Two Curious Souls

  We weren’t sure what to expect in Ljubljana. It is a town of about 300,000 people and 50,000 students. That’s about the size that Austin was when Malcolm went to University of Texas. Young people everywhere. We found that almost everyone we talked to spoke perfect English. An unbelievable 74% of Slovenians adults speak English.   The city is built around a big bend in the Ljubljanica River. As usual, there’s a castle on the top of the hill, built by the Hapsburgs during their reign over the city. Since no one from the family lived here, it was mostly for the Governors who managed the city and collected the taxes for the Hapsburgs.   We love cities with free walking tours. Well, they are not really free. You’re expected to tip the guide if they did good work and our guide was outstanding. During the tour she told us about the geology of the city, about key people in the architectural history, and even about legends.   She talked about the geology of their ‘disappear...

We made it to Fantasyland in Slovenia. When we arrived at Lake Bled, it had that high-Alpine feeling to it. We couldn't see the majesty of the mountains but we could feel that small village feeling we would expect from a Walt Disney movie. We even encountered several accordion players adding to the mood. We drove in by rental car from Pula and were happy to get off of the freeway. Construction provided our entertainment while we were stopped. In most cases, on one-lane roads, we were stopped by a non-manned traffic light that we trusted would eventually turn to some shade of green that allowed us to proceed. When there was no construction, we were usually warned that the road was narrow and we just had to watch for the oncoming cars and make sure we were ready to give up half of the one lane and it always seemed to work. A few times it worked by one of us backing into a space that was wider.  Triglav National Park is almost 4% of the land area of Slovenia. Similar to the Rockies wi...