and on the last piece he came back and tried it on again, the cheeky scamp! We quickly hurried on, fearing he might come back and peck at us regardless of whether or not we had chocolate, and stumbled across a bloody great waterfall! Not the kind of thing you expect to run into, but there it was tucked behind the trees, hidden from view like a sneaky assassin. Looking at the map at the entrance when we left, we saw that we had barely walked a third of the actual grounds of the place.
After yet more pasta we walked to the Swarovski shop near our hostel, which was holding an exhibition called 'Winter Wonderland'. Ooh, it was so sparkly! The exhibition itself wasn't as interesting as just walking through the shop seeing all the pretty crystal sculptures, including a tiny purple pufferfish and a tiny green and red cactus.
Unfortunately, our hostel room has no window to the outside world so we are not able to sit and people-watch at our leisure, we have to actually leave the house. The whole city has embraced football fever, every shop has incorporated the theme into their window displays, my favourite being a ladies fashion shop whose mannequins are dressed in pretty floral dresses, shin pads, socks and football boots and made to stand in various football-y poses. Hung from nearly every window of every building in the centre of town are flags of all the participating nations, and fans walk around in their full regalia whether or not their country is playing that day. We decided to watch the Switzerland - Turkey match in a café in town, and found one with a horde of Swedes. We do like Swedes, so we knew we'd have fun. I think we must have watched them more than we watched the football to be honest, they were so entertaining! They were all singing and chanting and having a great time. They had one song in particular that we especially enjoyed: it was to the tune of 'Go West' and it sounded as though they were singing "Stand up, be a unicorn! Stand up, be a unicorn!" We couldn't help but join in the singing, and I wished Toby was with us.
The first thing we came across on the train was a topless fat man with a tattoo on his huge upper arm saying simply, "SPACE BEER". This train terminated at Brenner, which is 45 minutes away from Innsbruck. All the signs in the station were in both Italian and German so we had no idea which country we were actually in. We had had no passport checks during the entire journey and everyone there looked bewildered when we attempted to speak Italian to them, so we assumed we were in Austria. The second train was more like a London bus than a train, it had bendy bits, handles coming from the ceiling and fold down seats, but unlike London buses it was full of people dressed in lederhosen! What more could I have asked for? It was like an Austrian dream come true.
The change in temperature hit us immediately, and we were helpfully notified by an LED display outside the station that it was 23 degrees. Walking through Innsbruck we noticed crowds of people wearing red and yellow, and were curious until we realised that the football was actually being played there that night. Our hostel (technically a B&B) was in the old part of the city, above a café. We dropped our bags, grabbed a map and made our way out for a wander. We had been told by the ladies at the hostel to help ourselves to anything we could find in the kitchen, and spying some chocolate milkshake powder we couldn't help but go out to get milk. In the supermarket queue ahead of us was a guy around our age wearing a t-shirt saying "Best of Pork".
As soon as we left the supermarket, milk in hand, the rain started. All the fans watching the big screens must have been drenched, it was a pretty big downpour. We didn't sit to watch either of the matches, but we walked past lots of people huddled under umbrellas watching it, including a large group of Spanish fans outside a café next door to our hostel. As we walked past we noticed two old ladies walk slowly between them and the screen, and they must have thought the funnily-dressed people with flags were waving at them because they stopped, laughed and waved back, staying there for a good minute or two before realising that they weren't waving but telling them to get out of the way of the screen! Old ladies are funny everywhere in Europe!
People in the streets were singing various chants and we felt a little left out, so we decided to join in, shouting and singing the word "milk" (for it was still in our hands) in as many tunes as we could think of. I think it made us fit in :)
As you'd expect there were scores of street vendors, all the usual suspects, but it was the first time I have ever seen a street stall serving champagne by the glass. Austria is so civilized, even the football fans who came into the hostel late that night were sure to be quiet, as they knew we were tucked up for the night.
Breakfast the next morning was yet another treat: bread rolls, delicious homemade jam, creamy hot chocolate, cereal and CAKE! The morning had started so well, until some Scousers came down for breakfast - even the brash American girls shut up when they boisterously entered the room. Listening to them grunting and snorting their food made me think I should pretend to be from Sweden in future. It was like they were speaking in another language, and as they belched their way through breakfast the café quickly emptied.
