Rainy Days and Castle Walls.

After a delicious breakfast of chocolate croissants, fresh fruit, and raw milk from the farmer's market, eaten on the banks of the Ljubljanica, we spent the day wandering about Ljubljana's castle and learning about Slovenian history in the various exhibits. The day started off cool and ended up rainy. Despite my lack of jackets due to absent-mindedness, it was a very pleasant day.

(For the record, I did end up buying a coat here :P )

Tomorrow we head to Salzburg.

I am so sad to leave this place. :(

Longing.

Steve and I took a bus from Plitvice Lakes in the morning to Zagreb, where we would have lunch and catch a train to Ljubljana, Slovenia in the evening. So we wandered around, ate some food, drank some beer, and headed over to the train station around 5:45pm to wait for our 6:18pm train.

We proceeded to wait around for almost three hours, because our train (and about six of the other eight trains due to board around 6pm) was delayed because of fire on one of the rails in another part of Croatia. It's almost 9pm when we finally get on our train, and I'm getting anxious because the train ride is about three hours long and public trans in Ljubljana stops running at midnight. I didn't want to take a taxi, and I certainly didn't want to walk two kilometers in the middle of the night to the hostel we were staying at.

The time comes for us to disembark the train and we come to find out that yes, yes we do have to walk to the hostel because the buses have stopped running and there is not a taxi in sight. So we walk a little ways from the train station and we get to this river. The Ljubljanica river. And it is beautiful. It is fairly small, with gondolas parked alongside it, and beautiful stone bridges, and cafes lit with colored lights and the soft murmurs of the people around drift to my ears in a way that calms me down. Really, how can I stay irritated at such a sight? It may be late but there are still things to do, food to eat, people to meet, and a beautiful little river with the light of streetlamps dancing upon it. As we walk we pass by a bench with two older drunk guys, who tell us "Make your life great! It's too short not to!" and really, is anything more true than that? Is there any reason to not make your life the best it can possibly be?

We make it to the hostel and settle into our private room, decorated in black and white, with caricatures of famous jazz musicians adorning the walls. We are both in good moods by now, happy that our long and treacherous walk to the hostel turned out to be something pleasant, and we decide to head out for a drink. We sit at a riverside cafe and each have a glass of Slovenian wine while listening to a local girl sing covers of famous American songs like Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." By bedtime, I am half in love with this city and I have hardly seen any of it.

In the morning we go on a free walking tour, and I spend the entire time with a deep sense of longing, heartbroken already just knowing I have to leave this city in a few days.

Slovenia for a long time was a part of Yugoslavia, and whilst part of a bigger nation, they always retained their own identity. They were the first country to declare independence from the republic of Yugoslavia and have since flourished as a nation. Ljubljana is known as the City of Dragon - a green dragon is the city's symbol, and its origin stems from the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts. In Jason's quest to obtain the Golden Fleece, he and the Argonauts went through a swamp that supposedly was present-day Ljubljana. In that swamp was a dragon, which Jason allegedly defeated and Ljubljana was free. There are dragons everywhere in this city, most notably on the Dragon Bridge.

There are bridges all over the city, and beautiful architechture, almost exclusively done by the same architect, Jože Plečnik. There are trees everywhere and students from the university's music program playing a variety of instruments on the streets to earn money. Only about 780,000 people live in Ljubljana, but the city seems even smaller than that.

I don't know what it is about Ljubljana. But I love it here. I have never wanted to live anywhere more than I want to live in Ljubljana. I can't pinpoint any one thing. Is it the culture? The friendliness of the people? The art that is in every bridge, every building we pass? Is it the food and the wine? Is it the small town feel of a major city in Europe? I just don't know. All I know is that for the entire day, I alternated between a feeling of completely uplifting joy at being able to discover and cherish and spend time in a place like this, and a feeling of gutwrenching despair at knowing that not only will I have to leave this place in a mere few days, but it is unlikely that I will be able to live here for good. Have you ever loved someone (or something) so much, and had your heart broken into millions of pieces because realistically you knew you could never have it? But at the same time, you wouldn't give back any second of those memories for anything? It doesn't matter if it is a place you wanted to stay in forever, like me and Ljubljana, or if it was a person you loved but had to let go of, or a feeling of accomplishment that you knew wouldn't last forever - that is how it feels for me in Ljubljana. I want to spend all my energies into seeing what this place has to offer me, to experience everything I can from so inexplicably wonderful a place. I have never so enthusiastically tried to learn a language (albeit in so short an amount of time) nor have I ever wanted to explore eery inch of a place as much as I want to do here. It is such an intense feeling of longing. I feel drawn to this place for reasons I can't explain. I don't ever want to leave here. I want to come back, I want to find a job here, I want to raise my children here, I want to live here forever.

But in all likelihood, that dream is not going to be realized, and as I've said before, that knowledge is heartbreaking.

But that saying "It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all" can not be any more true than it is for me, right here, right now, in Ljubljana.

Slovenia, I will come back to you, one day.

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On a less emotionally-invested, serious note, Steve and I ate horseburgers today! Billy was not too happy with us. I don't think he likes this place very much because of that.

Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Croatia has seven major national parks, and Plitvice Lakes, our last stop in Croatia, is the third we have visited.

