"Afoot and light hearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose" Walt Whitman
I have a confession to make.
You see. Well. I don't know how to say this. The thing is…umm.. Okay I'll just say it. INeverWantToStopTraveling. Phew, I said it! What's that? You didn't understand me? I'll say it a little more slowly this time. I. Never. Want. To. Stop. Traveling. Ever.
I'm seriously addicted to that travel feeling. You know, the one that makes you buy airplane tickets on impulse at midnight after hearing about some place that you just have to go. That feeling that gives you butterflies in your stomach the day before the big trip. Or makes you walk around with a big ridiculous grin on your face like you're in love..or you're a crazy person.
To be perfectly honest, I've had this feeling for quite some time now.
Of course, traveling hasn't been as glamorous as on the Travel Channel. Partly because there is rarely a camera crew following me around and also because I don't have my own stylist. Also, everyone on Travel Channel is so refreshed, energetic, and well groomed. I, on the other hand, have been wearing the same two outfits for a week straight (hey who wants to lug around any more than that for 2 weeks, not me. And good thing we didn't stay in one place for too long, otherwise everyone might have noticed). I'm exhausted from being out and about everyday. I didn't pack a brush.And let me just say that hostels aren't exactly resort hotels. But hey, that's what I love about it. While it can be draining, I love the feeling of being in a new city. Or just before arriving and not knowing what it will be like or what my favorite part about it will be. That feeling is unbeatable and I love it. Trying new food, meeting people from all over, hearing different languages, all of it. Each place is so different and has it's own unique little something to offer. I can't get enough of it.
"To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted" ~Bill Bryson
27 December- 7 January 8 trains, 4 buses, 1 plane, 1 taxi, endless metro rides. 11 days, 4 currencies, 4 countries (Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia) ~2213. 62 km (~1375.48 miles)
In short, Krakow is a magical fairytale with beautiful people, castles, the best food of the trip and a warm and welcoming atmosphere. Budapest a grand city, massive in every way. The city, the buildings, the river, bridges, castle…all of it. Luckily, the metro system is on the same scale, making it easy to get around. Zagreb is pleasant, packed full of museums of every kind. And Slovenia is where dreams are made, apples are grown, where the alps can be seen all the time.
Highlights: Amazing food in Krakow, with a visit to Auschwitz. An overnight bus through the snow. Baths in Budapest. More metro rides than countable. Fireworks over the Danube. Longest train ride. Ever. But good time to relax. Zoo in Zagreb. Museum of Broken Relationships (had us guessing too). Train ride along the river to Ljubljana, which was beautiful. Peaceful day trip to Lake Bled. Trains on the brain. Slovenia (which we were close to being stranded in, unfortunately we found a way home) was a great place to end a great trip.
Krakow. When we arrived, it was dark already, but the city was illuminated with Christmas lights, the main plaza even had the Christmas markets up still. By far the most memorable thing about Krakow was the food. Meat, potatoes, mushrooms, mulled beer, perogis. The perfect combo for success. They even have bacon and burritos. It's incredible. They must eat so hearty because of the cold. There there were snow flurries one of the afternoons. (Time to break out the sleds!) Thanks Dad and Cindy for the warm stuff, came in handy for sure!
We traveled out to the Oswiecim Concentration Camps, which included the Auschwitz Museum and Birkenau. The whole experience of was difficult to take-in, let alone trying to imagine what it would have been like seventy years ago. Needless to say it was a day of quiet reflection.
We also met up with our travel buddy Gina. She had already been to Krakow, couchsurfing, and we met up with her host. Like all the people we met there, he was super friendly and welcomed us to his country. In Krakow, I'm almost positive there are princesses trapped in castles with dragons and the princes are on their way to save the damsels. There was even a dragon that breaths real fire. Seriously. Sadly, we had to leave this beautiful city and make our way south. I can only hope it's a bit warmer down there. On our way out of Poland, we took an overnight bus through the snow storm.
What a great idea: Traveling at night because it will save daylight hours that can be used to explore a new place.
Of course, this is not the first time that I willingly signed up for overnight transportation that I knew wouldn't be the most comfortable. For some reason I try to convince myself that I will get plenty of sleep and wake up refreshed just as we arrive in the new destination. Pshhh! Why do I always kid myself like that? And I'm sure this won't be the last time.
