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!

The Seaside

We arrived yesterday on the island of Krk for our real seaside vacation.  We've been excited about this mini-trip since we got to Ljubljana ("How many days until we go to the beach, Mommy?"), but compared to Slovenes, we are amateurs at this…everyone gave us pitied looks when they heard we’ll only be here for four days.  Apparently, you need at least two weeks for it to count.

In any event, we decided to return to the town of Vrbnik, where we came two summers ago.  For us, it’s the perfect place for a beach vacation, as there is literally nothing to do other than go to the beach.  And amazingly, given as nice as it is here, there are literally no tourist shops (i.e., no place to buy “Vrbnik Drinking Team” t-shirts), which is very different from other places we’ve been.

Instead of staying inside the old walled town like two years ago, this time we are staying in an apartment up on the hill overlooking town and the sea.  The view is spectacular, and the owners let us in on a little secret:  if you keep heading up the hill, on the other side you come to a much more beautiful and much less frequented beach than the one everyone walks to near town.  Of course, the reason it’s less frequented is that it is a three-kilometer drive on a curvy, hilly, single land road with a 100-foot drop to the sea right at the edge of the pavement.  But it's well worth it...the beach is very beautiful and we practically had the whole swimming area to ourselves.

Ice Storms

One of the defining aspects of Slovenian landscape is its forestland.  It is the most-densely forested country in non-Scandinavian Europe, with almost 60% of its land covered by forests.  Given the geographical diversity, it also has one of the most diverse tree populations in Europe as well.

This past spring, Slovenia was hit with about the worst ice storm imaginable, with the area around Postojna (about halfway between Ljubljana and the coast) taking the brunt of it.  Some places were left covered in six inches of ice and a quarter of the households in Slovenia lost power.  The damage estimates are over $100 million and the clean-up effort is expected to take two years.  The pictures of it are unbelievable.

Driving down to Piran last week, we saw the remnants of the storm along the highway.  It looks like someone came along with a giant buzzsaw and hacked off every tree two-thirds of the way up.  It is quite sad, although our taxi driver from the airport when we arrived had a more positive outlook: “People will have jobs for two years,” he said.