One day, three countries

Well, Donna has left for home. When we were having dinner last night we were talking about the dreaded trip home - not because you are headed home, but rather because of the thought of 20+ hours flying in cramped conditions and endless hours of stopovers in generic airport lounges where it is impossible to get any sleep, or maybe even worse - the fast stopover that has you running from your arrival gate to the departure gate. Both Donna and I have exhausting memories of arriving at Gate 1 in Hong Kong and then needing to leave only one hour later from Gate 89 and the mad dash to get there in time. Unfortunately, she only has a 1 hour turnaround in Hong Kong again - hope the gates are closer this time Sis!

We left the Hotel Stella about 5:20 am to take her to the Airport and once she had checked her luggage through, left her at the departure point to come back and try to get some more sleep. You know what it is like when you know you absolutely positively have to wake up by a certain time - yep, you sleep with one eye open even through you have set the alarm - just in case! Huh - good intentions, but there is a construction site within easy earshot of the hotel - hadn't been a problem over the last couple of days because it was the weekend. This morning however is different . . .

And so we move out too. This begins the countdown for us as well and from here we are headed north towards Germany and Steph and Felix and then further north for London and our own departure. Don't have an exact date yet, will know by the end of the week I hope. (We are trying to change our tickets for a week later). We will definitely be home for Christmas though.

Before we leave Zagreb for good we are going back in to the old town for one last try to get a look at Ban Jelačić Square - the one spot that we have missed so far. But today is not to be lucky either - parking on a week day is just as bad as on the weekend, if not worse. Michael dives out at a Souvenir shop to get a few mementos and comes back with plenty to share with Donna as well. Nice. We also get a photo of the local tie shop - you see, neckties were invented in Croatia - go one guys say thanks! We head back in through the main commercial area to turn north and join the crawling traffic. With nowhere to park I am left wondering if they just drive round and round in endless circles!

Once we are clear of the city though it soon thins out. Today is very foggy. It looks dim and dismal, but apart from being rather dank, and despite being very cool (down to 13.5C), it is a very comfortable day for driving. We want to make one last stop at a supermarket here - I want a bottle of Orahovac (Walnut liquer) that I have come to like so much! I'll add it to the Pear Cognac I have to bring home - so from now I will be building Michael's alcohol allowance!! Don't worry though, my cigarette allowance is still intact. So we follow the signs for one of the Konzum Super stores and end up about 10 kilometres away! Still, shopping successful (we also bought enough of their lovely Jamnica mineral water - by far the very nicest we have ever tried) we re-join the motorway.

This part of northern Croatia is much like Slovenia for where we are headed en-route to Graz in Austria. Through the foggy mist, we can see mountains developing from the lowlands we have left. There is plenty of ploughing going on in the fields by the roadside - everyone is getting busy preparing for what feels might be a long cold winter. All around, we can see the smoke from the home hearths burning inside the houses. Without any wind, they curl lazily upwards in straight columns.

As we near the Slovenian border, the countryside gives way to more rugged scenery with deep chasms appearing between higher cliffs - oh how I wish we had more time to explore this part of Croatia. It has been a wonderful two weeks getting to know this jewel of the Adriatic and its people. But push on now we must. The motorway ends, with further construction going on ahead of us - boy Croatia is really in a road building blitz. And as the motorway ends, the traffic comes almost to a total stop. We crawl forwards so slowly that it doesn't even register a speed on the speedometer. Ah, this is the last kilometer before the border crossing. At least it gives me time to get one last look at the colours of autumn in their blaze of glory before winter and the white claims victory shortly.

As Croatia is not yet a member of the European Union, border posts are still manned at its borders. There is a huge traffic jam here - cars in three queues, buses and coaches in one and trucks in another. We join one queue hoping that there is not going to be any need to open theboot - I mean it is packed to the upper limit. As we get close to the officials, we can see the passengers on all the coaches disembarking to file past a border office and have their passports checked - no wonder there is such a long line of coaches. It would be faster for an official to get on the bus and check the passports - but hey, they are the ones in control, right!

