The Journey Begins

16^th October

The last 6 days has seen a lot of change for me. To begin with on Wednesday I had my last working day. I’m now officially unemployed / travelling, it’s a scary thought. My last few weeks in Italy were so full I’ve not had chance to write about all of the amazing things I did so expect some sort of catch up when I have more time. Leaving Italy brought about a sadness I never expected to feel. I know I’m leaving friends there and the area I was living in was so quiet because the tourists and the majority of the tourist staff had left it felt like the very beginning again, but without the anticipation of how the summer season would turn out. As much as people talk about meeting people whilst travelling they never speak of the equal high number of goodbyes you have to say. I think this is the hardest parts of travelling. Some people it doesn’t really have the same draw. That friend you met once or twice in the bar, saying goodbye is irrelevant. But when you have been working and living and socialising with people for weeks at a time in such close proximity, to have to say goodbye is hard. I don’t like that part. I think this is the sadness which I feel about leaving Italy. Italy has been my home for seven months and although I may complain about the lack of international cuisines, in the whole she’s been good to me and I will miss her.

I am now on my flight from Berlin to Brussels. The journey so far has seen me take a train from Venezia to Milano coupled with my first experience of staying in a hostel dorm as a solo traveller.  I then managed to utilise planes trains and automobiles but in a different order (coach, plane and train, but automobiles, plains and trains isn’t as catchy and probably one of the reasons the film isn’t called that)) to deliver me to Berlin where I met Jasmin! My first thoughts on arriving in Deutschland ‘Why is it so Cold?’  I did have a little problem once I arrived in Berlin centre though, I had, somehow, researched the directions to a totally different hotel. Walking around Berlin with 35kg’s  (ssshhhhhh don’t tell Ryanair) of baggage on my shoulders searching for Wifi to check my emails was not how I had originally intended to spend my first day in Berlin. Suffice to say, I am more prepared for my next accommodation search.

It’s been so good to be in a place which has so many food options. I’ve eaten so many different types of food there it took me 3 days before I ate something German. As expected I was much quicker to try the German beers. I have become a bit of a fan of using ’mi italiano’ though so now when have to say ‘Danke’ it’s usually after a few attempts at thank you in a variety of different languages. I think my foreignness in their country shines through.  In the next week(ish) I have 4 more languages to deal with, I think I’m gonna need some help.

Ok so time spent in Berlin was great. We saw the main sights, Brandenburg Gate, The Jewish Memorial Site, Check Point Charlie etc etc and obviously, The Wall. It’s amazing how you can be walking along the road with a man made structure to the left of you which at one time controlled the movement of so many people and effected the lives they led, symbolised a lack of freedom. Parts of the wall which remain as they once were can not help but make me grateful for the freedom I live with. What’s much more uplifting is the site of the East Side Gallery. Here the remains of the wall have been graffitti’d. I wish we could have spent a full day just looking at each piece. Each design has its own personal meaning; the walk could go on all day. We didn’t manage to do everything though, as caching up often got in the way. We’ve done lunch, evening meal, cocktails, cosy nights in with ‘The Girls,’ clubbing, bar hoping, drinking in the street, being refused entrance to a club, looked at art, mastered the Berlin inner city transport system and gotten our money’s worth out of the free wifi the hotel so graciously provide and still 4 days isn’t enough. Actually what’s worse than saying goodbye to new friends is saying hello to old ones, and having to say goodbye to them again. The repetitive nature of saying good bye should get easier, but for me at least, it never does.

That’s enough of being contemplative Berlin is such an amazing city, I have to return here again. It has a quality which isn’t tangible but it’s as though everyone is laid back and the city somehow manages to function but without any of the hecticness that can be felt within a city like say London. Maybe I’ve just been starved of city life for too long, but I think that Berlin is definitely one of my favourite cities in Europe.

Now that I’m moving around a little more I’m hoping to make updates more often, fingers crossed eh. I’ve got about 6 weeks travelling before I arrive in Australia and then probably a week to get to where I actually want to be in Australia. So here is my itinerary:

2 Nights Brussels

1 Night Antwerp

1 Night Rotterdam

4 Nights just North of Paris

2 Nights Geneva

13 Nights split between Israel and Jordan

10 Nights Egypt

2 Nights Istanbul

5 Nights between Georgia and Armenia

3 Nights Sri Lanka

8 Hours in Singapore

Finally arriving into Australia on the 30^th November when I’m going to have to make my way across the continent to the East Coast to make my date for New Years Eve in Sydney.  Then I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do :-) I’ve spent so much time planning how to get there I’ve never really thought about what I’ll do once I’m there, still the age old saying it’s the journey not the destination.

