Paradise...or is it?

Hi there!

Guess who it is? ME!


Oh wait, you knew that already?

JUST SO YOU KNOW, I haven't blogged the past few days because the internet was out.

So I'm not faltering on the first step.

Anyway, who remembers the description of the apartment we stayed in last time? It was maybe fifty by forty feet, or 66 square meters, if you can understand that. There were two rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a toilet room. Avery, Jia, and I were all jammed with our things in one room.


So when we first saw the apartment we are staying in now, we were ecstatic. The main room plus dining room and kitchen was as big as our old apartment. We all had (have) a room and there were two toilets. Anyone with four or more people in their family knows that one toilet for four people is not fun. So this apartment was glittering gold.

But that was just on the outside. As the faulty internet may show, some things were not as they seemed on the outside. After saying up thirty-six hours (see last post) and riding on three airplanes, a nice hot shower is definitely something you want. A nice warm shower would be good too. Or even a nice lukewarm shower.

But no, we got a nice freezing cold shower. Something (don't ask me what, I don't know even if I should) was wrong with the water heater. Freeze the dirt and grime off or just ignore it? I picked ignore, as did everyone else.

The one other major problem was, where do you sleep when you don't have a bed? True, we all had a room, but they were rooms brez postelja, as the Slovenes would say. Two completely empty rooms. And the floors, while very pretty, are hardwood. They weren't even soft wood.

Luckily, we had scheduled beds to be delivered, so we would not have to sleep on our hardwood floors...
...that is, if the beds ever got here.

We got a phone call, and since Dad was out, it was my duty to answer. I put on my slovene-speaking-english accent.

"Halo?"
"Halo, we hav beds, but we are lost."
Uh-oh. Beds are on the way, but they're lost.
"You don't know where Presernova (said preshernova) is?"
"No."
We were lucky that it was Slovenians delivering the beds. At least they knew some local landmarks, and we got to sleep in beds.

Frankly, I was so exhausted at that point I could have slept like a log on the hardwood floors.

We're baaa-ack

Hi there!

I'm back! We're back! Lets have a party!

Well...then again we may just sleep.

Tell me, who's ever dreamed of staying up all night?

There are many ways of doing it. You can drink coffee. You can dance and have fun. You can tie lit matches to your fingers.

You can also decide to fly American Airlines to Slovenia.

It's not the most pleasant way. Here's how to do it, though, if you feel like trying.

Materials needed beforehand:

Lots of frequent flyer miles.

Frequent flyer tickets from charlotte to Dallas to frankfurt to ljubljana.

Neck pillows

Procedure:

6:00 (start) - GET UP! We've got to make the twelve o'clock flight! We need to leave at seven sharp!

7:30 (awake +1.5 hours) we leave. Come on, you don't expect to leave on time for an international flight with two connections, do you?

10:00 +4 hours: we're at charlotte.

12:00 +6 hours: takeoff!

4:00 +10 hours: we leave dallas with high hopes for a fun international flight.

6:00 +12 hours: after eating a meal with NO VEGETARIAN OPTION (can you believe it? If you fly american air you have to order vegetarian meals beforehand!) Jia gets a glass of apple juice. She happily sets it on her tray to drink but the full glass starts to slide off the tray!

"Jia, look at your apple jui -"

Too late. The full cup fell straight onto her seat, and those who've ridden airplanes before can tell you that a wet airplane seat is a hellish experience. But Jia's seat is not wet. Not a drop. How did that happen?

"EEEWWW, what's this dripping all over my shoe?"

Oh.

It turns out that the apple juice had hit the exact center between Jia's seat and mine, and had dumped itself all over the feet of the woman behind us.

She stared daggers through the crack in the seats, and caught me with her piercing gaze.

"Young man, did you spill this juice all on my feet?"

"No, no, of course not.

"Well, isn't anyone up there going to apologize? Isn't anyone going to say something?"

Mom wanted to apologize, but she really couldn't because she was so happy that Jia wasn't wet. She finally had her mirth far enough under control to say, "I'm so (heehee) sorry."

"Harrumph."

By the way, it's officially the night now.

1:00 (AM) +19 hours: we land in Frankfurt. We cheated a bit - that picture up at the top was in Frankfurt

3:00 +21 hours: We sleep a little bit on the Adria flight. Ironic, we don't sleep on the overnight. Tells you a bit about the relative seat comfort of the airlines. (That can be seen in the first picture from the top.)