It is much faster to be in the cars and none are being stopped at the moment thankfully - I think that the police are annoyed at the traffic building up that by now must be kilometres long. A police car has come to a screaming, angry stop at the border post just a few minutes ago. We get to a bored official who no doubt must have sore feet. He just glances at our passports and hands them back with a dismissive way. So we crawl forward about 50 feet and this time don't make the mistake of not stopping for the customs official. He doesn't even look at us before waving us through! Guess there is no hard and fast rule.

So we are now back in Slovenia and the EU. First stop is a roadside petrol station for a Vingette that we need to have in order to travel the motorways and main roads. And you can't get one for one day and have to buy one for a week for €15. That's an ouch as we actually need it for less than one hour to travel the 60 kms to the Austrian border where again we must buy a weekly vignette but this time we need it for about a 24 hour period as we are stopping overnight in Graz to have a look. And at €7.70 at least it is more reasonable. Ah, revenue raising in Slovenia is alive and well. As we are travelling the motorway, there is not much we can see of this area of Slovenia, but as with the more western edge, it is very scenic - rolling hills with villages in the valleys and copses of trees left standing on the ridges to minimise erosion and lots and lots of churches - some with tall spire and others with the more orthodox onion shaped domes. Bugger bugger bugger that our time is ending - there is so much more to see. Anyone want to finance us to keep travelling????

Graz is just 40 kms into Austria from this southern border, so it is not long before we are back into a city. The outskirts are very familiar looking - individual houses with fenced or hedged lawns. Once we reach the more urban areas, this gives way to medium density apartment blocks and commercial enterprises. There is the golden mile of car yards, lots of 'bars' thatare advertising scazntily clad women in provocative poses - ah, a (brothel) rose by any name is sweet I guess. There are also numerous casinos and gaming shops.

Austrian motorists here are about as crazy as the Italians, taking crazy crazy risks overtaking on this major road that is generally thick with traffic. And like many other European cities, the horn rules here as well. Gosh, you kind of forget how crazy a large city can be. Kate has no trouble getting us to our accommodation at Hotel Daniel which is literally right next door to the main railway station. However, it is as quiet as!!

The hotel is one of those funky modern types and our room is very interesting with a shower that has a glass wall that looks into the room! Hey Donna and Helen, aren't you glad that you are not with us now! Its very comfortable and that bed looks really really inviting after what has turned out to be a longer day than usual. So instead of going out for dinner, we give in to the dreaded takeaway from the world's largest chain before crashing. By tomorrow morning we should be ready to have a look around!

You know, we swore when we started out on this trip that we would not do the ten countries in two weeks thing that so many visitors to Europe do. Today proved us a little wrong I guess.

Donna meets us in Zagreb

We have checked out the Slovenian website and we do need to purchase a vignette. Didn't get one yesterday as we were travelling the back back roads and no sign of needing one - but today we will be using the fastest and therefore motorways and major routes to go over to Zagreb one and a half hours away. This morning it is dark! Well, after all it is only 7 am when we get out of bed - the earliest we have been up in absolutely months!

Breakfast was the best we have seen in ages - a great selection of fresh fruits, cereals, breads, meats, cheeses, tomatoes and preserved veges, then scrambled eggs and sausages. Juice and coffee and criossants - a different sort, not as rich and buttery as those in France, but still nice and fresh.

We set out from the Hotel Hum to go to Zagreb in Croatia to meet Donna's plane around 10 am for the 1½ drive to the airport. We stop for fuel and to get the vignette and to Michael's great relief the station attendants all spoke good English. It really is becoming the universal language over here. Slovenia is turning out to be a right little gem. It is very picturesque and looks beautiful in the crisp clear clean air this morning. At one point we pass this lake within the river and see about 20 fishermen all busy with their rods and nets - and all spaced equidistance apart! Quite a sight in the morning sunshine! And on the opposite side of the road, there are houses perched on the high ledge with farmed plots running down the hill.