Flights beginning to descend into Brussels now so I best switch my laptop off and prepare myself for my first of (hopefully) many positive couch surfing experiences. I have high hopes of Belgium as a whole; I’ve been told they make chips like we have in chippy’s in England. I can’t wait!

Lake Bled, Under AND Over The Alps

Road Trip!

On a sunny August day (I know it’s now October) 3 friends decided to take a trip to a little place called Lake Bled. A 3 hour drive north east of where we had been living for 5 months and we found ourselves searching for a campsite within walking distance of the water. We settled at a 4 star campsite which was situated on the lake front, had a pet pig, who was a little moody, and free WiFi. We set out our stall for the night.  Now this is my third (and maybe final) trip to Slovenja in maybe 3 months and I have to say I really quite like it. On this trip I’ve learnt that in English the country is called ‘SlovEEnia’ but locally it’s called ‘Slovenja,’ a far better pronunciation, so I’ve decided from now on I’m going to call it Slovenja instead!

Good enough map?

A little drive around and a visit to a local supermarket (Slovenjian supermarkets are brilliant) we stocked up of food which didn’t involve pizza, or pasta. Our evening meal would be in the form of a bbq with the embrace of the mountains behind us to keep us safe. Turns out that when one wants to use a bucket bbq there are a few important items which need to be present; you know bbq, charcoal, grill etc. You can imagine our horror when the grill had been lost in transit, it’s at times like that that you wish you had flown and could blame someone else, as it was we had driven so the missing grill clearly had decided it didn’t want to come to Slovenja and taken a much needed rest away from us. Not to fear though, when in camping, it’s possible to acquire a grill for the night and all one has to do is swap it for a cheap bottle of red, it wasn’t like I could drink red anyway (I didn’t have my red wine drinking vest with me). BBQ grill borrowed, food cooked (and eaten), tents built, beer drank, WiFi connected (and promptly disconnected) we all fell asleep after a hard day of well pretty much doing nothing, 

The next day we woke and it was really apparent that we were high in the mountains, the air felt cooler, and the mosquitoes could not get quite so high. Basia decided to head off to Ljubijana as this was her first trip to Slovenja, Ali and I decided to head of around the lake and discover what was on offer. Overlooking the lake is a dominating castle, Slovenja is great at building Castles (or Grads in Slovenjian) so we jumped in the car and drove up. Once at the top we realised that there was a photo shoot going on. There was a lady wearing a white dress and veil, it may have been her wedding day as she was sat on the wall next to a man wearing a suit, when I noticed the shiny new wedding ring on her finger, well the penny dropped. So we had our picture taken and did a runner.

I swam to that!

As we continued our drive around the lake we saw an activity that I had only ever watched on TV before, namely on ‘coach Trip’ (I do miss Brendan). We found a dry tobogganing run. Deciding if it was good enough for Brendan it was good enough for us. We paid out 6 Euros and headed straight for the ski lift to take us to the top of the hill. I’m not going to lie, as soon as I saw the size of the run I wanted to change my mind, but never one to waste money I perceived through and kept my mind distracted with thoughts of other things. As the ski lift creaked we moved slowly but surely (at times) towards the top of the hill. There were many points during this little ride that I thought the wire was going to break or much more likely, I would drop a flip flop and forever be known as the English boy who lost his shoe. Luckily neither of these things happened but the worry of them did distract me from the task at hand.

Is it too late to change my mind?

Once  at the top the views were amazing, not that I could enjoy them because I was petrified of going too fast on this tobogganing thing and go flat on my face for the second time in a month, (for those who don’t know a few weeks earlier I had come off my bicycle head first over the handle bars and had to have stitched in my chin, I was impressed with the standard of Italian hospitals, well some of them) anyway trying unsuccessfully to hide my fear I climbed into the toboggan and posed for the obligatory picture.  The toboggans had breaks so that it was possible to control how fast (or slow) you wanted to go, I’m not sure anyone has had an experience as dramatic as what was about to unfold.

Yes it is!

