East-Eurotrip

This is my third day in lake bled, and I'm leaving here this afernoon to Ptuj. This is a summary of my activities here so far. First a bit about Bled - it's one of the most popular resort areas in Slovenia. It has a small lake (6 km in circumference), with a small beautiful island in the middle and a church in the middle of it. It is said to bring good luck to ring the bell of the church, so all day long you here the bell ringing. Around Bled there are a lot of hills for hiking.




Day 1
Met a japanise guy named Jun on the bus from Ljubljana to here. We travelled together for around half a day, going next to the lake, visited Bled Castle (a castle of a tall cliff falling into the lake), and hired a row boat and rowed into the small island in the middle of the lake, visited the church, and rang the bell (you wouldn't expect otherwise, would you?). I even have a picture of me ringing the bell. amazing.
We split up in the afternoon, and I continued to the tallest hill around the lake (more than 700 meters tall). The walk up was real steep, but from the top you have a great view, and I also took the opportunity to catch a siesta on a bench at the top...
On the way down I tried to find a short-cut, but only found myself going down steeper and steeper slopes, until eventually I gave up, went all the way back to the top, and found the trail down... I also finished all my water somewhere in the middle of it, and there is no one there! I met only 2 other people on that hill in the 3-4 hours I was there. So luckily, I survived...

Oh, I went to lunch with the japanese guy, and we met there a couple with the guy being Israeli (21 years old, and acting like one). He was really fun, but kept talking on the differences of smoking marijuana in different countries, and where you have good parties, and such thing. Apparently, the japanese guy was also into such stuff when he was younger, and lived 4 years in amsterdam, so they had much to talk about... I didn't contribute too much to that conversion. This is what 9 years in the army does to you I guess...

In the evening just went around and drank beer at a local pub. Nothing intersting.

Day 2
Woke up at around 11 oclock (still a bumass!). Went for a walk to a gorje nearby, very beautiful, saw a group of old&boring Israeli going there also, but didn't reveal my secret Israeli identity. Then in the evening in went to the final of an international hockey tournament, the two teams competing were both slovenian, and the local team won. Much joy. At the evening went to play billiard for a little bit (alone)

Day 3 (i.e. today)
Went in the morning to do rock climbing, in natural rock. It's hard, but it's fun. Specially getting to the top, and knowing you didn't quit. It's much harder then the artificial ones, because you hardly have anywhere to grab with your hands when you're climbing in the nature.
In the afternoon I'm probably going to do a horse riding lesson, and then head to Ptuj.

When I'll get to a real internet cafe (now I'm just using one in the extreme sport's office), I'll upload some more photos.

Today was a lot less busier than yesterday. Got up at 10 (yeah, still bummass...), went to the city museum where they had exhibition on the history of Ljubljana and the path to independence of Slovenia, and they also had a very interesting exhibition from Croatia called "broken hearts", it's a collection of items that people who got dumped sent to them, items that they got from their loved one, including a letter about the item itself and its significance in their eyes. Some were kitchy, but some had interesting insights.

Later I went to look at the faculty of mathematics in Ljubljana University (that's true). It was locked, but in the physics department I met a student with whom I talked for around 2 hours on student life here and in Israel, on the political conditions on so on. Learned some interesting facts about Slovenia. Did you know there is a 60 years old rivalry between the catholic and the communists in Slovenia, although now they have no real differences in their approach in goverment?

That's all. Now I'm going out to the city to have something to drink, and hopefully meet some interesting people. Tomorrow it's off to lake Bled early in the morning.

Hello everyone!
Blogging - maybe that way I'll remember all my adventures, and you will be able to update in real-time (relatively).

The trip started on a bad sign. The plane from Israel to Vienna was a bit late, so we had to rush to our connection flight to Ljubljana, but I guess I ran faster than my lagguage, because after we landed everybody left, and only I was left waiting for my lagguage. Eventually I gave up to report it's loss, but good surprise - Vienna already notified on it to Ljubljana, so they said they will bring it in the next flight. So it wasnt lost, just delayed a little bit. They delivered it to my hostel later that day.

I took a bus to the city center to get to my hostel, which was defined in internet booking site as being "near the center". Apparently they new I"m from tel-aviv, because near was tel-aviv walking distance, around 40 mins. or so. Luckily, I didn't have my big&heavy bag to carry...

From then on, it improved. I wondered around Ljubljana, the city is really nice and quaint - a lot of small streets, colored houses, small cafes along the river. There are some nice bridges over the river, the most famous are the three bridges bridge, and the dragon bridge. Went up to the castle (really steep ascent, but still some old guy kept running up&down on it, while I had troubles just walking up). the castle wasnt really interesting, but there was a nice view of the city, and there's a huge forest around it where you can walk a long time. I just took a random path, and got out eventually from a door in the middle of the street! I never would have guessed.

On the afternoon I met this really lovely and nice english girl named Sarah, and we continued together for the rest of the day. We basically just did a random walk around the city, and wandered around Tivoli Park (huge park, that had photos exposition of really beautiful places around the world from some solvenian photographer. game me some ideas on where my next trip will be...)

A bit about the food here - it seems that all that slovenians eat, according to the stores we saw, is alcohol, cafe, ice-cream, pizza and some sandwitches. We tried to find a nice place for dinner to eat "local" food, but ended up eating local mexican food - burritos. We also found that in slovenian they are called torillas, although it is really a different food.
We continued to a local pub called Mackon, with a really cool logo. Local beer is called
Union, and it is quite nice actually.

Now for pictures. It seems that posting here takes forever to upload, so I use my usual kodakgallery place. When I"ll enter new posts, I"ll try also to add new photos there, so keep an eye on it. The link:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=nmb6n2g.bqjqwbjo&x=0&y=ho1efy

Tomorrow morning I"m heading to the north-west, to lake bled. I hope it wouldn"t rain, because here at Ljubljana it already rained a bit yesterday. It seems to me not as much fun swiming and sun-bathing without the sun.