We did the usual tourist shop expedition, finding only ridiculously over-priced snowstorms. Again, my little heart fell until John suggested that we buy a tiny, kitsch little cuckoo clock instead! I love the man more every day, and I am now the very proud owner of possibly the tackiest, and yet somehow cutest, plastic cuckoo clock ever! It is so awful that it is actually, in fact, sans cuckoo. But I think that adds to the charm and I love it! After dropping it off at the hostel (I don't want it to get damaged now, do I?) we went for another wander, steering clear of the tourists as best we could. We saw yet more signs of how civilized a place this is: the youth spit not on the floor but into bins, and the silhouette men on the roadsigns are wearing hats!
Our nun count was a very disappointing 1, but we did see a fat priest chatting with some football fans and a priest dressed all in white who looked like the Angel Islington from "Neverwhere". We have also seen some Christmas themed graffiti so I think it makes up for it.
Remembering the demand to eat the food in the kitchen, we dutifully responded by eating almost our own weight in free pasta. Lacking any kind of sauce, we headed to the Aldi up the road (they call them 'Hofer' here) where we saw chess piece shaped biscuits and dragon shaped crisps and were served by an A. Unterberger, the fastest checkout girl I have ever seen. It was as though she was possessed - she ran through the items at crazy speed then, inevitably, had to wait ages for people to fiddle with their change, but she even predicted with which coins they would pay and had their change ready before they had even opened their purses. We fooled her by paying for something costing €1.99 with a €10 note.
We also bought some chocolate (the first for ages) and took it with us when we visited Schloss Ambras, the castle just outside the city. We had one of most fun days there: we watched a peacock eat an entire lawn of buttercups, saw a goose chalet, met a hyper-intelligent duck with an enormous head, cheered on a duck dance-off, saw a tiny woodpecker and fed a duckling. Not all of our fun was bird-related, but the majority was. After feeding the duckling and a couple of dancing geese we sat down on a nearby bench to have our chocolate. A squawking sound stopped us mid-bite and we looked around to see another peacock marching towards us. I think he must have been annoyed about not being given any seeds, as he came over and snatched the chocolate out of my hand with his beak! Luckily, it was only a couple of squares, but he swallowed it in one go and then ran off! We finished the remaining chocolate and on the last piece he came back and tried it on again, the cheeky scamp! We quickly hurried on, fearing he might come back and peck at us regardless of whether or not we had chocolate, and stumbled across a bloody great waterfall! Not the kind of thing you expect to run into, but there it was tucked behind the trees, hidden from view like a sneaky assassin. Looking at the map at the entrance when we left, we saw that we had barely walked a third of the actual grounds of the place.
After yet more pasta we walked to the Swarovski shop near our hostel, which was holding an exhibition called 'Winter Wonderland'. Ooh, it was so sparkly! The exhibition itself wasn't as interesting as just walking through the shop seeing all the pretty crystal sculptures, including a tiny purple pufferfish and a tiny green and red cactus.
Unfortunately, our hostel room has no window to the outside world so we are not able to sit and people-watch at our leisure, we have to actually leave the house. The whole city has embraced football fever, every shop has incorporated the theme into their window displays, my favourite being a ladies fashion shop whose mannequins are dressed in pretty floral dresses, shin pads, socks and football boots and made to stand in various football-y poses. Hung from nearly every window of every building in the centre of town are flags of all the participating nations, and fans walk around in their full regalia whether or not their country is playing that day. We decided to watch the Switzerland - Turkey match in a café in town, and found one with a horde of Swedes. We do like Swedes, so we knew we'd have fun. I think we must have watched them more than we watched the football to be honest, they were so entertaining! They were all singing and chanting and having a great time. They had one song in particular that we especially enjoyed: it was to the tune of 'Go West' and it sounded as though they were singing "Stand up, be a unicorn! Stand up, be a unicorn!" We couldn't help but join in the singing, and I wished Toby was with us.
Pope TV & Crock Da Shock!
We left Venice for Verona on a super swanky double-decker train. Verona is the most expensive place on our trip, accomodation-wise, so we only spent one night there. When I booked the place I had no idea that it was actually a 2 star hotel that I was booking! No wonder it was a bit pricey, but it was nice to have a bit of luxury instead of the usual dorm rooms. The hotel itself was lovely, as was the guy at reception when we arrived who thought we must be brother and sister as we looked much too young to be married.
