Monday, June 20, 2005

Trip to Slovenia (imported from old blog)

Zagreb, 20 June 2005
That's it! I've decided. From now on I'll post here everything that's going on in my life. I'll try to make it as digestible as possible, but if it's getting bored, use the Comments ;)
I'll also post the things that happened before. But I still need to work on that ;)
So here's what happened this weekend. Matt came up with the idea to go to Ljubljana for the weekend, so without to much trouble we signed up. It was me, Ines, Renee (a trainee from Australia which works for InBev Croatia) and Matt.
Friday, around 5:30pm we met at the train station (Glavi Kolodvor - as they call it) to buy the tickets and leave. Of course I was late due to the fucking traffic and all the stupid trams - I so hate those. Anyway. We bought the tickets and left. :P
Well the travel to Ljubljana was really short, around 2:30 h. It is so strange for me that you only need like two hours from a Capital city to another. But hey, Slovenia is really small, as the Croatians say in their jokes, so it's natural.
We got to Ljubljana and we were trying to figure out a way to get in touch with Chris. Chris is this guy from Canada, as Matt and he's MCVP in Croatia for 05-06 term. He's a really funny guy. Anyway, we were looking for him as either the train arrived early or him late. So we started asking around and I was surprised that everyone was speaking English. Oh! I felt so dumb. We got off the train and we couldn't see "LJUBLJANA" written nowhere. So I went and asked "Sorry, is this Ljubljana?". Obviously the girl looked at me like I was some sort of a freak. Funny, huh? So we finally met Chris, exchanged some money and and went to his place.
GUSH! He has a great place... He's living in a dorm which looks like a 4* hotel. His room has everything he might ever need: Bathroom (with fancy white nice stuff in it), Kitchen, Living room, Bedroom and an wesome balcony out of which you can see the city. Daaaaaamn! :) I have a 4 walls room, a bathroom that I share with 30 other people (imagine how white and clean it is), a "kitchen" and that's all! :) Anyway, some of us are more lucky. :) It was good to sleep there. Thank you Chris for that ;)
We had "Canadian Club" whysky and left for "a suppa cool regae paaty". The bad part about party is that there was no regae music. But it worked for a while. There we met some other people from AIESEC and from outside. Everything went cool.
Next day, we slept-in till about 12:30. Nice huh? Chris had to leave early in the morning to get to Kranj for this conference that AIESEC Slovenia was having. So we woke up, had showers (God, I loved that white clean shower!) and left. We walked around Ljubljana for a while and went to the turist office. Had some stuff to eat and then we headed to the trainstation to go to Kranj. Renee didn't want to come so it was just me and Matt. And then the fun started :P.
We bought tickets and went on the train. And the train left. And we got into a discussion about marriage and fidelity to help the time pass faster. Well, the time passed and 45 minutes later we went crazy. We knew that the trip should have lasted around 30 minutes. Why are we still on the train? So we watched the next few stops for anything with "KRANJ" written on it, but noooooooooooooooo. It was too late. And Ines also calls telling us that she already got to Kranj (though she left 1/2 hour later from Ljubljana) and she was asking where are we... I asked a pessenger on the train about where Kranj should be. She looked at me with pitty and said: "you know, you already passed Kranj 30 minutes ago". Fuck! We got off on the first train station to decide what the hell we should do. :) This is how we missed Kranj.
So we SMSed Ines and told her the situation. We were supposed to meet her in Kranj as she was coming from Zagreb. Obviously she smsed back something like "hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha". And she was right. We got off on this little town called Javornik. And we soon found out that we are about 30 km away from Kranj. So we started walking and hitchhiking. We went to a gas shop to buy water and the guy there told us we should take the bus from a nearby bus station. Well we got to that bus station, but still decided to walk on. After around 1 hour walking, Matt asked if hitchhiking is legal. Well we got a bit worried and just to spice it up, I heard a car coming and when I turned back to make the "hitchhiking" sign I see the police. Shit. I think I turned white instantly. We were just discussing before that we don't have any ID with us. So I think that would have been fun. But we were lucky enough not to have any troubles.
So after about 5-5,5 km walking and no car stoping we got to this bus stop where a guy was waiting. He was around 40 or 50 but still speaking English quite good. Say about that! So the guy told us that the next bus should be there in the next 5 minutes and that's the last one. We should better get it. So after trying to find the trainstation in under 5 minutes to check for trains, and obviously not succeeding, we got on the bus. Well the bus faire was 910 SIT (Slovenian Tollar) per person which is around 3 euro. But the strange part is, that for pretty much the same distance we payed 940 SIT together me and Matt. Isn't that strange?
Anyway, we got to Kranj and got off. Then we asked a guy where is the train station so he told the bus driver to drop us there as it was on his way. Well we went 2 more stations and then saw on the window "KRANJ" with a line over it. That ment that we were leaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaving Kranj. So Matt ran to the bus driver and aked about the train station. The bus driver shouted "Jebiga!" (which means something like "fuck it") and then I knew for sure something went wrong. Well he pulled over and we got off. This is how we missed Kranj for the second time. And there we were, once again, walking back to this damned place. Well finally met Ines, had something to eat (McDonald's - bleah!) and started searching for the "Ekonomski Fakulteta" where the AIESECers where supposed to have their trainings. So I asked somebody where is the University and she showed me the Gimnasium. Well that was a fine building, but didn't help a lot... So we managed after a while to find the right direction and finally got there.
They were already done with their conference by the time we got there. We we met some of the people and then left to eat. First we walked around Kranj a little bit and were told some things about it. We were supposed to go somewhere to eat as students and we got to this place which doesn't look at all as a student restaurant, but still is. It's a sort of a tavern with a very very good food. We loved it. I was surprised. First the dorm room that looked like a millionaire appartment, then this place which was really really nice. I'm sure it's great to be a student in Slovenia.
So though we were a bit tired, we were very happy to be there. The trip around the country wasn't that bad actually. We really liked the landscape and we had lots of fun. Also Kranj is a very beautiful city, though it's very small (around 50.000 people - the 4th biggest city in Slovenia).
That day was a very unlucky day in terms of transportation. We missed Kranj twice, and after we had lunch, we missed also the trains/busses back to Ljubljana. Can you imagine that? So Žiga, was kind enough to give us a ride with the car back to Lj.
Next day we walked around the Capital city of Slovenia. Though it's a smallest capital city I've ever seen (around 276.000 inhabitants) I found it very very beautiful. It's a relaxed city, whith A LOT of green spaces, nice buildings, beautiful girls etc. I was saying that I'd love to spend a few months there. :)
You can see what Ljubljana looks like thorugh my camera's lenses, on my Online Photo Album.
That day was also really nice and a bit "unlucky". After we walked around Ljubljana and had coffee in the city center, we headed back to Chris' place to get our stuff and catch the 6pm train back to Zagreb. But guess what! No, we didn't miss it. It was just not runing that day, even though Ines specifically asked if it's runing on Sunday. So this way we got some extra 3 hours in Slovenia. We went to this really nice place to have a drink. On the way there we passed by this place where there were lots of Grafitti and interesting scenes... I still don't know what's that all about, but sure looks good. :) We had also a burek which was one of the best ever :)
Then we left Ljubljana. It was a nice trip. Lot's of adventures :) I want to thank everyone for the great time I had there. :)