Adijo #4

Early tomorrow morning, we leave here for the fourth time, and for the fourth time we have no idea if we’ll have the opportunity to come here again.  So, we spent the past few days thinking through what we should do one last time before we go.  Of course, there was one last trip to Tivoli Park, of course there was one last Saturday morning at the open market, and of course there was one last ice cream cone at Cacao.  And we’re sure that tonight, for one last time, we will hear the WHEEEEEEEEEE of our neighbor racing his remote control car up and down the empty streets at 4:30am…except this time we will already be awake.

What I’ve come to realize most on this trip is how blessed I have been to have this experience with my family.  Sure, I can gripe about how the kids are so jacked up about leaving tomorrow they won’t go to bed and about how many clothes my wife packs for a 30-day trip (although she did admit she over-packed this time…you have to be pulling on my leg!), but it’s because of them that I have taken so much away from our trips here.  And I have a lot more puke stories to tell.

As we packed up today, we laughed about how the first time when we were leaving, we found a closet full of stuff we had forgotten about as we were on our way out the door…and had no place to put any of it.  We sort of feel like veterans now…pretty much everything was packed and in order by noon today.

So, until next time, enjoy a few final pictures below, of the blow-pipes Marinka gave the kids, of the cricket t-shirts Lelantha gave the kids, of the slides at Tivoli, and of our final ice cream cone.  And thanks once again for joining in our journey…Na Zdravje!

Evolutions

Our last week here has been relatively quiet.  We had planned to go spend a day or two in the mountains, but given the weather, our budget, and the energy spent getting back from the seaside on Sunday, we decided to stay put and enjoy Ljubljana.

One of our obligations here is a trek up to the castle.  We went up a new way, the super-secret path on the south side of castle hill near our apartment, which nobody knows about but us.  Very sneaky, and very exciting.

At the castle, there was an exhibit showing the evolution of all of the main squares in Ljubljana, from 2000 years ago (when it was the Roman city of Emona) to today.  It was a great exhibit, really making us stop and envision how all of these squares, where we’ve spent so much time, used to look and feel way back when.

In our four years here, we’ve noticed a micro-evolution of Ljubljana, as it becomes more and more tourist-friendly.  Stores have started to stay open later at night and some are even open on Sundays – four years ago, we quickly learned that if we didn’t have something by 7:00 at night, we wouldn’t have it until the next morning, and if we didn’t have something by 1:00 Saturday afternoon, we wouldn’t have it until Monday.  There still isn’t a Starbucks here, but there is a “take-away” coffee shop that has opened in Preseren Square – four years ago, you couldn’t find a to-go cup of coffee, which I thought about every morning I hustled to the bus stop to get to class.  And Kellogg’s and Coke have arrived in full force – four years ago, it was tough to find boxed cereal and Cockta was the biggest cola.

At the same time, we still don’t have a dryer here (but have evolved to be efficient clothes hangers).  Maybe in another four years…

Genoa Lows, Rainbow Loom Highs

If someone had asked a few years ago what my most important fatherly skillsets would be, Rainbow Loom wouldn’t have made the list.  Yet, thanks to the Genoa Low, my talent in assisting my daughters to make anything and everything out of colorful rubber bands has become second-to-none in value.

A Genoa Low is sort of like a polar vortex, except that it starts in the Alps and throws a low-pressure system over everything to the south.  If you look at a radar map of this region right now, there’s a counterclockwise pattern from Austria, down through most of Italy, across the Adriatic, and then back up through much of the Balkans and Slovenia.  This front just circles around and around and has pretty much sat right in this position for all of July.

The result is cooler weather and lots and lots and lots of rain.  The rain that caused the flooding in Bosnia and Serbia in May was a result of one of these systems, and this is one of the coolest July’s on record in both Slovenia and Croatia (we really lucked out with the weather at the sea last weekend…if we were there now, we might not be doing much swimming).  Not surprisingly, it’s the main topic of small talk these days, and you don’t need to know Slovene to join in.  You just look up at the sky, throw up your hands, and shake your head.