The city is beautiful and, naturally, incredibly romantic. We walked the 3km from the hotel to town in the afternoon sun, passing small lizards left, right and centre, and soon found ourselves at the castle. There wasn't a lot to it, but the views were very pretty. We walked further into town and stumbled across a very famous balcony in a very famous house that belonged to a very famous young lady named Giulietta. The doors and walls leading to the house were absolutely covered in declarations of love and the gates were covered with brightly coloured padlocks inscribed with people's names.
Amazingly, even after looking for snowstorms in all the touristy shops and seeing THE balcony, John still didn't realise why I had wanted to visit Verona, and assumed it was something to do with the castle or the arena, which were his highlights. I couldn't find any snowstorms that had the castle or anything on them, apart from Romeo and Juliet, and the ones I did find were so expensive that I began to wonder if snowstorms are even worth all the hassle!
The sun was still strong (28 degrees apparently) and we "mutually" decided it was ice-cream time. We had Nutella and Crema Biscotti flavours. While eating ice-cream we watched out for nuns, seeing only two in the end, one dressed all in blue and one with a big suitcase. After our short break, we walked past the arena and down towards the river to stroll hand-in-hand in the early evening sun.
On our evening supermarket adventure, this time to look for peanut butter (there was none, but there was hazelnut butter), we saw in the toiletries aisle milkshake-scented and tea-scented body spray! I couldn't help but buy the tea one, mmm tea.
That night we watched the Italy - Netherlands match and felt glad that we hadn't decided to go out to watch it with the Italians of Verona.
The city is beautiful and, naturally, incredibly romantic. We walked the 3km from the hotel to town in the afternoon sun, passing small lizards left, right and centre, and soon found ourselves at the castle. There wasn't a lot to it, but the views were very pretty. We walked further into town and stumbled across a very famous balcony in a very famous house that belonged to a very famous young lady named Giulietta. The doors and walls leading to the house were absolutely covered in declarations of love and the gates were covered with brightly coloured padlocks inscribed with people's names.
Amazingly, even after looking for snowstorms in all the touristy shops and seeing THE balcony, John still didn't realise why I had wanted to visit Verona, and assumed it was something to do with the castle or the arena, which were his highlights. I couldn't find any snowstorms that had the castle or anything on them, apart from Romeo and Juliet, and the ones I did find were so expensive that I began to wonder if snowstorms are even worth all the hassle!
The sun was still strong (28 degrees apparently) and we "mutually" decided it was ice-cream time. We had Nutella and Crema Biscotti flavours. While eating ice-cream we watched out for nuns, seeing only two in the end, one dressed all in blue and one with a big suitcase. After our short break, we walked past the arena and down towards the river to stroll hand-in-hand in the early evening sun.
On our evening supermarket adventure, this time to look for peanut butter (there was none, but there was hazelnut butter), we saw in the toiletries aisle milkshake-scented and tea-scented body spray! I couldn't help but buy the tea one, mmm tea.
That night we watched the Italy - Netherlands match and felt glad that we hadn't decided to go out to watch it with the Italians of Verona.
Friday, 13 June 2008
Solar-powered pigeons, Moonwalking dogs & The Spank Mob
We woke late the next morning, after a much needed rest, and, forgetting it was a Sunday, missed the hourly bus to the city. Not wanting to wait, we walked the few km to the airport to get a bus from there. Walking a different way through town (it is difficult to re-trace your steps in the city even if you tried) we passed pigeons basking in the sunshine and a man wearing a t-shirt declaring "I am an abstract piece of art". Despite it being a Sunday the streets were far busier than they had been the previous day. On Saturday it had felt like we had the whole place to ourselves, but now there were people everywhere! We walked and walked in an attempt to escape them and found ourselves alone again just when the heat was getting more intense, both desperately needing a drink. Shops are harder to come by off the main strip, but 'Boutique Del Gelato' was our saviour: tucked around a side street, it had a huge queue of people, none of whom were tourist-looking. We had found the locals favourite! The ice-creams were cheap and enormous, I had tiramisu and hazelnut flavours, and John had a lemon granita, the most refreshing thing known to man.
