Slovenia
THE JOURNEY
Whoa. First off, let me start by saying that it should be clear to all by now that I will never be able to write a weekly journal. I am apparently struggling to write monthly as we have been in Sicily for almost three weeks now and I still haven’t written a lick about our amazing adventures in Slovenia! Now that you know that important bit, I can tell you that the journey from Spain to Slovenia was incredible, frustrating, awe inspiring, and terrifying all at once. The terror was entirely unfounded, but it was our first European train trip and it was a long and fairly complicated one. Our route took us from Valencia to Ljubljana changing trains in Barcelona, Marseille, Milan, and Trieste where we boarded a bus to Ljubljana. Let’s break this down in sections.
Leaving Spain was sad, as it has been with every country we have left. Spain was kind, beautiful, and delicious with a very homey feel about it, but our journey wasn’t over yet so onward we headed out of our tiny town of Vera to drop the rental car in Valencia and hop on a train. The drive was another of those damned early mornings we can’t seem to get away from. Have I ever mentioned that I am not a morning person? I don’t function well until about 10:00am. Good thing Gregg is a morning person (irritatingly so at times…), so he drove and we got there in good time. We dropped off the rental car and they called us a taxi. We shoved all of our annual possessions into the trunk and back seat of the taxi and made our way to the train station. Up until now my experience with trains has all been riding the Amtrak trains to Chicago as a kid, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We made sure to leave 2 hours, plenty of time I thought, for whatever we encountered. That ended up being about an hour and forty-five minutes more than we needed. The train station was very simple, a waiting area with a few benches and some shops, ticket counters, and cafes, then a small security check point to go through to get to the platform when our train arrived. We lost a couple of Gregg’s pocket knives at the security checkpoint (though they left us with two little ones) and, oddly, two pairs of tiny sewing scissors? Other than that there was nothing to it. We hopped on the train, found a spot for our bags in the car where we sat (thankfully there was plenty of room for our mountain of bags), and enjoyed Conner’s very first train ride as we traversed the north-eastern coast of Spain.
Our train from Valencia was about fifteen minutes late coming into Barcelona and thanks to my heightened level of anxiety I misread the time on our next train and thought we had twelve minutes to get through Barcelona’s much larger train station, find our next train, and get on it! I couldn’t find our train number on the story boards, so I grabbed a lady in a uniform and said “I can’t find our train on the board?” She looked at our tickets, looked a little confused and then pointed us toward a waiting area. We hustled over and I looked at the tickets for the 20th time, and wanted to smack myself upside the head. “Sorry honey, I can’t read 24 hour time format and we actually have two hours and twelve minutes. That’s why our train isn’t on the board yet….” Nothing quite like almost missing your train to heighten the adrenalin, and then the crash of learning we actually had two hours to sit with our luggage mountain and a cranky, hungry, bored 6 year old. Thinking Putty to the rescue!! I swear, that has been one of the most useful things I’ve carried with me on this trip. A tiny little can of putty has saved many a melt-down moment. We also played dice, cards, rhyming games, water bottle toss, and a fun game called “Move all your shit to the other bank of chairs because you are in the wrong waiting area and you aren’t allowed to sit here.” That was probably Gregg’s favorite game. He loves moving our bags over and over again. Finally our turn and we got on the train with no problems. The trains in Spain were quite comfortable and we had a pleasant ride to our stop for the night in Marseille, France.
Ah Marseille. Not quite what I was expecting? Full disclosure, I actually knew nothing at all about Marseille except what my imagination had cooked up from hearing references to “charming villas in the south of France” and romantic getaways with steamy hotel room scenes. My expectations were pretty vague. Also, we had only one night in which to explore. Not a very rounded opinion then. With those pre-notations I will tell you of our brief adventure into Marseille. Thankfully our hotel was directly across the street from the train station, so we hauled across and checked in with ease thanks to a lovely front desk clerk who was friendly and full of smiles, and spoke perfect English (any French I did know was buried somewhere in the travel fog that encased my brain). Then came the arduous task of finding dinner. I searched online and found a place that got great reviews for their gluten free options, so although it was a bit of a trek we decided to go for it. After all, we lucked out in Spain right? We had also been sitting most of the day and a walk through Marseille sounded nice :-). We left our bags in the room and ventured out to see what Marseille had to offer.