Alls well until we get to the border. Slovenian officials rather disinterestedly stamp our passports as we leave, then we go another 100 m and the Croatian officials take a little more interest but stamp them as well with no hassles. Then we go another 100 m and there is another official standing there in a different uniform. We are not sure if we need to stop or not and when I stop about 4 feet passed the line on the road, Michael asks if we need to stop. A curt response in Croatian. So I reverse back that precious metre and a bit. More in Croatian and Michael responds with "Sorry we dont understand". "Ah, English friends." "You could see me standing here. Why did you stop up there?" the beligernat young man says. "Do you need our passports?" asks Michael. "Ah, Australians. Down Under. Aussies" in a drawn out derisive tone. "What are you doing in Croatia? How long are you staying? Oh. OK, well have a nice stay." Put a uniform on them and they all important! There is a lots of road building going on in Croatia and they do not have a vignette system so we stop and pay tolls regularly. I don't mind really, the new roads are really great.

Donna arrived in Zagreb this morning after flying from Sydney via Singapore and Paris. She looks like she could use a damn good holiday - but for God's sake don't tell her I said that !! It was great to see her. We arrived just about the same time that her plane landed (thankfully we were not going into Slovenia at the border - they were stopping every car and going through all the luggage - and as Hels knows, our car is chockers!!). She is on the other side of a glass partition waiting for her luggage, but its not long before we are hugging hello. Gosh, its nice to have her here.

So back out to the car that we only parked about 10 minutes before and we head out of Zagreb. I have booked accommodation in Split, a 4 hour drive away and I know Donna will be tired, so we get on the road straight away. At first she is taken with the colours of autumn and the stretches of Dolomite Mountains that we can see. Just wait till she sees the ones I know are south of here! She has bought a book on Croatia withe her and is full of interesting things to see and do. Gosh, she has done more research than we have! As we head down the road about an hour into the trip she sees signs for Pula - "Wow," she says, "there is a Roman amphitheatre there." And that was where the fun began.

I headed west off the motorway towards Pula and after a while changed Kate's destination to Pula because she kept wanting me to turn around so we could head for Split. And once Pula was the destination, I looked at Points of Interest near the destination to see if we could pick up the amphitheatre. It does, so we select it and continue on our way. Now we pass one turnoff for Pula, but Kate wants me to continue down the road for another 6 kms before turning off. Maybe it is not in the city. We actually head down a road towards Trieste (Italy) and we are back at the Slovenian border. Strange, I thought. I thought Pula was more to the south. So border formalities leaving Croatia and back into Slovenia. A few miles down the road and check Kate again - this time with my glasses on. Wow, won't that teach me. We are headed to the Roman Amphitheatre in Trieste! Uh oh. So we turn back around and go back to the border. I am waiting for the twnety questions and the request to step out of the vehicle and open our bags as we head back across the borders only ten minutes later. But no, they hardly even look up. In fact they don't even check the passports to see when we last left or entered. Rather, they just add yet more stamps and send us on our way. And the customs official this time is much more pleasant.

We have lost the better part of an hour, but this time we head back to the first turn off and into Pula which is still 24 kms down the road. And as we expect, we do find the amphitheatre in Kate's databank once we are in town. And yes, it is smack bacng in the centre of town and the new town has grown, radiating out from it.

Like Hels at Verona, Donna is stunned by the size and age of the complex. There are not many of the seating banks remaining, but certainly enough to give her a good idea of what it was all about. We can still see where the caged animals were led out to the arena as well as some of the amazing capping stones that once graced the entire upper perimeter far above us. We also see the foundations of a lot of the rooms that would have existed - canteens, bars, toilets, change rooms etc.