So, we’ve resolved to a lot of apartment-based activities.  A main one is hunting down Rainbow Loom tutorials on YouTube.  Rosetta and Celia have graduated well beyond Packer bracelets and necklaces and have now built bananas, owls, Hello Kitty, Elsa from Frozen, Barbie bikinis, and much more.  And I’ve become the go-to-guy when they get stuck (“DADDY!  I need your help!!”).  I’m not sure how Chantelle weaseled her way out of that duty, but to be honest, I’m glad she did.  It’s fun.

That New Car Smell

We’re not sure how folks here can manage two weeks at the seaside.  After day three, we were pretty much spent.  In fact, Celia and Rosetta got out of the water voluntarily about mid-afternoon Saturday (you have to be pulling on my leg!).  After that, we got cleaned up, had dinner, and wandered around town all the way down to the harbor, where we discovered a little part of Vrbnik that had a character of its own.  We also saw what appeared to be a tunnel way out in the rocks that looked identical to the one the mermaids on Mako Island go through to get to the moon pool to regain their powers (we’ll have to investigate next year).  And we were fortunate to get all the way back up the hill to our apartment just as a serious thunderstorm hit.

So, this morning, as we piled into our brand new Opel Astra (Budget had just gotten it on Thursday…it had all of 40 kilometers on it), we felt like everything with our trip to Vrbnik had come off without a hitch.  Good weather, great beach, no sunburns, thunderstorms avoided, lots of fun.  And then, twenty minutes into our trip home, Chantelle commented about how our car-sickness adventures seemed to be subsiding.  Right on queue, two kilometers later, Celia said, “I feel like I’m going to throw up!”  We were at a roundabout and I whipped around it to get back to the parking lot of a produce stand, pulled in, yanked the parking break, unbuckled my seat belt, reached for my door handle, and sure enough…

According to Sy, it was like a volcano.  Poor Rosetta took the brunt of the eruption, which had the look and fragrance of the wild berry yogurt Celia ate just before we left.  And, yes, it was all over the brand new backseat, running down through the seat belt latches and underneath the cushion.  The general mayhem of a large-scale riot ensued, with screaming, crying, gagging…it was a disaster.

We were ill-equipped to deal with this disaster, so we stopped at the Plodine supermarket just up the road in Malinska to get wipes, paper towels, and a bucket just in case…which we did need about an hour later for Celia’s encore.  In the process, Trader Joe’s moved out of the number one slot on my list of most-despised shopping experiences, as Plodine is the main supermarket on the entire island and was so overrun with vacationers that it took twenty minutes to maneuver around the cramped parking lot to find a place to park.  At a time when patience was nonexistent.  Inside the store was worse.

However, we did manage to get things reasonably cleaned up and make it home.  And, once home, we managed with a staunch effort to get the slightly-nauseating, yet sweet and fruity, scent out of the car before we brought it back.  Ask Chantelle for the magic baking soda/vinegar treatment…it does wonders.  At least we think it did.  We’re waiting to see if Budget asks us why their car doesn’t smell new anymore.

Day 2 At The Sea

Yesterday, we got in a full day at the remote beach that only those “in the know” go to.  Talk about a great place… the water is crystal clear and calm and the beach is not overrun with loud tourists.  In fact, as far as we can tell, there are only three loud tourists.  From Minnesota.

We left the beach later in the afternoon, headed into town to get the world-famous Pinnochio ice cream sundaes, and then wandered for a while.  If the town was bigger, you could get lost for weeks.  All kinds of nooks and crannies, none of the streets seem to lead anywhere, and absolutely no landmarks.  But that’s why it’s cool.

We revisited some places we remembered from last time, like the mini-door through the town wall and the world’s narrowest street, and made some new discoveries, like Ivan the winemaker.  We stumbled across Ivan’s small, dark, musty cellar in the middle of town.  Ivan doesn’t speak much English, but he is quite a character.  He has a mule who drinks coffee, and he made us try everything he has to offer (there are a few of these cellars in town…if you did that at each one, you really might get lost for weeks).  He showed us his vinegars, saying “Not veen-a-gra, vee-a-gra!”  And he was nice enough to pose for a photo-op as well.

We also met a wonderful artist and Rosetta got her first pair of dangly earrings, which she has been wanting “forever”.  Very exciting!