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Ahhhhh, Lake Bled. Out of all of the beautiful things I was looking forward to seeing on my trip, I think that Lake Bled was sitting comfortably at the top of the list. Lake Bled was the beautiful image I used to make my workmates jealous of my trip (sorry guys!) - I had a picture of it saved as the wallpaper on my work computer, and took great pleasure in looking across the office from the printers and seeing my beautiful Lake Bled staring back at me (and the rest of my co-workers!). That is where I´m going, I´d tell them, bringing up numerous photos on Google Images for them all to see. And now I was there.
Lake Bled is this beautiful lake (in small town of Bled, Slovenia) that is surrounded by mountains and also has an island in the middle that you can rent quaint little row boats and row over to. But to make this picture even more perfect, the island has this beautiful church on it. I love how in Europe people have taken great satisfaction from building churches in the most hard to reach places. It´s like they´re testing you - so, you believe in God, hey? Well then, how about you prove it by climbing this snow capped mountain that is surrounded by an impenetrable thorn forest, the entrance of which is closely guarded by a senile old man whose answers you first have to answer correctly, but first you must click the heels of your red ruby slippers and say ¨I want to go back to Kansas¨ three times before we even tell you the location of the mountain. Honestly.
I arrived in Bled on Tuesday afternoon after a short bus ride from Slovenia´s capital, Ljubljana. I had chosen the cheapest place possible to spend my time in Bled - the hostel I had chosen was part of a bar, but didn´t sound too bad and was after all only 11 Euros per night - bargain! I was shown to my six bed dorm where I met my two room mates - Chip, a 45 year old man from Atlanta with a deep Southern accent, and Lou, a 30 odd Engineer from Malaysia. Interesting company, were my first thoughts. I hoped that some young and hip backpackers would turn up later that afternoon...
Turns out that Chip is a pretty cool guy. He has the most amazing story to tell as to why I discovered him, a high income 45 year old father of three criminal law professional staying in a dingy 11 Euro per night hostel in Bled, Slovenia. In November 2007 Chip received a phone call late at night from Londno where the voice on the other end said, your father is gravely ill, you need to fly to London now to be by his bedside. So he hopped on the next flight to Heathrow airport. When he arrived, he was met by one of his father´s assistants, who promptly handed him a jar of ashes and said, your father wanted to be cremated, so here he is. Thanks for coming. And that was that.
As an only child, Chip had been left his father´s estate, which according to his will listed three properties in Europe that would now need to be changed over into to Chip´s name. However, as he went through his father´s files in his London home, he came across numerous receipts in various different languages that appeared to be from property taxes and the like. After a few phone calls to his father´s business partners (his father was also a lawyer), Chip discovered that he had not inherited three properties, but in fact 27 properties all over the world. Wow. A trip that was supposed to take three weeks has now taken over five months, as he travels to each country to probate each property. And they are everywhere - there are houses and business in France, England, Austria, Albania, Slovenia, Montenegro, etc. There´s an aircraft hanger in Malaysia, and even a Buddhist monastery in Cambodia that produces its own wine and bread. How NUTS!
The story gets even more interesting. Each time he travels to a new country, he goes and views to property to try and decide if it is something he would like to keep, or if he would prefer to sell it and take the money instead. His father had a property on Lake Como, in Italy (which is a very posh place to have a property - your neighbours include George Clooney!), and when he asked to see the property, he was told that he was not allowed to go near it. If he even drove by it, under Italian law that would be considered harassment. He wasn´t even allowed to evict the tenant, because under Italian law they would then be eligible for up to six months free accommodation while they find a new place to rent. The strange thing is, the tenant at the property was a 27 year old single mother with a nine month old baby - how could she possibly afford the rent of such a prestigious address? And to make the story even more interesting, when Chip visited his father´s safety deposit box in Como, he found four Tiffany jewellery boxes - one with a baby rattle, one with a baby bracelet, one with a baby necklace, etc. Who could they possibly be for, as his father´s youngest grandchild was 12 years old? Could Chip perhaps have a mystery brother or sister he doesn´t know about?
So Chip is only about halfway through probating his properties now - I´m sure it´ll get even more interesting along the way. He might even write a book about it one day!
No one else arrived that night... And our Malaysian engineer did a bit of ´self loving´ that night... Ewwwww...
On Wednesday morning I decided was was going to attempt the impossible and be an outdoorsey person - HA! The I realised I didn´t really have the appropriate footwear to be an outdoorsey person... hmmmm... So, being the true Australian that I am, I set out in a pair of thongs - can´t going wrong with thongs, right? However, after about 20 minutes of walking around the lake in the fresh morning air, I started to question whether I actually had toes, or whether the little red tipped things sticking out of my jeans were just fungal sprouts on my shoes from months of bacteria laden hostel showers.
I spent about two hours altogether just wandering around the lake, stopping and taking about 100 pictures along the way (seriously, how many different angles can a church on a island in a lake have?! Delete, delete, delete...). You know what made the trip so enjoyable? THE LACK OF TOUR GROUPS SPEWING ACROSS THE PATHS! Hallelujah! I could stop suddenly in the middle of the path without causing a five car/body pile up behind me. I could zig zag across the path without sending middle aged couples flying into Bled´s murky depths. I could even sing classical songs as loudly as I wanted without competing with screaming little children for airspace! Yay!