Marseille was a big city that definitely felt like a big city. The not so exciting parts were that the streets were dark, loud, crowded, and filled with trash. Not just the usual litter, but piles of trash around full dumpster bins. Strange? Traffic was an insane mangling of cars and pedestrians, cars were liberal with the use of their horns, and there were plenty of explicit gestures from the drivers. The exciting part was seeing the massive amount of diversity in the people and the food! Marseille felt like a huge global melting pot. I must have seen food from more than 20 different cultures in the small area we got to explore. French bistros, Italian sit downs, Thai, Japanese, American, and lots of what looked like Middle Eastern and Ethiopian street food. The people wandering around at 10pm were equally as diverse looking and I heard quite a few languages being spoken. Surrounded by all of this wonderful culture in a brand new city and we ended up eating at the McDonalds by the hotel. I wish I were joking, but let me explain how it happened. We walked all the way to this supposedly amazing restaurant at 10pm only to find it closed for renovation until Monday. Shit. It was very late, we were all tired and hungry, we didn’t speak French, and we didn’t recognize any of the street food let alone know how to ask what was in it. I tried one Thai restaurant to see if their Pad Thai was safe for me and he looked at me like I was nuts and said “non”. If my brain hadn’t been fried from a day of traveling through four different cities I would have said “Lets just grab a pizza on the corner and I’ll get a salad”. Instead we flocked to the giant yellow sign that said “I’m easy, come see me” and Conner was happy which meant that all was well in the world. I got a salad with “grilled” chicken that was actually breaded which meant that Gregg got a chicken salad with his meal and I got to eat out of the designated train snack bag. Yay! Thankfully our hotel breakfast the next morning had lots of fresh fruit and yogurt so my stomach got a small reprieve from dried meats, cheese, crackers and granola bars.
I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see Marseille in the daylight, I wanted the chance to improve on my opinion of it, but we had a morning train to catch so we packed up and hauled back across to the station to catch our next train to Milan. What an incredible stretch of countryside!! This was definitely my favorite leg. Looking out the big windows of the train as the terrain changed was what I had been expecting and more. Beautiful mountains, crystal seas, and quaint seaside villages painted the landscape as we streamed by. We saw quite a few small towns that looked to be inviting us to stay there when we go back to Europe next time :-). It was a comfortable and enjoyable train ride, especially after a small bottle of champagne came back with Gregg from the dining car, and we arrived in Milan with just under an hour to switch trains which meant we didn’t have to wait in the station for long. The station itself was very cool to see though with its old metal arches towering overhead. Milan was probably my favorite train station simply because of the solid, old feel of it. Even if we did have to pay to pee….
The train from Milan to Trieste was a short one and we arrived on time, which was just before midnight. We had arranged with our Airbnb hosts ahead of time, so they knew we were coming in late. Unfortunately this place was not right across the street from the station, but with much patience and prodding we made it through the twinkling streets of Trieste to our beds for the night. The host was lovely and she had everything ready for us. We made it into the room and Conner fell asleep about ten minutes later. Believe me, that is a huge testament to our state of exhaustion. The next morning the host had a yummy spread of pastries and fresh fruit and yogurt for us. She even bought a large selection of gluten free pastries just for me! We had a nice conversation with an American girl over breakfast who was studying for the summer in Venice and taking a weekend in Trieste. This was just the revival we needed. The hosts were very accommodating and allowed us to keep our luggage in the room until it was time for us to catch our bus in the afternoon which meant we had half a day to explore the city of Trieste bag free!