The last time I took an overnight flight, I vaguely remember stumbling off, rumpled and disoriented and in desperate need of sleep, and of course vowing to never do that kind of thing again. As this distant memory flashed through my mind while we looked at options from Krakow to Budapest, I said, "Sure, an overnight bus. Let's do it. We can just sleep the whole way. Besides, it's like having a hostel and transportation all in one. Perfect."
Turns out, once again, it wasn't the perfect choice.
On the bright side, while waiting at the deserted bus station for a bus that may or may not show up because it is probably a real bus, but who really knows because everyone speaks Polish and the station closes after dark, I was able to reminisce about Morocco with a fellow bus rider from there.
"As always on this boulevard, the faces were young, coming annually in an endless migration from every country, every continent, to alight here once in the long journey of their lives" ~Brian Moore
BIG OL' BUDAPEST
When we arrived, crowds around us were rushing around, knowing exactly where they were going. Then there was us, aimlessly walking in circles, bags under our eyes as we tried to fight the exhaustion and figure out where the metro was. (Turned out we were dropped off at the entrance) Once we realized that, we were immediately swept up into the chaos of the subway. I had no idea that Budapest was so big. On one hand you've got Buda, on the other you've got Pest. Our story picks up where these two cities meet. Together, they make one massive city with the Danube running through it. The biggest of our travels so far. Luckily the metro is so quick and well organized that once we got the hang of it, the city became accessible. We went all over too. More castles, churches, yummy food, not so yummy food, wine. We spent New Years there. Oh man. What a place. I wasn't sure if it was Halloween or an 80's masquerade party. Everyone had crazy colored wigs, masks, and blow horns. Lots of horns. If we were lagging at that point, boy did those wake us up. The streets were jammed of a river of people. When we jumped in, we let the crowd sweep us down the main street. To watch the fireworks we went out to the middle of the bridge and counted down to the new year.
I took a bath for the first time since arriving in Europe. Today (the day I went to the baths) marks the 127th day that I've been living abroad, away from the comfort of San Diego. Now before you start scrunching up your noses in your homes fully equipped with hot water showers and laundry washers, I'd like to clarify that it was a special kind of bath. Yes, I've showered and even kept myself semi-presentable since being here. What I'm talking about here is the magnificent, magical, surreal, entrancing Turkish baths where you can float around for hours in the warm mineral water and leave feeling revitalized. That was definitely needed after such a lonnnng day.
You know that saying about learning from your mistakes? Yeah, well that seems to be a hard concept for me. I make mistakes all the time. Everyone does it. It's only human right? Of course, every time I do something stupid, I say to myself after, "Okay. I'm definitely never doing that again". Then it seems that I do it again. Maybe one day I'll learn from my mistakes- like when I'm seventy. There are always the positive to the negative, though. Even if I didn't realize I made a mistake until it was too late, it led me to unexpected paths that brought about surprises and adventures. Other mistakes are those repeated so many times that now they are just bad habits, ones that maybe one day I'll break (like taking overnight transportation).
Thinking that I can walk to where I need to go because it looks walk-able on the map. This one never fails. And I can't tell you how many times I've done it before, probably because I've blocked those memories from my head. These are traumas filled with sweat, blisters, achy feet, and more than a few hunger-induced hallucinations.
Sure, walking sounds like a great idea. Healthy, refreshing, a great way to see the city, right? Also, walking wouldn't be such a bad idea if I had a sense of direction. Or maybe if I could read maps. Or if I had only brought some snacks…
We decided to walk from the train station to our hostel. Being cooped up in those little train cars, crammed in with other people's luggage, we needed to stretch our legs. And besides, Zagreb looked like a nice little city, judging from the map. Another reason to stroll the streets- I had a flashback to my trip with Janelle and our taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong street. What a better way to show those taxi drivers I didn't need them by walking to the hostel myself? Yeah, that'd show them!
Judging from the map, it looked pretty close from the train station. Just walk to the center and hook a left. No problem.
It might be necessary at this time to point out at this time that I wasn't using an official map. No. Not even a google print out. I didn't need one of those things. I used a copy of a map…which I had drawn in my notebook. At least we had a map. Right?
In case you hadn't guessed already, things didn't work out so well on our little expedition.
The sun was going down.
The weight of our backpacks was making our legs weary.
We had been on a train all day, ready for some nice warm beds.
And food.
