With a meeting in Munich Monday/Tuesday, my boss, Quan, suggested taking a trip the weekend before. This one suggestion at lunch a month out was enough to convince me to book it.
Where to? Well somewhere that had Munich in the middle. I wanted to go to Verona to see Bea and drink wine, but she was in Rome this weekend. So I thought I'd go somewhere new. Looking at the FlixBus map, Ljubljana seemed like a good choice - accessible by night bus from Berlin, safe, a bit different, *good weather*, and accessible to Munich by a shorter ride than from Berlin.
So I booked it hours in advance.
Hopped on the night bus and was excited to have this trip to myself. The past weekend made me realize I needed a solo trip. I needed to get out of the big city and be by myself. WHOO.
I slept pretty well since the seat next to me was free, and woke up in Bled - the famous town/lake/newest tourist hub in Slovenia that I was set on avoiding. Butttt if it was gonna be right in front of me, why not. I asked the bus driver to hold to his 5 minute break promise (maybe still not the smartest thing to leave my passport, money, and phones in the bus) but I ran down to the lake. Wow I forget how amazing mornings are. It's all chilly and peaceful and misty - perfect in the mountains. I took in the sight that was Bled - yes beautiful, but I'm glad I was here on a free 5 minute stopover. I can say I saw it, and I didn't have to think about what I was missing. It wasn't really that great. Maybe I didn't have the best view, and yes I went into it a bit snobbish, but it was really just a mini-castle on an island in a lake. I guess I was expecting more mountains, but the mountains was what I was after.
That paragraph up there probably took as long as I spent at Bled, so I will move on to my arrival into Ljubljana. It was like 7am probably, and check-in started at 9:30, so I walked around a bit. Again, the morning is just the best and most peaceful time. I really enjoyed just sitting near the bridges and watching the town wake up.
K that's the end of my cheesiness. I killed time by getting some advice from the tourist info office, and I finally got to go to the hostel to drop off my bags. I quick changed and packed a day pack and ran off to the bus station to bus back to the mountains. Barely making it on time, and the bus driver was kinda annoyed I think, I got a seat and hung out till the end of the line... or at least I thought. Not as many people got off at Bled as I was expecting, and the bus driver said "Bohinj!" before the last stop. Deciding to trust the bus driver, I got off and ended up in a mini tourist wonderland. Meh it wasn't that bad but it was definitely different than what I was expecting. I thought Bled was supposed to be like this. There were restaurants and hanggliding companies and people everywhere. I asked the tourist office for hiking suggestions, and the one I was interested in was recommended to have "good hiking shoes" as it was very steep. Thinking that the naturally athletic human that I am could handle a spontaneous 1.5 hour mountain hike in tennis shoes, I set off.
*Yes I did stop and have a brie/bread/grapes lunch by the water and it was incredible. How else do you think I'd start a hike??*
The routes were not marked as well as they are in Germnay, so I started out kinda hesitatingly (that's a word now). I read the biggest danger you could face in the Slovenian alps is sheep-herding dogs, so I was super scared. I stopped every two minutes to make sure there was no sign of dog.
Not only was there no sign of dog, but there was no sign of human besides this woodsy barely-path thing. Was I actually following the map?? It also turned out to be actually steep, and I took a break on a rock, drenched in sweat. I also don't like to move slow so that didn't help. I tried to go through Google Maps, and from what I could tell I was doing pretty okay, and then BAM all of a sudden another human comes along! Woah. This was actually a path! I wasn't just trekking through random people's farms!!
Doing my best to hide my sweat-drenched, 12-year-old-looking face buried in my cell phone on a beautiful mountain, the guy finally passed. Ok, if he can do it, I can do it. I set out again, go 30 steps, and realize it's really steep, and I'm only a fourth of the way there. I don't mind going up mountains, but I REALLY hate going down them. This was going to absolutely suck coming down, so I decided to turn around. Yes, I know, lame, but I got a workout, whatever.
Missing out on some great views, I decided I'd go to the gondola. I was walking and walking and walking around the lake, and took a wine/brie break after a while. Checking Google Maps, I was a third of the way there. What?? They really need to put a scale on their maps. Jk they have one but I doubted it (smart).