That evening John dined on supermarket sandwiches (white bread with the crusts cut off, how terribly British) as we sat in the park. A small family of sparrows came to join us, and there were even some tiny, fluffy chicks! That same evening I was finally able to give in to my craving for falafel! Mmm, real food! The guy in the falafel shop was hilarious. He had his radio turned up loud and started singing to us when we came in, using a rolling-pin as a microphone. He told me he loved me and asked if I was married. I said yes, and he shouted, "me too!" before asking John if he could buy me from him for a Porsche and a thousand falafel "only for nine months, we make beautiful babies then you can have her back". Nice.
Nun count: three, dressed all in white.
That evening John dined on supermarket sandwiches (white bread with the crusts cut off, how terribly British) as we sat in the park. A small family of sparrows came to join us, and there were even some tiny, fluffy chicks! That same evening I was finally able to give in to my craving for falafel! Mmm, real food! The guy in the falafel shop was hilarious. He had his radio turned up loud and started singing to us when we came in, using a rolling-pin as a microphone. He told me he loved me and asked if I was married. I said yes, and he shouted, "me too!" before asking John if he could buy me from him for a Porsche and a thousand falafel "only for nine months, we make beautiful babies then you can have her back". Nice.
Nun count: three, dressed all in white.
Wine Horses, Marshmallow Smurfs & Photographing Doorbells
We left for Venice early the next morning, after a fairly solid nights sleep, interrupted only by one of the Aussie girls in our dorm sleep-talking. The first train of the day was to Villach in Austria. For some reason it´s only possible to get to Venice directly if you take a train at 2:22am, and we didn´t fancy that so we had to go via Austria. We snacked on cipi cips (I´ll do the correct accents when I can) and Vic Sticks on the train, as we passed through LONG tunnels in the pitch black darkness, and again had a nice little compartment to ourselves.
Sunshine and warmth greeted us in Venice. We got in around 1pm, and it was a pleasant 26 degrees. We took a bus to the campsite which, as we later found, was more like a caravan park, with a few tents and chalets. It was technically in Venezia Mestre, across the water from Venezia, but less than half the price of staying in Venezia itself.
Naturally, the first thing we did was sample some Venetian ice-cream. I had star biscuit flavour and John had chocolate mousse flavour. The side streets of Venice are the prettiest I have seen, and we immediately got lost, reaching dead ends at almost every turn. I couldn´t help, while walking through the streets I had only ever seen in anime, imagining I was on the island of Water 7 in "One Piece", secretly looking out for members of Cipher Pol 9, but with no luck. We did see dozens of men with poodles and found a shop with not one, but a selection of snowstorms! We also found possibly my favourite thing so far, a "sexy priests" calendar! Oh, it is truly spectacular and we cannot wait for June 2009!
There is very little graffiti in Venice, and the small amount we did see was pointless tagging. One tag I didn´t mind so much was VMFC, my initials! I had never seen my name in graffiti before and now the last two cities have had it! Having no graffiti to photograph we had to find something else; we chose doorbells.
Peckish after our long trek through countless streets we found a supermarket to stock up on supplies. Tummies feeling a bit odd we decided to swap chocolate spread for honey, biscuits for cereal bars with blueberries, white bread for brown and bought some natural yoghurt, peaches and carrots. I don´t think we´ll be giving up the ice-cream any time soon though!
I spent the entire day looking for nuns, and had almost given up hope when we spied two in the bus station on our way to the shuttle bus, hurrah!
Sunshine and warmth greeted us in Venice. We got in around 1pm, and it was a pleasant 26 degrees. We took a bus to the campsite which, as we later found, was more like a caravan park, with a few tents and chalets. It was technically in Venezia Mestre, across the water from Venezia, but less than half the price of staying in Venezia itself.
Naturally, the first thing we did was sample some Venetian ice-cream. I had star biscuit flavour and John had chocolate mousse flavour. The side streets of Venice are the prettiest I have seen, and we immediately got lost, reaching dead ends at almost every turn. I couldn´t help, while walking through the streets I had only ever seen in anime, imagining I was on the island of Water 7 in "One Piece", secretly looking out for members of Cipher Pol 9, but with no luck. We did see dozens of men with poodles and found a shop with not one, but a selection of snowstorms! We also found possibly my favourite thing so far, a "sexy priests" calendar! Oh, it is truly spectacular and we cannot wait for June 2009!
