Slovenia

All my flights to Ljubljana took about 35 hours total. Nothing really to report except that the view of Hong Kong during landing was amazing and has made me excited about going there as part of a trip around Asia. After making it to Ljubljana Airport I split a taxi into town with an ethnic-Swedish Finnish girl who was fluent in English and competent in Hungarian and enjoyed talking at a million miles an hour in all of them. After making it to my hostel I relaxed for a few hours before heading out drinking with a 6'8" ex-professional volleyball player from Canada.

Slovenia is a country of around 2 million people. It's one of those places that has been kicked around between about 800 different regimes over the course of the last couple of millennia. Most recently it was part of Yugoslavia, but this ended after the Ten Days War in 1991, through which Slovenia became the first Balkan state to gain independence.

Ljubljana, the capital, only has about 300,000 inhabitants. It was quite a nice city, but without much to distinguish it from other European cities. I was fine with only having one night there. The drawcards of Slovenia are to be found out in Bled and the surrounding Triglav National Park. On my second day I caught the bus to Bled with the Canadian and a Swedish guy and spent the day wandering around the stunning lake and revisiting the castle. In the evening I met up with Mike and Dane and we played cards with some people off the Triglav daytrip they'd just done.

We had three more days in Bled. Highlights included:

- Swimming out to Bled Island with Dane. From the point on the shore that we started from, it was probably 400 metres each way. Dane is a pretty good swimmer, but I'm hopeless and ended up doing survival strokes most of the way. The island doesn't have much on it other than the church, which we didn't go into because it was Sunday and we were in nothing but shorts and dripping wet. There are 99 steps up to the church from the dock. A tradition is for newly married men to carry their wives up the steps. Lacking brides, we just wandered round the island and caught our breath (OK, I caught my breath) before swimming back.

- Kayaking on the Sava Bohinjka river. Mike and I went on a morning trip to do this. The section of the river has a few basic rapids - something like grade 1 - which was perfect as it provided a bit of interest while keeping our chance of dying acceptably low. Mike tipped over once but I managed to stay upright.

- ATV quad biking. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of driving them. At first, because I was sitting in a saddle and using handlebars, my subconscious was convinced I was riding a bike, and kept issuing me with imminent death warnings every time the thing tilted past a certain angle, or lost a little traction. Eventually my inner voice came to the conclusion that I must actually be driving a car and settled down, enabling me to relax and enjoy the scenery, which was incredible. Slovenia is a strong challenger to Norway for prettiest country in Europe. It's a jumble of amazing skyscraping rocky alps, fluorescent blue rivers and lakes, and lush, deep green forests. It looks more like something out of Middle Earth than a real place.

The only thing I missed out on was hiking the nearby Vintgar Gorge, which is supposed to be awesome, but I think there's a very good chance I'll be back to Bled for a third time in the future.

I tried to take photos on the last day, but discovered my camera was out of batteries and didn't have time to recharge it. I suggest checking out the photos here or looking at my Bled photos from last year here.

I'm now typing this in my underwear in a hotel in Brussels, Belgium, having woken up a bit too early on the first morning of Rock Werchter, the music festival we're headed to next. I have 50 minutes left to check out, so I'd better get moving.