Trieste was a very pretty city with interesting architecture and friendly people. They were having a kids volleyball tournament in the main square which entertained Conner for a bit. Then we walked down by the port and saw tons of jellyfish swimming around! They came right up to the surface all over the port, it was very cool. As we strolled down random streets we came across a few street musicians including a man playing a hand pan (one of Conner’s favorite instruments) and a man playing a couple of didgeridoos. We listened and danced and talked with the didgeridoo player, and then walked by an old ruined amphitheater on the way to find lunch. Lunch was inexpensive and yummy at a restaurant downtown and we happily went back to the B&B ready to trek back to the station to make the last leg of this trip.
Here is where things started to get a little grumpy. The bus station was supposedly the same building as the train station (according to the all powerful Google Maps), so Conner and I hung out in a small park in front of the station while Gregg went to find where we were going to catch our bus. 30 minutes later he came back more confused than when he left. There was nothing about buses in the train station and the only place we saw buses was a little way down past another building surrounded by scaffolding, but those buses had no drivers in them. As we were talking about what to do next we came across another American couple sitting in the park also waiting for a bus. They helpfully explained that the building surrounded by scaffolding was actually the bus station and there was a doorway if you walked underneath the scaffolding on one side. Thank you random meeting in the park! I hope you are having a wonderful time wherever you are. Feeling a little better we decided to head over and see if our bus was there yet. I didn’t see our bus listed on the storyboard or even on the timetables listed for that route, so I went up and tried to ask the ticket clerk. I asked if he spoke English and he said “No” so I whipped out my handy Google Translate app and asked if our bus had arrived yet as I didn’t see it listed. He said something very fast in Italian which I didn’t understand and after a couple of minutes of failed communication it turned out that he did actually speak a bit of English and he told me the buses were through the red door. I went through said red door and saw buses. Progress! Except there were no lime green Flixbus buses. I was starting to worry a bit since our bus was supposed to be departing in ten minutes and I couldn’t even find the damn thing. I went back in to ask and he said again “All buses inside the red door.” I explained that our bus wasn’t inside the red door and was supposed to be departing at 4:25, ten minutes from now. His response was “Is it 4:25 yet? No.” and then he turned back to his desk happily denying my existence. Fine. We went inside the damned red door to sit and see what happened. Thankfully, right at the stroke of 4:24 a lime green bus came in and brightened the day (literally and figuratively, those things are almost neon!). A bunch of people got off and wandered around stretching their legs and smoking cigarettes, and we waited as the bus driver and his aid checked passports and loaded luggage. We were the last to get on, though there were only about four others getting on in Trieste, and when I climbed the stairs I was faced with a completely full bus. We saw two seats together and Conner and I sat down while Gregg scanned for another seat, but then a man got on and said we were in his seat. I asked if he would mind trading to a single empty seat so Conner and I could sit together and he said that he had both seats (I assume he was talking about his wife or other relation), so we got back up. I walked up and down the aisle and saw a total of two seats, far apart, without either people or bags sitting on them. We decided to wait until everyone got back on this time to see where people were sitting. Once everyone was loaded there were two seats total, both of which had bags in them, but no people. Many annoyed looks, mutters, and sighs later Conner and I were able to sit together and Gregg snagged a seat in front that the driver’s aid had set his bag on. So here is my rant, there was not a single elderly person or child younger than 15 on that bus. If I was traveling alone or even with my husband and saw a person trying to find a seat to sit with their 6 year old I would happily offer to give up my seat, even if it meant I had to split seats with Gregg, so that they could sit together. No question. Not one person out of the 50+ people on this bus felt that way. I had to beg, badger, and apparently piss people off in order to sit with Conner. I would later learn that this was totally normal on private and public transportation in Slovenia (and somewhat in Italy), but I will go into that in another section. I will finish by saying that we arrived safe and sound in Ljubljana, took a $5 cab ride to the apartment, and all too happily unloaded and settled in. Then, just like a bandaid on a skinned knee, our very first night in Ljubljana made everything all better…. :-)
