Slovenia

Slovenia was not actually on my list of countries to visit on this trip, but I had to go through it to get up to Austria, and it was highly recommended to me by my friend Theresa, so I decided to spend a bit of time in the capital city of Ljubljana (I know, how to say it, right?! Lube-lee-ana). I ended up being really glad I went. It was a very small town as far as capitals go, and my hostel was about a one-minute walk to the city center. As soon as I got to the hostel, I met Katie, who is from the US but has spent the last three years in Bulgaria in the Peace Corps. That afternoon, I was able to skype with my niece, Marina, on her 4th birthday, which was awesome! She was so excited because now that she is four, she gets to take ballet classes:) That evening, Katie and I went out for a happy hour beer, along with another girl from the Netherlands. While we were sitting there chatting, a girl who had been sitting nearby walked over to see if she could join us. She was Jess from Australia, and it turned out that she was also staying at our hostel.The four of us had a fun evening - we went for potato goulash and more beer, and then ended up in an odd bar with a skeleton theme! The next day, I walked around town and went up to the castle on the hill. I had just arrived at a nice park to relax, enjoy the sun, and read my book, when the clouds moved in and it started to rain! That evening, Katie and I went out to try to find a grocery store, but like many of it's neighboring countries, the stores were all closed by 6 or 7 p.m. We ended up having a delicious meal at a pizzeria for possibly less than what we would have spent at a market. I even got to have a small glass of red house wine! Katie was heading to the small town of Bled the next day. I had heard and read about the town, and decided to go for a night as well, especially since it was right on my route anyway. Again, I was glad I did. On the short train ride there, I met up again with Kevin from England, a self-described railway buff, who I had initially met on my train ride to Ljubljana. Once we got off at the train station, we waited for a bus that took us to the actual town of Bled, about ten minutes away. It really is a small, beautiful town. In it's center is Lake Bled, which has a small island with a church on it, and then there is a castle up on a cliff. All of it combined makes for picture-perfect scenery. We walked around the lake, and couldn't stop taking pictures. Then we enjoyed some of Bled's famous cake - krema snezna rezina (cream and custard pastry - yum!) with a great lake view.
That night, we went to the grocery store (before 7 p.m.) and got wine, cheese, proscuitto, and bread. We sat by the lake just looking at it as long as we could, but it just got too cold. So we went back to my hostel to eat the food. I was the only person in my whole dorm, which was strange! Overall, Slovenia was a nice, unexpected surprise. Next, I was off to Austria!