Now It Gets Interesting

(on a train from Bled to Ljubljana)

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope your Christmases have been ordinary and traditional, to counterbalance ours. A summary:

We woke, rushed, at 8:45 a.m., realizing that we had to make a 10:10 a.m. train to Bled, a mountain resort town with a large lake and several castles. We packed up, ate a quick breakfast, and made it to the train station by 9:45 a.m., purchased our return tickets for Bled and our one-way tickets for Zagreb, and boarded a nice train to Germany, with full expectation that it would stop in Bled.

It did, and after waiting for a few minutes for a bus, the taxi driver convinced us that buses do not run on Christmas Day and that we could "ride like kings" to Bled itself in his Mercedes taxi for just $2.50 a person. We did, and soon we were at a misty and blue mountain lake with two castles––one on an island in the middle of the lake, the other on top of a sheer cliff on one edge––that, we slowly realized, was the symbol of Slovenia, or at least symbol enough to put it on their flag.

We started walking on a path around the lake toward the castle on the hill, and quickly found ourselves at the head of a trail: "Grad 1." Martin convinced the rest of the family that grad means castle, and we were all sure that 1 meant 1 kilometer which, for you metrically-disabled readers, is considerably less than a mile. So, with the acquiesce from Pam, we decided to start the long climb up the mountain.

Long it was, and stop we did, often, but we made it, which impressed Pam more than the rest of us, but the castle itself was impressive, and after wandering around the premises we stopped for our lunch of ham, bread and cheese, all left over from our incredible meal the night before.

Quick now, as I'm writing this, stork-like, under the alcove of a building that has free wireless. We made it down from the castle, wandered around the village some, and then got back on the train to Ljubljana, where we'll be for a few hours before taking a train to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. We'll stay in Zagreb tonight, and take a day train to Sarajevo tomorrow. Wish us luck.