Music and Mountains in Slovenia

From hot and fabulous Croatia we made our way across the border to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.  For being a capital city it has a real small feel to it thanks to it's old part of the city which is a buzz with people day and night.  While there, we climbed to a castle for sunset, drank beers on patios, had a pic-nic in the park and hit up several local festivals.  A music festival was underway which we took in, then a photography exhibit sent us to several galleries and finally a film festival.

The journey to the film festival was half the fun as it was a really underground event and no one seemed to know about it it or where it was being held. As we wondered around looking for it we stumbled upon what felt like an alternate dimension as we left the world of order and sophistication to a area of buildings covered in graffiti, piles of rubble everywhere and small cafes and clubs in every corner.  We learned later that the area used to be a prison and is now a local hangout for the alternative crowd.  And it is here we found our festival location, settled in to our seats with a beer the film started....a French film that is subtitled in Slovenian.  It was about a band and we like the music so stayed and enjoyed our walk back through the crowd at the prison before heading home.

From Ljubljana we headed into the Alps to the small town of Bled.  This place is something out of a fairy-tail with an emerald lake, church on a small island and a castle perched high above looking over the town. We stayed three nights and spent one day hiking at the near by national park.  We were well prepared, we bought a map, packed a lunch and lots of water as well as our first aid kit, left early in the day etc.  The trails in the park are marked with red and white round markers which fells kind of like playing a massive game of connect the dots in the wilderness, so no chance of getting lost.  Our only issue being our map we bought did not indicate the quality to trail and what looked like a simple route took us over cliff faces area where we had to do some major searching for the markers. We planned a 4hr hike and when we got to what we thought was the half way point a sign indicated we were in fact 5 hrs from our destination...holy crap. 

We kept our spirits up, climbed several peaks (1200m gain in elevation...no big deal) to some amazing views, stopped at a hut where some Slovenian mama's sold beer and food, bandaged our blisters, guzzled spring water and kept on truckin. And at 10 hrs of hiking when we got to the bus stop 5 minutes before the last bus left back to town we concluded that we are in fact awesome and celebrated our newly discovered awesomeness with a hearty Slovenian dinner. Bellies full of beer and sausage we fell asleep instantly  which was welcome as we shared our dorm with seven 20 year old girls who we are sure as individuals are lovely people but in a group dynamic make you want to tear your own ears off.

The weather forecast was poor for the next day which suited us fine as we planned to rest our aching bodies, but the sun came out and this combined with the fact that our roomates conversation about fingernails was going into its second hour, we were driven to leave the hostel and took a leisurely (aka flat) 10km stroll to a nearby gorge which our muscles actually liked and to reward them for a second day of activity we went to the local pool for a soak at the end of the day.

R