Then I was off, ‘racing’ down the hill I could hear Ali shout words of encouragement to ease my fear, unfortunately for the her, it didn’t work and I continued to stop and start my way down this hill. It took forever. When I began to hear the conversations of souse tourists above me on the ski lift I knew I was going a little slow. If I hadn’t of realised it at that point then I certainly did when I came to a complete stop and had to use my feet to push against the floor just to get me around the final corner. I think my time came in around the 5 – 6 minutes mark, when I looked on YouTube for the clip from ‘Coach Trip’ most people did the course in less than 2 minutes. I’ve never been one for speed. Ali actually had to stop and wait for me on the final corner because having waited a good 3 or 4 minutes she had caught me up.

This gave Ali a great laugh and the rest of the day was spent out by the side of the lake and on a wooden swan which we hired to row across to the island in the lake. I always thought I’d be good at rowing, it’s one of the few machines I used to enjoy at the gym, it turns out that the rowing machines in the gym don’t prepare you for steering or being around other lake users, I think they’re very misleading. I think I will bring this up with the gym next time I join one. However we managed to get ourselves to the island and had a little swim.  On the island there is a load of steps and a church with a tower. We decided we had done enough physical activities that involved going high today and instead appreciated the view of the steps from the comfort of our private swan.

Evening came, Basia returned from the big smoke and we swapped stories of our day. Standard camping night followed, BBQ, beer and wine.

So after an early morning swim to the island with Basia we dismantled our tents and headed off for a drive around Slovenja, hoping to find a campsite a little closer to the Italian boarder so our drive home in the morning wouldn’t be so long. I don’t think any of us thought that the day would turn out the way it did. Armed with a road map out of the back of a Berlitz guide to Slovenja it was an inevitability that we would get lost. The extent of which will soon present itself.

We drove around some little villages and tried to imagine how dramatically the landscape would change when the winter’s winds arrive. We visited canyons and valleys and once again re-established that Slovenja is an amazing little country and very much underrated which I feel is where the charm lies. Deciding we wanted to drive through the Triglav national park and armed with Basia and her Berlitz travel guide’s map a direct route was bound to occur. The navigating was going perfectly until we stopped at a toll point and paid our 8 Euros, out of morbid curiosity we asked the toll worker a simple question which would begin our demise;

Us ‘What’s the toll for?’

Toll Worker ‘The tunnel’

Us ‘Tunnel? Where does the tunnel go?’

Toll Worker ‘Austria, go’

Us *Gulp*

And so it was decided we were going to Austria. Once in the Tunnel we began to ponder our position, we had plenty of time to do this the tunnel was 14 KM long and it really was a concrete miracle. Once safely through the tunnel and stepping out on Austrian soil for the first time we used the facilities of the service station and set off to a) buy a pass to drive on the roads here and b) find a map which was a little more comprehensive than the Berlitz attempt. To this day I am still unsure as to why we didn’t buy one, but instead, using Basia’a German skills, we (I am using the royal we) spoke with a fellow driver who happened to have a map. We studied the map and planned a route, then just to be safe; we took a picture of the parts of the map we thought may be useful. Now we had a more comprehensive map, but could only see it on the small screen on the back of Basia’a camera. I’m not sure which was better. Either way we drove around and around the Austrian countryside for a few hours. We visited St Nicholas, Fauk em an’see and (my least favourite) Kocnah.

Merry Christmas!

A visit to an Austrian supermarket (not a patch compared to their Slovenjian competitors) we had lunch and attempted to cross back into Slovenja through some mountain trail which would lead us directly into the national park. After a lot of driving and becoming a little friendlier with some roundabouts more so than with others. Despite our lack of decent map Basia found our way back to the Austro-Slovenja boarder. It was a definite photo opportunity.

We found it!

The drive that continued was amazing, and I was very pleased I was not behind the wheel. We drove to the top of one of the highest points in Slovenja. The mountain rose to over 2000 meters and the road which led to the top is only open part of the year due to bad weather rendering the road impassable in winter. The road was hair pin bend after hair pin bend but some of the views were amazing. 

I'm king of the world!

The drive to the top took an awful long time and the road down took an equally long time, having arrived at the top and seeing nothing but a car park, I do question what point this road now serves, except to scare Ali halfway to death and provide us with some good pictures. We eventually got out of the national park and found a campsite about 20 KM from the Italian boarder. 

'Where does the road go?'

The next day would see us drive home. But we would have a brief passing into one of the regional cities I really wanted to visit, Udine. I actually only wanted to visit this place because it looks like urine and presumable is pronounced in a similar fashion alas. You can imagine my huge disappointment when I discover that it’s actually pronounced ‘ew-din-ay.’ It’s a nice city but the urge to revisit has gone.