After my incredibly pleasant walk around the lake, I began the difficult ongoing task of finding something for this vegetarian to eat for lunch. I eventually found a cute little pub that was serving vegetable soup as its daily special, pulled up a bar stool and out my novel, and placed my order. There were two young men who were the waiters for lunch, and they wasted no time in striking up a conversation with this solo traveler. First they wanted to know if I was traveling myself - yes. Next, where I was from - Australia. Third, do I need a boyfriend - no thank you. They were just so nonchalant the way they asked the final question, just like you would ask if I would like some salt with my meal. No pressure or anything, just throwing it out there! Funny guys. After I had finished my soup they gave me a Slovenian specialty to try, which the pub had made itself - blueberry schnapps. And it was good!.. So they gave me another one. And another one. The pub was decorated really tastefully - the owner was a motorcycle fanatic, and everywhere he traveled he brought back a numberplate from that state. There were even plates from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia! At around 3:00pm I convinced the waiters that I had plans for the afternoon, and promised I would come back the next night for some dinner before I left Bled (I think they must get quite bored living and working in such a small town).
That afternoon I walked to a nearby village to see the Vintgar Gorges. Beautiful. Seriously, it´s like an interior designer pranced around this entire country and made everything look ´just so´. The walk there was nothing short of spectacular - deep green grass, snow capped mountains rearing up in the background, dairy cows mooing contentedly as they munched their cud, apple trees heavily laden with fresh fruit, giggling children zooming by on bicycles, quaint little slope roof houses with window boxes spilling out bright flowers. It was so damn perfect I started to feel a teensy bit suspicious...
That afternoon I pleasantly surprised to discover that my room had two new guests - a Laura and Georgie from Melbourne! Hooray! Now estrogen was the higher power in my once testosterone dominated dorm room...
Like me, Laura also had plans to travel from Bled on the overnight train to Munich to attend the notorious Oktoberfest on the weekend. I was meeting my Couchsurfing friend Kortine in Munich on Friday afternoon and had planned to take the overnight train Thursday night, but Laura´s offer sounded so much fun - we could catch the train together on Wednesday night and spend the next couple of days at Oktoberfest with her and her friends before I met up with Kortine Friday. They were camping, and had a spare spot in one of their tents, so I was more than welcome to join them. Lately I´ve been realising that I think about things too much, which stops me having random, unscheduled fun that people my age are supposed to be famous for - I´ve decided that I need to start saying ´yes´ more often, instead of thinking what is the most sensible thing to do. So I said yes, I would love to join her. And I am so glad that I did (more on that in my next blog...).
The next day I had booked to go white water rafting and canyoning, which I was so excited about! So many people I had met during my travels had really enjoyed rafting in Slovenia, so I couldn´t wait to try it out for myself. It was also part of my new Nike ´Just Do It!´ mantra - while I was a bit scared about the prospect of hurtling down a river where there is a high chance I could fall into the 6 degree water and possibly knock myself unconscious on a rock, I had to start taking risks.
I met at the excursion office Wednesday morning to head off to rafting first. Turns out that as it was autumn and the air temperature was only 13 degrees that day, not many people were interested in splashing around in icy water - funny that. So it was only me and my instructor who would be rafting that day. We drove to the launch point along the Soca river where I suited up in the most attractive ensemble of a skin tight wet suit, a waterproof jacket, a lifejacket and a crash helmet - the only part of me that wasn´t protected was my feet, which again felt non existent after about 20 minutes of paddling! I would give $100 to the first person to look graceful when putting on a wetsuit. You´re bending over to heave the thick, wet fabric over your protesting thighs (wearing a bikini, mind you) while all the while trying to suck in your stomach to trick the wetsuit into thinking you are smaller than you actually are, and therefore make this process slightly easier. Once the fabric is up to your bellybutton, the bottom half is so tight that your top half looks like toothpaste being slowly squeezed from the tube (and your skin looks no less white, due to the cold). However once the fat squeezing ordeal is over, you are pretty proud of the way you look in your skin tight ninja costume - it holds everything in and the black fabric adds to the slimming effect. Bravo.
As it autumn, the water wasn´t flowing very fast, and very rarely did I feel scared of falling in, except when my instructor kept offering to stop to let me go for a swim. Thanks, but no thanks.
After about an hour of paddling and bumping down the river, we drove back to Bled so I could wait for my instructor for my next activity - canyoning, But it ended up being canceled! As it was forecast to rain that afternoon, they decided it would not be safe to go clamoring about canyons when there was a high risk of flood. Oh well. So instead I headed back down to the lake where I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and soaking up Bled´s beauty before I had to leave.
Laura and I had been discussing our overnight train experiences, and had agreed that unless you are really really tired, it is often difficult to get a lot of sleep, what with all the sharp stops and starts, whistles, passport checks, etc. So we came up with a plan - knocking back a few quiet ones at the pub before hopping on our 12am train would ensure we are in the right ´frame of mind´ for our journey to Munich. And so we payed my friends at the pub a visit before heading to the train station bar to wait for our train (which was inevitably late). We had quite a nice snooze across Slovenia and Austria - a little too nice. Before we knew it we had arrived at Munich Central Station, with the train conductor shouting in our cabin ¨You must get off now! This train will leave in one minute!¨ - s***! In our relaxed state upon boarding the train, we had promptly strewn all of our gear throughout our cabin, which we now had to attempt to scoop up in less than 50 seconds. To make matters worse, I had had the bright idea of looping my handbag strap through my backpack and daypack, to make it difficult should anyone try to steal them. Forgetting this, I attempted to put on my backpack, which sent the contents of my handbag and daypack flying across the cabin. Like unwilling puppies, I dragged my belongings on their leash and barreled out of the train as fast as I could.
...And then our train didn´t leave for another ten minutes...
Talk to you soon!
Love Hayley x
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