6:00 +24 hours. We get in a cab in Ljubljana. Congratulations! You have just stayed up the whole night!

We stayed up until eleven o'clock slovenian time. (about 36 hours total from the time we woke up in asheville until then) and I just woke up an hour ago. An hour ago it was one in the afternoon.

So, if you've wanted to sleep fourteen hours too, just stay up the extra twelve.

And that's all there is to it!

G-man

Ziveti Avstrija

Hello to all!



So very sorry about my continued silence on the airwaves!



But I'm back...

...in Austria!



Yes, the title of this post is Ziveti Avstrija!



I am on vacation in austria, and it is different!



We arrived after an exhausting car drive (three and a quarter hours) and some beautiful mountains. Sharp, jagged peaks rising up, more often snow-covered than not. We drove tunnels under these mountains. Some incredible feats of engineering - The longest was 8480 meters, or eight and a half kilometers, about 5.3 miles. No kidding, a behemoth tunnel. We couldn't roll down windows because of all the fumes.



We arrived in Salzburg for a lovely view of their trian station, undergoing extensive work. After adjusting slightly from slovene to german, we found the hotel. Living in the US, it is weird for a different country to be only a car drive away - different countries for us were usually separated by a grueling plane ride. All the slovene is useless, as everyone here is german!



We found our hotel, and had unloaded our baggage and entered the room complex. There were three doors, and we assumed one must be the elevators. Dad pulled one door open and prepared to walk in, only to find an electrical panel. Oops. So we tried the second. Locked. The third was a trash bin storage area. So we lugged our large, international-sized suitcased up a impeccably polished marble stair case.



We met our grandfather and grandmother - they are visiting - at the train station after a hopeless search to find the platforms in all the construction. Then we dined a dinner, and after tasting their hotel's original sacher-torte, I decided that all my time in Austria was for desserts.

The Austrian flag.

The restaurants and cafes have been troublesome because, out of habit, we all say "Dober dan" and "Hvala," and we expect the poor waiters to understand. They never do, but they speak perfecdt english, so no matter.


Today, we took the sound of music tour. Interesting enough - the movie differs incredibly from the real story. We learned other fun facts - the captain's villa was filmed in two pieces. Explaination? The front of the house, where Maria sings "Confidence" and the back where the lake is are acutally two different houses. And the inside is all stage - in hollywood. The Gazebo where two pairs of lovers meet is in the palace of an archbishop, who had his guests sit on fountains and spray them, and the inside of the gazebo is in hollywood. Haha.

We next visited Mozart's house, and learned all about the composer. He apparently hated Salzburg, and so did his father. One third of his life he spent traveling in horse-drawn carriage all around Europe, performing and composing.

Well, that's all I have time for now. We are going to Vienna tomorrow, and I will have new material.

Nasvidenje,

Garrett

You never know...

You never do know.

Ljubljana comes alive in good weather. Blue skies and warmish temperatures bring out all the people that we haven't seen through the grey. Trees even decide to come out of their barky houses and bud.

The nice weather merits an unofficial flea market to be set up on the banks of the Ljubljanica river. Stalls and tables line the concrete and stone walls.

We were strolling by on our way to a riverside cafe for a late lunch when we walked past a table and mom points out to me a SWORD.

Yes, lying there was a short stabbing sword, the handle and hilt painted gold but etched with letters and patterns, with a very sharp blade made of burnished steel.

The vendor noticed our interest withen a millisecond and rushed over. "Yes, thees ees a, rrowman sword. Thurteenth centurey. All one, very solid."

I was hooked. I asked the price.

"Feefty uros."

That was tough, it took a very large chunk out of my savings. I hesitated, picked up the sword. It was indeed solid steel. It reminded me of the sword Sting for those of you who have read or watched Tolkien. I hesitated some more.

"Fourty-five uros.

Better. I decided to bargain for forty, but then, as Avery and dad and Jia gathered...

"Fourty uros."

Mom, like me, wanted to do more bargaining, so she kept asking, "Do you have that much, Garrett?" to which I dim-wittedly said, "Yes, yes, I do."

They were packing up. I decided to try for thirty five.

Mom once again nudged me to make a desicion. I winked at her, then said, "Thirty-five?

Unfortunately, the vendor's assistant saw me, and when I said 'Thirty-five," he spoke rapidly in slovene to the vendor, who shook his head and said, "Forty, last offer."