There is very little graffiti in Venice, and the small amount we did see was pointless tagging. One tag I didn´t mind so much was VMFC, my initials! I had never seen my name in graffiti before and now the last two cities have had it! Having no graffiti to photograph we had to find something else; we chose doorbells.
Peckish after our long trek through countless streets we found a supermarket to stock up on supplies. Tummies feeling a bit odd we decided to swap chocolate spread for honey, biscuits for cereal bars with blueberries, white bread for brown and bought some natural yoghurt, peaches and carrots. I don´t think we´ll be giving up the ice-cream any time soon though!
I spent the entire day looking for nuns, and had almost given up hope when we spied two in the bus station on our way to the shuttle bus, hurrah!
Country Weddings, Foot Pedal Flushes & Copulating Skeletons
After washing our clothes the next morning (wahoo for access to a washing machine at last!) we walked in the rain to town. We headed up the hill to Ljubljana Castle which from the outside looks like a fairly modern castle but inside were swanky bars and galleries, fancy glass floors and a virtual museum. The central square is covered by tables and the grassy edges are spattered with pieces of "modern art". The castle gallery had two shows on, one was an interesting installation with lots of rocks and photos taken down what looks like a well, and the other was a collection of black and white photos in an exhibition called "Country Wedding". It was a really cool show, but I will have to tell you about it another time, as we´re still in Expensive Internet Land!
The sky was cloudy so we didn´t go up to the viewing deck but instead wandered down the hill, in our soggy shoes, to look for some hot chocolate. We sat in Cafe Don Cortez and ordered our drinks. The chocolate was less a drink more like melted chocolate mousse and it was delicious! As we were drinking (eating?) we heard the eerie church bells from the Church of St James, which has the highest belltower in Ljubljana and the spookiest bells I have ever heard. When leaving the cafe I noticed an interesting numberplate: LJ 30 ORK!
Heading towards the rail station we passed a car at some traffic lights blaring out Euro Pop. There were two youngish guys dancing wildly in the car, and we couldn´t help but dance as we walked past them. They even turned their music up for us and gave us a thumbs up. Making friends is fun! By now our feet were super wet. I was wearing my jelly shoes but John´s shoes had almost completely given up hope. He bought some new ones, and after leaving the shop we saw some old men wearing skate shoes and realised we were no longer "hip".
We saw two blue nuns on our way back to the hostel and on our daily stop at Mercator to buy strawberry juice we noticed chocolate and vanilla scented washing liquid and wished we´d known about it before washing our clothes in boring powder. The prices here are around 3 times higher than in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, as I noticed when I went scouring tourist shops for snowstorms. I came across only two and they were both around €8! I refuse to pay that much for tourist tat, much as I love them. I did, however, buy a postcard showing the Ljubljana dragon. Legend says that Jason (and the Argonauts) founded Ljubljana and slew the dragon who lived there (which appears on their flag and all over the city).
That evening we ate pizza in the pizzeria below the hostel and headed into town to visit a bar we had read about in a guide book. The bar was called Pr. Skelet and the guide book says it is full of "grinning, cackling, spinning and copulating skeletons". We foolishly forgot it was a Friday night in a studenty city and by the time we got there it was completely packed, but it was, indeed, full of skeletons: animal skeletons in cages, human skeletons in glass coffins set into the floor, skeletons everywhere you looked.
We left the bar, deciding to go again next time we were in the city, and the rain started again. It was heavy. This time, my shoes decided to die on me and John´s new ones performed brilliantly.
The sky was cloudy so we didn´t go up to the viewing deck but instead wandered down the hill, in our soggy shoes, to look for some hot chocolate. We sat in Cafe Don Cortez and ordered our drinks. The chocolate was less a drink more like melted chocolate mousse and it was delicious! As we were drinking (eating?) we heard the eerie church bells from the Church of St James, which has the highest belltower in Ljubljana and the spookiest bells I have ever heard. When leaving the cafe I noticed an interesting numberplate: LJ 30 ORK!