But we are not finished yet. In the sub-structure under the whole complex where the animals were once housed and the gladiators spent time before they combatted for the crowds above, there are now two exhibtions. One relates to the later use of this area as an olive oil processing operation and we see not only the grind stones used to crush the olives, but also the stone gutters that were installed to allow the oil to run into collection areas, and hundreds of amphora that were used to store the oil. Very interesting!

The other exhibiton relates to the Amphitheatre on its site and former, now lost, Roman buildings in the city. There is heaps of archaelogical information and there are aerial photos of the current city with the siting of the former Roman theatres, temples and large houses in line drawing over them. Very interesting.

But we now must push on. Pula is much further north than I expected and we are now 5½ hours from Split - and it is almost 5 pm! I phone Apartments Johnny where we have made our booking to let the know of our late arrival, but he is unconcerned, thankfully! We set off, knowing that we will have to stop and have dinner somewhere en-route. We make one quikc stop to take a couple of photos where we first get a glimpe of the Adriatic Sea and the islands of Croatia that lie just off the coast. We eventually do stop about 7:30 pm for fuel and a toasted sandwich on long yummy crispy flat rolls. Then we push forward.

Eventually Donna sleeps. In fits and starts - I mean, it is 3 am her body time and she said she only got about 4 hours sleep in total on the flights. By now of course it is dark and we can't see the areas through which we pass. But it is a journey for much of the time underground as we travel through tunnel after tunnel after tunnel. The longest is 5,760 metres at Mala Kapela followed by 5,681 at Sveti Rok. Impressive, even in the dark.

We eventually pull in to the driveway at Apartments Johnny just before 11 am, well and truly ready for bed! We are going to see if we can stay here for another couple of nights.

Slovenia - a new country

Thunder and lightening - not so very frightening. We left Silea this morning as the heavens opened. There has been widespread rain storms across Europe for the past week, but Italy has been dry - until sometime late last night - and the rain continues today. We are headed east for a quick drive through Slovenia en-route to the Zagreb Airport in Croatia to collect Donna who is joining us for an all too short two weeks. We could have driven directly from here, but as her plane lands at 11:40 am that would have necessitated a very early start - something we are not good at presently!

The trip totally off the highways will take more than 5 hours so we decided to begin on the motorway as far as Trieste and the border and then to re-programme Kate and see how long it will take on the back roads from there. And so that is what we do. An hour after leaving on the motorway, we are happy to leave it as we get a poor view of the world through which we are travelling thanks to the high (and no doubt effective) double guard rails. We are also travelling again with our regular companions on the roads - the convoys of trucks bearing Eastern Europe plates - gues on a Satuday most of them are headed home for the weekend. After all it is not very far from here to Slovenia, or Croatia, or Hungary, or Romania where the majority of them are from, although it is a little further to Russia (we pass a few from there as well!)

West of Silea towards Trieste, Italy is flat and open. There are varied lots of crops intersperced with small groves of birch and ash trees. I think that these are used in the furniture trade. Around Trieste, the road begins to become less well engineered. I guess this close to the border the authorities think that they dont need to maintain standards. When we cross the border with its former infrastructure just a few kilometres away at Sežana, then the standard of the road really falls away.

Now, I just LOVE the Slovenia tourism marketing tag - I feel love, Slovenia. How clever is that! Again we cross a border and cross landscapes. Gone are the flat open plains of eastern Italy and hello again to hilly landscapes. For most part the road wends its way through narrow valleys alongside fast slowing rivers. We go up into the forests and for a minute hold our hearts in our throats as the car tyres slip on the carpet of wet fallen autumn leaves as we come down a steep turn. But just for a moment - god, how would it be to go over a ravine in a country where we are still grappling with the hello's and thank you's?

