Settling In

The first few days of this trip to Ljubljana are just a bit different than the first few from the last one.  Instead of stumbling around trying to get our bearings, we have been reacquainting ourselves with what we knew we would miss:  Preseren Square, the Triple Bridge, the castle, the fountains, the market, and, of course, ice cream cones.

We feel incredibly fortunate…walking down to old town the day after we arrive, it felt as though we never left.  So many of the people that had become staples in our daily lives are still here: Jure at the vegetable stand (who said, "Where have you been for one year?"), Marinka at the Mercator, Lalantha at the jewelry store, Lepa and Ana at the hair salon.  The kiddos remember so much from last time, it’s unreal.  The first day we were here, Celia looked at one of the big fountains across the river and shouted, “Daddy, we saw that mountain yesterday!”  Maybe she doesn’t really remember, but the spirit is at least there.  Unfortunately, we discovered that our good friend Mijo has moved to the coast, so we will have to take a trip there to see if we can track him down.

Plus, this is likely the only time in our lives we will live in a penthouse suite.  It’s not exactly a deluxe apartment in the sky, but it is on the fourth floor (103 steps up with no elevator) with a terrace view of the city, Tivoli Park, and the Julian Alps in the distance (see below).  It has enough space for four rug rats and a yoga master to operate and is air-conditioned, which more than makes up for its other deficiencies, as it was 35 degrees Celsius today (no need to do the conversion..it’s just hot).  We’ve been packing on the miles, so it’s nice to come back to a place that’s cool.

So, now we’re on the tail-end of jetlag, my class starts on Monday, and we’re starting to plan out the remainder of our seven weeks here.  We already have a trip to the mountains and a trip to the sea planned with our friends Petra and Rok, Mirko from Belgrade will be coming to visit in mid-July, we will go to see Mijo in Piran, and there are a couple of other places we’d like to get to.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the Renault Megane to get us around this time, so we’ll have to figure out alternatives.  Then again, that decreases the likelihood of breaking down in the middle of nowhere in Serbia.

In any event, we know this seven weeks is going to go quick.  There may not be quite as much of a novice factor this time around, and we didn’t bring the strollers along so I shouldn’t get stuck on any trains, but we’re certain it will still be an adventure.

Ebb-Insanity

We’ve been relatively nutty the past few days, even for us, with travel, jetlag, and settling in.  Hence, the lack of blog updates.  So, we’ll try to get caught up over the next couple of days here.

First up:  the flight over.  It’s a long story why we flew Icelandair, but we did.  And because we did, we got to see Iceland for an hour.  And because we did, we couldn’t check our bags all the way through to Ljubljana; instead, we needed to claim our luggage in Paris, haul it to another terminal, and check it in with Air France for the final leg.  We found this out when we got to the Minneapolis airport.  Great start to the trip.

After that, the first two legs of our flight went fairly smooth.  The kids actually slept a bit on the plane, occupied themselves with TV shows, and didn’t completely disrupt anyone else’s flight.  We also got to see a beautiful sunrise/sunset (???) on the way across.  Then we arrived in Paris...

If you’ve never been to Charles de Gaulle Airport, picture a sprawling metropolis larger than most Midwestern towns, where the terminals are miles apart.  Then picture a husband and wife, each pushing a cart piled high with suitcases, bags, and booster seats, trying to manage three overtired kids and trying to figure out where to go and how to get there.

The short of it is that we got where we needed to go, but nearly maxed out our credit cards on the way.  There was no way to take airport transportation with all of our stuff, so we hitched a 50-euro taxi from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2, or about 25 euros a mile (which was either a total rip-off or well worth the money, depending on whether you consider the effort required of the taxi driver or the effort it saved us).  Air France then charged us 55 euros to check each of the kids’ booster seats as extra bags, which is more than we paid for the seats (again, either a total rip-off or well worth the money, depending on whether you’re able to ignore the fact that you’re getting ripped off and assume you’re somehow accumulating karma points).  We then spent another 50 euros on a couple of sandwiches for lunch (this was pretty much a total rip-off no matter how you look at it) and continued our hitting streak of at least one spilled milk per airport meal.  After all of this, we settled in for the rest of our seven-hour layover. 

The good news is that we finally made it to Ljubljana in one piece.  Everyone got some sleep during our layover (see the progression of snoozers below) in Paris and again on the flight to Ljubljana.  Maybe that was us cashing in some of our earned karma.  We got to our apartment about 11pm local time, got everyone to bed and asleep somewhere around 2 or 3, and we all slept until noon the next day.

Round 2

Today, we’re off again, this time for a seven-week stint.  I was fortunate enough to be asked to help out with an internship program the U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana has organized.  So, there’s our excuse.

The kiddos have been bouncing off the walls since 6am and we’re not leaving to go to the airport until five o’clock.  Right now, they’re all working on maps to help us get there (see below).  Rosetta has the itinerary down:  Iceland, then Paris, then Ljubljana.  Three planes.  And we get to watch movies on all of them.

We have a very different feeling this time around.  Instead of wondering what in the world we’re getting ourselves into, we’re thinking about the little things like kids puking en route.  When we came home last year at this time, we had no idea if or when we would be back.  So, mostly, we are fired up with anticipation at seeing Ljubljana again and many of our good friends there.

We would love your company, so please join us for our next adventure to Slovenia through our blog (or come visit if you get the chance!).