I didn't come here for no reason - I was going to go to the top of a mountain, and I wasn't going to let some dumb long road get in the way of that. Steep trek, fine, but road no way. I powerwalked the other two-thirds and finally arrived. WHOO! I bought my ticket and hung outside for the next ride. Meanwhile I met this nice American couple who were a bit hesitant about the heights. I convinced them to do it though ;)
I never know when to be American or when to be German. I (obviously) still have to make an effort to be German, it doesn't come naturally, or well even, but that means that my Midwestern American is consciously suppressed. Do I be nice to these nice people? Wait how do you be nice again?
**"Nice" in this sense means open and outgoing to strangers. Germans are nice, just not usually willing to share life stories/experiences with strangers.**
This internal confusion resulted in an awkward friendship of here-and-there conversation and then me backing off at the first silence. I kinda liked them though - I dunno she was so friendly and even called me her second daughter when I told her about the bottle of wine in my hiking backpack. We wandered around a bit together, and then I broke off on my own to sit in the sun and take in the beauty and maybe later journal. THEN I met ANOTHER American couple, and I liked this one even more - as I was taking in the scene, the wife goes "Hey let's do something we've never done before - take a selfie!" Hilarious. So cute. Letting them have their first-selfie moment, I later offered to take their picture. They offered to take mine and I said no (the other couple already took my picture lol) and then we got to talking the usual talk of why I'm an American female in the Slovenian Alps by myself, and they were so cute and interested in my life. Carol and Chuck from North Carolina. They offered to walk around with me, but I declined saying that I wanted to journal before the next cable car left. THIS IS WHERE I HATE INTERACTING WITH AMERICANS - I felt bad because they asked me like, "would you like to walk around with us, or you probably don't want to, we're too old." in a friendly funny way, but then that made me feel like I was being mean and saying they were old in my refusal - AMERICAN THOUGHT PROCESS. They threw off my groove!! It wasn't just them, it's a compilation of all Americans I encounter during this time, and solo time makes me "nicer". I don't like it.
I journaled for like two minutes - actually I really just wanted to drink my wine up top there, but since I told them I was going to journal, I had to journal at least for a bit. There wasn't much time though, and soon I was headed down to the cable car to go back. That's where I ran into the first couple again, and we caught up a bit, but then I saw Carol and Chuck and felt like I was cheating on them. STUPID AMERICAN THINKING. I thought it was kinda funny though how I had made two sets of parent/grandparent friends in the span of one hour.
We all peace out, and the first American couple offer to take me back to town which I accept as I thought back to the journey to get there. They drop me off at the bus stop, and I see the next bus comes in five minutes. Great. But then I look to the lake - ugh so beautiful. By the time I get back to Ljubljana, it'll be fully dark. Ok, why not stay?
I head down to the spot where I had my lunch, and I get fancy and lay out my blanket with my wine, grapes, bread, and brie. So freaking beautiful and peaceful. Great solo moment. I ate, and stared; and ate and stared. Luckily I checked the bus times because I didn't realize the last bus departed only at 7:50pm. I had enough time though to just take in the sunset over the mountains. It was great.
The bus was late, but I was happy to be on board and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep just before Ljubljana. BUT I made it no worries. I went to the hostel and finally the people there were awake - when I had checked in at 9:30am, most of them were still asleep. This was an old-lady moment for me when I realized I was talking mostly to the one 40 year-old that was there. I didn't connect or understand any longer this Erasmus/travel year thing where people hop from city to city, sleeping in and wasting time. Not that Erasmus or travelling is a waste of time, and we all need to sleep in, but I don't believe in this particular group's style of travelling. They were nice, just way too at home at the hostel. I don't travel to meet people, well, other travelers. Yes I get that hostel hangouts are part of the experience... but is it?? I sleep at hostels because I need a place to sleep in my time of sight-seeing and exploring. I don't need to make friends to distract me from where I am.
Whatever. I'm old and lame. I'm good with that.
Overall great day - I'm deciding to break this up into two blogs as I now see that this is already super long just after one day.
2025-02-17