We reach Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, travelling arond the outskirts. There are lots of new buildings going up - very modern in design, bright and cheerful in well laid out streets where the roundabout rules. This is nice to see. Of course, we also pass lots of older areas complete with historic civic and ecclesiastical buildings - thats Town Halls and Churches to those who don't understand.

Back into the countryside though, things are different. We are now really on the back back roads and are twisting through small villages where the houses meet the street. Buildings are surprisingly large - stand alone dwellings with space for good size flower and vegetable gardens around them. We see hay drying on tile covered racks, and ears of corn hanging to dry as well as the last of masses dahlia plantings.

We drive over one 'mountain' and down into a long narrow valley into Trbovlje that lies by the river Sava. The area is known for its rich deposits of coal and there is a large coal mine as well as three power plants. One features the Trbovlje Chimney - reputedly the Europe's tallest chimney (360 m). It is also known for its co-incineration plant, built in Trbovlje's cement factory. Smoke and steam billow in to the air and if the chemical stains streaking down the side of the tall tower are any indication, then the plant's scrubbers are not too efficient. It seems so incogruous with the ladsacpe in which it sits, any with the twittering of the birds that we hear.

Its not long before we climb out of this valley and turn into the hills again to reach Laško, driving through a covered bridge that crosses the Sava River which we cross again as we are coming in to town. The landscape is filled with small villages complete with domed steeples on Orthodox or Catholic churches - very eastern Europe for the country that is at its most western point! And as we pull in to the street where the hotel is sited, Michael spies a steam engine that he feels the need to check out a little later!

We are staying at the Hotel Hum in Laško tonight. As we are checking in I remarked to the young clerk that it was chilly up here in the mountains. "Mountains?!" he quissically commented! "Ah", says Michael, "when everything is flat in Australia, these we call mountains!" Still not sure if he knew what to make of us. Hotel Hum is very central and literally just off the highway. Our room overlooks the highway and the adjacent river, but with the windows fully closed you can't hear any of the noise thankfully. Laško is located on the Savinja River almost in the centre of Slovenia.

Funnily enough, my friend Kaye has today emailed me a list of the 'top tens'. Amongst them was the Top Ten Best European Cities to Visit. And we have been to nine of them! It's amazing what can be crammed into just a few months, and each of these cities are as exciting as they are diverse. In retrospect, it's not the buildings or the archaeological relics which defines a city - it is its people. In our ten months of travel, we can confidently agree we haven't had one bad experience with the locals.

We went down to dinner tonight and joined only one other couple eating. They are German!! We take a seat in a restaurant that must be busy at some times - it is set for 60 people. We are handed a slip of paper with todays offerings (menu!) We can choose between Beef soup or vegetable soup, then Minced beef with rice, Turkey in cream sauce or vegetarian dish. Doesn't sound much, but the food was really good.

Michael had the Goveja juha z rezanci (beef soup with noodles) while I had the Vegetarijanska juha (Vegetarian soup).
This was followed by Mleto meso obrezovalec s sirom postrežejo s paradižnika riž (Minced beef topped with cheese served with tomato rice) while I had the Turčija v smetanovi omaki s testeninami, crepes in papriko (Turkey in cream sauce with pasta, crepes and peppers). I also had a lovely glass of Slovenian white wine. There were no prices on the slip of paper and so I did assume that it was a set price. We weren't however expecting this price! All of €20.50 for the lot!!! The glass of very drinkable wine was €1.40 out of that too! Bargain.

It was Mum's birthday yesterday but she wasn't answering when we phoned to give her our greetings. I manage to get on to her tonight with Skype and we talk for over an hour! Michael is thrilled - the telly is broadcasting two channels in English (sub-titled in Slovenian), one playing movies and as I finish up for the night he is enthralled in Dracula 2000 with Christopher Plummer and Jeri Ryan - a classic and a looker in a timeless story - yep, he's hooked! An earlier night as we must be off earlier in the morning to get to Zagreb in time to meet Donna's flight. Lahko noč (goodnight)!