Today is our last day! We are both thrilled to be leaving for Ljubljana tomorrow morning. It will nice to have the option to shower each night and the opportunity to flush the toilet when we are finished! The past few days have been fairly regular. We wake up, eat fruit salad (pieces of fruit in a bowl) for breakfast, work in the garden for a bit then switch to the wall, and finish in the early afternoon. As interesting of an experience as this has been we are ready to move on with our travels. We are a more than a little annoyed with John, there is an over-ambundance of flies that swarm and crawl all over us while we work, there is little food available to us during the day for lunch or "snacking," and there are flying ants we have to contend with each night. So it's been a little different than we imagined. Luckily this week the weather has remained fairly cool so sweat has not been pouring from our bodies like last week. It has provided a much more comfortable sleeping environment. But John's cynacism and negativity toward all things Slovene has been the most irritating part of our stay here. We have rarely heard a positive word out of his mouth since we arrived. His views are not the ones I want to adopt. Ever. We would prefer the chance the form our own opinions of Slovenia and its people and we haven't really gotten that chance. Our experience at Terme Catez and the pizza restaraunt were positive and friendly, but that is the only interaction we have had on our own thus far.
We went to another "dinner party" on Tuesday night. Allison and her twin sister are from Italy and live in a remote valley about an hour from Sromlje. And I mean, REMOTE. The roads we took to get there were tiny, narrow, curvy - nervewrecking. At several points it was the us, the road, and the cliff. The final portion of the road to Allison's is dirt. It was not well-compacted, but rocky and the car actually stopped running as we tried to scale one hill. That was a great moment... I was happy when we arrived safely. Allison was a very entertaining person. She's a little eccentric, but is hilarious and incredibly warm and genuine. We had fish and chips from a local restaraunt which were delicious - especially since we were both starving! It turned into a nice evening. We sat on a brown divan outside overlooking the valley and drank some beer while regaling one another with stories from our various travels. (John was absent for this part of the evening.) Allison even made us pasta for "dessert" since Zach, Nathalie, and I were still hungry. As it grew dark I became more and more anxious about the drive home. After a heart wrenching 15 minutes up and out of the valley we were back on paved road and I felt a little better about our chances of making it back to their home.
Tonight Nathalie and I had our last tennis date. Not to brag... No, we both played really well and it felt nice to stretch my legs on the court. We were very evenly matched. Afterwards we SHOWERED!!! It was our first shower since Sunday! It was amazing. What a feeling. And then we went to dinner in Brezice (Brezisay) at a Gostilna (eatery). We sat on the back patio and relaxed in the cool shade of the evening. I think it was a great way to end our time here. Nathalie, Zach, and I shared a meat platter. Wow. Turkey in gorgonzola sauce, pork schnitzel, more pork, meat on skewers, Serbian flat bread, cheese pinwheel pastries, and roasted potatoes. Soooo good. We stuffed ourselves silly. We even have some for tomorrow.
Now we are settling in for our last night here. The fan is on, the bugs are out, and we are packed!
