From Zagreb, we moved on to our next country, Slovenia, which as you drive in looks exactly what you’d draw Slovenia to look like. If you had a good imagination…and could draw real good that is. It really was like driving through a postcard…a postcard of Slovenia. Rolling green hills, tall white churches, terra-cotta tiles, beautiful.
We had a stop off in a small, mention-less town (which ironically just got mentioned) before ending up in Lake Bled…or at least in a hotel very close to the edge of the lake. A place magical enough to get even Lea punning that it was un-Bleddy believable!

After a rain affected first day, which only enhanced the views, the following morning James proved you can’t spell Slovenia without LOVE and you can’t spell romance without ROW (if you flip the ‘w’). He proved his rugged, outdoorsiness by donning his Kathmandu gilet and rowing Lea out to the island in the middle of the Lake for one of the most amazing experiences of the honeymoon, if not our lives! While on the island, Lea (now married) felt confident enough to take confession and despite nobody being on the other side of the confessional, she’s already started working on her stone collection…while James has decided to wait until they get to the Vatican as it’s probably safer to go straight to the top, and we hear there’s a hip and progressive guy in charge so fingers crossed.  Can I say cross?

After the boat trip, upon seeing it was again likely to rain, we thought we might take a drive. So we went to Austria for lunch…cos why not?? It was lovely to be back in Austria, so organised, so manicured, so well behaved and such a great picture of what the Southern slav towns were once like. It was nice to know a little more of a language (ein weizen bitte) and noticed that it’s common across all the towns we’ve visited to quote “open 7 days”, which must mean over Summer, instead of in a row, and it’s the unsuspecting tourist’s own fault for noticing the similarity to the number of days in a single week. On recommendation we visited the typically Austrian town of Klagenfurt by the lake Wörther See and not just because we knocked out (as expected in Austria) an elusive ‘W’, it was definitely worth-a-see…? Had we not talked our way out of a 300EUR fine on the freeway we might have told a different story.

Moving quickly back to Lake Bled, we saw heaps of highly camouflaged fishermen, which we assume/hope was to hide themselves from bears trying to catch them rather than aid their own efforts, continued to watch the Aussie dollar fall without us being in the country, James had to cut his nails after being so relaxed and also noticed himself start saying hello with an accent, “halo!”, maybe in attempt to not sound American or English…or probably Australian (whichever was causing the most hate), and avoid more meals being spat on. We thought kangaroo tattoos might be a good option…until we saw some groups of Aussies. Maybe a maple leaf.

Next stop, apart from two more lovely stops along the way, was the capital city of Ljubljana. Because you can’t spell Ljubljana without L and J! Twice. A town which Lea described as “like an Art Nouveau movie set…if all the Communist era buildings were photoshopped out”.

We were lucky enough to arrive just as a walking tour was kicking off, which completed our story (from the goodies’ sides) of the Balkan wars. We saw a surprisingly lovely, cosmopolitan town, which hid the fact that although they escaped relatively unharmed from their separation from Yugoslavia, they’re in as much or more of a mess than Croatia, 12% unemployment, average salary of 1000Euros pa, and worst of all, free University…for anyone in the EU who wants to come and study with subsidised housing and food!!

Our guide was great and gave us some suggestions such as eating a bear steak, which we didn’t follow and probably should have (because James thought it might be a little grisly…….) and visiting Metelkova, which we did follow and probably shouldn’t have.

Lonely planet also said to go to Metlekova. So we walked the dark, deserted streets of one of poorer countries in Europe, at 10pm, in hope of finding an amazing art commune like in East Berlin, but instead found bunch of goths, smoking stuff we’re not allowed to and listening to death metal (all of which we could have taken as a sign before entering). Somehow, rocking the double layer Country Road, Levi’s 507s and nobuk walking shoes didn’t quite cut it, even with Lea’s rings turned inwards some tough, poorly developed delinquent threw a bottle cap at us. Unfortunately drugs and/or other lifestyle choices rendered him unable to cover the 10m distance between us and if not for our super human hearing due to being on edge we wouldn’t have noticed. Nevertheless we walked straight in…and straight out, James tied his sweater over his shoulders and they headed back to drink wine in a square and stare at a castle, the real Europe. Such a shame, because it did look like some really talented people had been there and created an amazing artistic hideaway, I assume they’d be just as annoyed at a bunch of no good kids (there I just said kids), who elsewhere have vandalised beautiful examples of Art Nouveau and Baroque buildings by scrawling a false name and deciding they too are great artists. Particularly offensive as we all know what they say about Baroque…if it’s Baroque, don’t fix it.  Anyway, off the pedestal, maybe next time we’ll take a hoodie and a good knowledge of Slovene death metal, as I’m sure it’s worth more of a look.

While back in the square we saw a couple walking a door, complete with knob, through town (we have to assume either: we were really drunk, or; they were off to their first swingers party and the rules got a little lost in translation) and listened to “Singing in the Rain” being shown in the open air theatre. No doubt Monnie telling the Universe to get us up and dancing, or have another glass. We obliged with the latter, thanks Nan.

We caught a taller funicular up to the castle, bought some bigger clothes, mailed home those bottles of hooch from Korcula (which were 4EUR each and are now far more valuable), took a boat ride along the river in a lovely timber boat, drank street wine from plastic bottles in plastic cups (it was actually quite good) while watching a weird concert and visited the amazingly well preserved cave-castle of Predjama.

The LOVE in Slovenia is well and truly felt by us, but through some fault or misinterpretation of our own was a one way street as we never felt quite welcome. But, we’ll be back to try again!  Maybe we’ll have more luck with the Italians…