Well, I coughed up forty euros and paid for the sword. We wrapped in in plastic bags the man gave us (tough ones, not grocery quality) and was getting out of the way of the truck that came through collecting tables (that had apparently been lent) when I saw a rotund man in a stripey suit and sunglasses nudging a companian and gesturing towards me and looking at the sword. I hastily turned away.

But Avery, sharpeyed as always, saw the man, as he walked past dad, peer into the back of dad's backpack. If they were trying to thieve from us, or were just collectors I don't know. But both two wallets and a sword made it home safely.

So, really, at a flea market in Ljubljana, well...

... you really never do know.

Votes counted

Alright then, evidently the next poem needs to be in Chinese.

for those who voted french poem about violence, good job!

for those who voted a passage from a textbook, well done as well! that poem came from a french textbook.

For those who voted otherwise...well, there's always the next poll, isn't there?

Smarna gora snafu

Hello!

As you might know, I like rock climbing, so I tried to find climbing opportunities here. I asked the streetwise owner of our language school, Primoz, where there might be climbing gyms for me. He suggested two places - one halfway to the coast, the other relatively close to Ljubljana. I was ecstatic.

The experience turned out to be eerily reminiscent of the other time we tried to find rock climbing.

It was an hour long bus ride out there. After leaving Ljubljana far behind, the bus dropped us off in a small country town. As sunday is considered a sabbath (even the law school where dad works is locked sunday) we saw no one around. We headed in the direction of the mountain, where we saw a building perched on the tiptop of the peak. This must be Smarna gora. The S in the name has an accent on it, it is pronounced Shmarna gora.

Mom, of course, took the name and turned it to Snorragora. "Are we at Snorragora?" she asked as we disembarked and the bus, our ticket back home, back to food and water and heat, trundled away.

We started walking in the direction of the mountain. We wound through a quaint village, asking directions from the only person we saw around. We were on the right course. He said that this hike would take about one hour. This was not good, as we had no supplies. We thought we would only go partway to scope out the lay of the land.

Ten minutes up and we met some fellow hikers going down. They, however said thirty minutes. This was good. Maybe we could go to the top after all. That must be where the rock climbing is.

After a while we came to a crossing of paths, asked directions, and found we only had twenty minutes left. Good, but we were getting cold. We also got on the right path.

After fifteen more minutes we came to a large plantation-like house with a tilled garden. This might be the restaurant we were promised. but there wasn't anyone at the house but the hikers. Then we knew we had more hiking to go.

On we went. There was a last steep slope and then we were there. There were people eating and drinking. Hooray!

Of course, all meat.

we got juice and some really good bread. I got some energy bars and we ate. Good.

Then, on the way back from a quick look at the view, we saw an indoor cafe. And there we had been freezing all the time.

A knee-jarring hike back down and we made it to the bus stop. Same line, different stop. This one was right next to the river sava, which is known for its sky-blue water. And it was - very very blue.

I was admiring the water quality when I heard a frantic "GARRETT! GARRETT!" I looked over in alarm and saw that the bus was there and trying to leave and I wasn't on it.

I rushed over and hopped on the bus. The kind bus driver waited but he seemed annoyed about it.

But the bus bumbles weren't over. As went, Avery and I noticed some bus police coming down the aisles looking like secret service arrestors. They had handcuffs and were making sure that everyone had paid to ride.

I was scared. Mom had charged here card for all of us. She had paid four fares with her card for the whole family to ride. So the card I carried had not been charged for me, and the inspectors would think I had busjumped!

They came, but as I was desparedly getting out my bus card dad caught up with them and told them that mom had paid for all of us. Phew. they got off at the next stop, but then two large men in impeccably tailored suits got on. We thought they were the slovenian FBI until dad saw two nameplates that said "Mormonski" we all breathed another sige of relief. No fraudulent investors or murderers on this bus.

at the next stop, ours to chang buses, the five bus line was right behind us so we jumped out. Correction - dad, mom, and jia jumped out and I was left with avery int he back of the bus and the doors wouldn't open.

I frantically jumped for the open doors button. The doors slid open and we made it home safely.

So still no rock climbing. Sigh. But at least when we get another tip-off of a climbing gym, we won't listen.

But then, third time pays for all, so who knows?

Hello all!



New developments, more posts!



The latest poll slightly differs from the last one - this is not a picture, its a



CLASSIFIED UNIL POLL CLOSE



Oh, sorry. Well, for all you linguists out there, here's a riddle! Please only vote twice.



Today we met with another fulbright scholar, and with him was a man who had a contact who could provide us with musical intruments.