But first, we had to get there. Luckily, Zagreb is a very nice city and even if there are some language barriers, hand gestures and smiles go a long way. After showing my map to a woman selling roasted chestnuts, she deciphered it and pointed us to our street. Next time I will put some more details on the directions…Maybe.
The Museum of Broken Relationships. What kind of relationships you may ask. Croatia's relationship with the former Yugoslavia? Historical couples of the area? No, just normal people in normal relationships that didn't quite work out. One of the most interesting, and personal, museums I've been to. People from all over the world send in an item that represents a failed relationship along with a short story of it to be put on display. A museum like this shows how alike people are all around the world. Everyone loves. Everyone suffers. When a relationship ends, the instinct is to get rid of anything that may remind you of it. Here, all those items now represent the emotions of so many people around the world.
http://brokenships.com/en
Tjrajveljng to Ljubljana
I feel S-LOVE-enia
This country is incredibly diverse, you can go skiing in the morning, explore impressive caves in the afternoon, hike around the base of the Julian Alps, and stroll the quaint capital, Ljubljana. It's clean, beautiful, mountainous, green, coastal, super friendly… pretty much all the best qualities a place can have all rolled into one. We said that if we were to design a country, it would be just like Slovenia. We arrived by train from Croatia, one of the most beautiful rides so far. It snaked alongside the river the whole way. Being from California we are spoiled with a dense diversity of geography and landscapes, but looks like Slovenia shares that richness. We trained quite a bit through Slovenia, seeing most of the little country's huge snow-caped mountains, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, green rolling hills dotted with churches and scenes resembling a Ricola ad. Slovenia is a romantic fairytale that one can only dare to try to create. Just staring out the train window, the rolling hills look greener than any other place, the air fresher, the people friendlier. The capital city is picturesque, with an organized peacefulness. The inner city wraps itself alongside the river where there are no cars, no noises, and plenty lovely cobblestone walking streets.
Slovenians are super friendly and incredibly fortunate to live in such a wonderful country. Ljubljana is small compared to any other capital city in Europe. At 200,000 people, it is about 10% the size of Budapest (which has about the same population of all of Slovenia). The city celebrates its poets and architects more than its military leaders. The recycling system gives you every option possible of sorting waste. Plastic? Glass? Aluminium? Biodegradable? Electronics? Paper? Metal? What ever you need readily available right there. The vending machines were impressive in Slovenia. Not only did they have milk dispensers, but also apples too! And these apples… oh man… they are good. And not just good, they are literally the best apples I have ever tasted and will ever taste. We thought Polish apples were the best, that's only because we hadn't made it to Slovenia. I packed a whole bag full for the train home. Each bite is a piece of heaven on earth.
"That life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else" ~Vladimir Nabokov
Lake Bled
Imagine….
A place nestled in the Alps, a place boasting a lake charmed by wooded shorelines and alpine foothills. A castle clutches to an unscalable cliff overlooking a shining lake, rippled only by the gliding swans, or perhaps the gentle rowing of a gondola (no motorized boats are allowed on this lake, oh no siree. It's all about the serenity).
The only sounds to breach the quiet of Bled's calm is the hourly ringing bells from the church nestled on an island on the middle of the lake. The church bells echo off the crystal clear water. The fog is settled so that, like Gina describes, it is like being in a snow globe, trapped in time.
Maybe wishes really do come true in Slovenia...
"The situations that we face do not upset us; it is the decision that we choose to believe it, that upsets us. Life is merely about perception, perspective, and relativity. You always have the choice to flip your frame of reference upside down to gain a completely new focus on the situation"
Oh Slovenia, you are like home to me. Right down to your dragon statues along the bridges that cross the river, and your many caffès with willows right outside, drooping into the river, to your fruit market that has the best apples I've ever tasted and your readily available and organized recycling system. You are magical with the Alps overlooking your beautiful lake and the rivers twisting through your countryside. I only wish I didn't have to leave you so soon. Why did we ever leave? But I will definitely be back, don't worry. Though I cannot send for you, I will return. Until that time I will tell everyone I know what a special gift you are to the world. See you again soon. Love, Tiffany.
"Part of us remains wherever we have been" and if that's the case, I think I left my heart in Slovenia…I was secretly hoping we would never be able to leave this country. I haven't gotten enough of it.
"There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction" ~Salvado Dali (Thanks Janelle for sharing that one)