Heading towards the rail station we passed a car at some traffic lights blaring out Euro Pop. There were two youngish guys dancing wildly in the car, and we couldn´t help but dance as we walked past them. They even turned their music up for us and gave us a thumbs up. Making friends is fun! By now our feet were super wet. I was wearing my jelly shoes but John´s shoes had almost completely given up hope. He bought some new ones, and after leaving the shop we saw some old men wearing skate shoes and realised we were no longer "hip".
We saw two blue nuns on our way back to the hostel and on our daily stop at Mercator to buy strawberry juice we noticed chocolate and vanilla scented washing liquid and wished we´d known about it before washing our clothes in boring powder. The prices here are around 3 times higher than in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, as I noticed when I went scouring tourist shops for snowstorms. I came across only two and they were both around €8! I refuse to pay that much for tourist tat, much as I love them. I did, however, buy a postcard showing the Ljubljana dragon. Legend says that Jason (and the Argonauts) founded Ljubljana and slew the dragon who lived there (which appears on their flag and all over the city).
That evening we ate pizza in the pizzeria below the hostel and headed into town to visit a bar we had read about in a guide book. The bar was called Pr. Skelet and the guide book says it is full of "grinning, cackling, spinning and copulating skeletons". We foolishly forgot it was a Friday night in a studenty city and by the time we got there it was completely packed, but it was, indeed, full of skeletons: animal skeletons in cages, human skeletons in glass coffins set into the floor, skeletons everywhere you looked.
We left the bar, deciding to go again next time we were in the city, and the rain started again. It was heavy. This time, my shoes decided to die on me and John´s new ones performed brilliantly.
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Horse burgers, traffic light countdown & old women with trolleys
We left Zagreb the same way we had entered it, tired and being rained on. I´m sure when the weather´s nicer the city is more charming, but from what I saw I can understand why most of the people we have met use the city as just a stopover to other destinations.
The train to Ljubljana was nice, we had a little compartment all to ourselves. After border control, where a band were asked to leave the train, we zoomed past the Slovenian countryside, which with its fields and pretty hills looked an awful lot like English countryside. We ate Jaffa Cakes in celebration.
The rain followed us from Croatia. We waited outside the station for Marko from the hostel, who was only 40 minutes late (this is good for him, apparently). While waiting we people watched, and there was not much of note apart from a priest wearing a medallion. While sitting in the back seat we noticed a little furry head poke through from the front seat and out popped a little sausage dog, eager to say hello. Neither of us are fans of dogs, but sausage dogs are definitely an exception! He was more like a cat anyway, tootling around our feet, trying to jump onto our laps.
The hostel is above a pizzeria and is lovely and spacious, feeling like an actual house rather than a hostel. We braved the rain after having bought an enormous umbrella and walked the 30 minutes into town, passing some odd tampon-related graffiti. The first thing we saw as we entered the central area of the city were some roadworks, it was not cordoned off with tape or a fence but instead with bunting! I loved the city immediately. The rain stopped after a while and we slowly made our way around the small centre of town. We saw an awful lot of graffiti, my favourite being one young lady who had tagged "Miss Vix" all over the place :)
We were quite obviously in the studenty area of the city, the young people and shops all looked very "cool" and we passed a fast food place called `Red Hot Horse Burger´. We had been entertained by the sounds the traffic lights make in Europe, ever since hearing the ones in Sarajevo, but here there were not only sounds but an LED countdown to the green man! We were incredibly excited and may well have danced across the road... maybe. We sat by one of the three bridges in the centre with our huge umbrella and watched people pass us in the rain. An old gypsy woman with a trolley walked past and for some reason John decided to make up a song about her. We sat on the bench singing and decided a good name for a band would be The Plazma Wrappers. I danced while he sang, in the preferred style of Margaret who we had met in Split. The rain started to get heavier so we walked back to the hostel, past a street of Embassies. We saw a particularly pretty one and I remarked that it was like a fairytale castle. John said it was like (cue American accent) "a make believe castle" and we chatted about how much better the phrase "fairytale" is than "make-believe" and we shook fists at the Americans for not using the term before noticing it was actually the American Embassy...