When Steve and I were in Berlin, way back at the beginning of our trip to Europe, outside of the Hauptbahnhof there was an exhibit featuring the natural wonders of Europe: animals, plants, lakes, rivers, glaciers, and waterfalls. Steve saw a picture from Plitvice Lakes and mentioned that it would be a beautiful place to see in real life. So when we were trying to decide between saving money and going back to Ukraine to work on a buffalo farm or kick back in Croatia for some R&R, that comment came to mind and it was one of the deciding factors on our decision to come to Croatia.

And boy, am I glad we did.

We took a bus from Split to Plitvicka Jezera and checked in to a quaint little lodge nestled back behind the bus stop. One of the two entrances to Plitvice Lakes National Park was half a mile away and there was a trail through a lovely wooded area to get there. We bought a two-day pass to Plitvice Lake NP and the only thing I can really say is that if I received $10 for every waterfall I saw, we could probably stay in Europe for another two months.

On our first day, we walked partway around some of the lakes before breaking off onto a small, lesser-travelled path through a part of the park away from the lakes. The trail we chose was about 9km, or almost six miles, and we only saw three people once we left the lakes. We walked through the only beech forest in Croatia and revelled in silence so complete that we could hear the flutter of the wings of little birds, and the calls of hawks rang through the whole area crystal-clear. We meandered through juniper meadows and stood at the top of the highest waterfall in the park. It was well worth the physical effort we put into it.

On the second day we wandered through caves and took a rowboat out on to one of the lakes. We saw the big waterfall from a different point of view and watched the fish lazily swim around. And more than once, I wished my dad was there to see it all in person (and because his camera would do a much better job of capturing what our little camera couldn't :P).

We sat atop a little ridge for a while and just admired everything around us. Billy was thrilled because he has a new outfit to wear.

We've taken a boat out twice before this, but I am still just no good at rowing straight. So naturally, Steve does all the work while I sit back and take pictures.

I wish I could take everyone I know here. It is such a beautiful place and the people are so friendly. I would love to come back in the winter sometime - the family who owns the lodge we stayed at told us the waterfalls all turn to ice in the winter. How beautiful would that be to see?!

Squid Ink, Pilgrimages, and Waterfalls.

We left the hostel on Korcula at 6am to take a ferry back to Split, where we were staying for three days before moving on with our travels. Both of us slept through the entire journey on the ferry and we spent the rest of the day wandering around Split and eating squid ink risotto.

On Wednesday, we went on a day trip with a group out to Mostar, a city in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was a beautiful little town described to us as "west meets east meets north meets west". It is a city of many cultures, with influences from western/central Europe as well as Turkey from when the Ottoman Empire controlled the region. There are huge populations of many major religion - Christian Orthodox, Catholics, Muslims, Jews - and the city was one of the first cities in the former Yugoslavia that had a large population of interreligious marriages. Our local guide did apologize for the haze - apparently they had just had a bunch of fires in the surrounding hills, which happens often in the summer, but get this: they can't send firefighters into the hills to put out the fires because there are still LANDMINES!!! Landmines had been planted there when the countries of the former Yugoslavia were warring with each other, and they haven't all been found. Rachelle, I'm glad that Matt doesn't have to go through that kind of danger - no need to make firefighting any more dangerous than it already is.

After a lunch of food very similar to Croatian food and a rushed shopping trip in the Turkish-style bazaar, we all hopped back on the bus and headed to Medugorje. We weren't entirely sure what the importance of Medugorje was, other than it had some sort of religious importance, so we asked our guide.

He told us that at the end of the war, twenty years ago, the Madonna (aka, Mary, mother of Jesus) appeared to some of the children of what was then a small village. Word spread, a statue was built on the hillside, and now Catholics flock to Medgorje to pay tribute in a way similar to how the Muslims go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Indeed, it was a steep, rocky climb to see the statue, but we encountered hundred of people, some even barefoot. The church at the bottom of the hill has confessionals and masses in half a dozen languages, and Medugorje, which was once a small village of a few hundred people, now gets around 3 million visitors a year.

On our way back to Croatia, our guide took us to Kravica waterfalls. It was a beautiful little place with waterfalls and a small lake, and a nice way to end our trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The next day, we went on yet another day trip out to Krka National Park in Croatia to see MORE waterfalls!

One of the waterfalls had a lake in front of it where we could go swimming! There were also tons of fish in all the little streams and lakes.

Included in our day tour was a visit to a local restaurant for a lunch of all-you-can-eat Dalmatian prosciutto (Dalmatian is the region in Croatia; it is not prosciutto made from dogs), cheese, and bread, all of which is made at the restaurant. I think Steve and I ate our weight in prosciutto - it was easily the best I've ever had. The restaurant brought out a platter each of cheese, prosciutto, bread, tomatoes, and olives for every two people, basically. Plus a jug of white wine and a jug of red wine for every four. It was eat, eat, eat for an hour and a half. An hour and a half of pure deliciousness.

After we had eaten our fill, we headed off to the cultural city of Sibenik for a little while to walk around before heading back to Split in the evening.

And now on to Plitvice Lakes Natioal Park for the weekend!!!