We bought bread for dinner, and Hobbit biscuits, in the local supermarket, Mercator, and discussed whether or not Jean Claude Van Damme would star in a film of that name. That evening we watched some incredibly low-budget and fairly humiliating kids TV and some very expensive looking but equally crappy Slovenian music videos. Nothing has yet beaten Bosnian TV! We ate our bread and cheese and chatted about music with Marko. He played us some traditional Slovenian music while Britney Spears was muted on the TV. They suited each other surprisingly well! He then played us some Slovenian pop which was really good! I think he was quite taken aback when we told him that we actually quite liked it. He told us there were over 200 radio stations in Ljubljana, most of which are based in peoples houses, and apparently even the house next door runs its own a radio station! We sat in the living room chatting with the hostels other guests until bedtime. There are 4 Aussies and 5 other Brits. For the first time on our trip the British are the majority. One of the girls was reading "Yes Man" by Danny Wallace, so we got chatting about Join Me and I told them that that was how John and I had met. They all laughed nervously at the mention of the word "cult".
The train to Ljubljana was nice, we had a little compartment all to ourselves. After border control, where a band were asked to leave the train, we zoomed past the Slovenian countryside, which with its fields and pretty hills looked an awful lot like English countryside. We ate Jaffa Cakes in celebration.
The rain followed us from Croatia. We waited outside the station for Marko from the hostel, who was only 40 minutes late (this is good for him, apparently). While waiting we people watched, and there was not much of note apart from a priest wearing a medallion. While sitting in the back seat we noticed a little furry head poke through from the front seat and out popped a little sausage dog, eager to say hello. Neither of us are fans of dogs, but sausage dogs are definitely an exception! He was more like a cat anyway, tootling around our feet, trying to jump onto our laps.
The hostel is above a pizzeria and is lovely and spacious, feeling like an actual house rather than a hostel. We braved the rain after having bought an enormous umbrella and walked the 30 minutes into town, passing some odd tampon-related graffiti. The first thing we saw as we entered the central area of the city were some roadworks, it was not cordoned off with tape or a fence but instead with bunting! I loved the city immediately. The rain stopped after a while and we slowly made our way around the small centre of town. We saw an awful lot of graffiti, my favourite being one young lady who had tagged "Miss Vix" all over the place :)
We were quite obviously in the studenty area of the city, the young people and shops all looked very "cool" and we passed a fast food place called `Red Hot Horse Burger´. We had been entertained by the sounds the traffic lights make in Europe, ever since hearing the ones in Sarajevo, but here there were not only sounds but an LED countdown to the green man! We were incredibly excited and may well have danced across the road... maybe. We sat by one of the three bridges in the centre with our huge umbrella and watched people pass us in the rain. An old gypsy woman with a trolley walked past and for some reason John decided to make up a song about her. We sat on the bench singing and decided a good name for a band would be The Plazma Wrappers. I danced while he sang, in the preferred style of Margaret who we had met in Split. The rain started to get heavier so we walked back to the hostel, past a street of Embassies. We saw a particularly pretty one and I remarked that it was like a fairytale castle. John said it was like (cue American accent) "a make believe castle" and we chatted about how much better the phrase "fairytale" is than "make-believe" and we shook fists at the Americans for not using the term before noticing it was actually the American Embassy...
We bought bread for dinner, and Hobbit biscuits, in the local supermarket, Mercator, and discussed whether or not Jean Claude Van Damme would star in a film of that name. That evening we watched some incredibly low-budget and fairly humiliating kids TV and some very expensive looking but equally crappy Slovenian music videos. Nothing has yet beaten Bosnian TV! We ate our bread and cheese and chatted about music with Marko. He played us some traditional Slovenian music while Britney Spears was muted on the TV. They suited each other surprisingly well! He then played us some Slovenian pop which was really good! I think he was quite taken aback when we told him that we actually quite liked it. He told us there were over 200 radio stations in Ljubljana, most of which are based in peoples houses, and apparently even the house next door runs its own a radio station! We sat in the living room chatting with the hostels other guests until bedtime. There are 4 Aussies and 5 other Brits. For the first time on our trip the British are the majority. One of the girls was reading "Yes Man" by Danny Wallace, so we got chatting about Join Me and I told them that that was how John and I had met. They all laughed nervously at the mention of the word "cult".
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