Bled and a new buddy

We took a relatively early bus to Bled and arrived there about 2 in the afternoon, are next mission was to find the hostel, at this point Nina decided to tell me that whilst she had memorised the directions to the hotel (roughly), she had pretty much forgotten the name of the hostel. She knew it was 'Travel something' or 'Travellers Something' or 'Something Travel'. So as you can imagine when we had been looking for a hostel that was meant to be located just 100 meters from the bus stop for over 30 mins we started to get a little narked. The locals were ice enough at asking where we were looking for, but answering them with 'a hostel but we don't know the name of it' really wasn't much help. Eventually Nina decided she would dive into an Internet cafe and print of the name from her email account, this led to the next problem of where the hell is there an Internet cafe.

Leaving me outside a shop Nina strolled across the road to ask, in what looked like an adventure day retailers, where the nearest Internet cafe was, 30 seconds later she came back smiling. Turns out the thing we mistook for the adventure day retailers was in fact our Hostel, after that we loosened up a little.

The host sowed us to our room, a nice compact 4 person mixed dorm which appeared to be empty, we then got the fright of our lives as we were unloading our bags when out of nowhere came a 'Hell0', spinning round we saw Younni a Finnish guy laid up in bed looking a bit pale (but then he was Finnish), we apologised for waking him, and he said he was more than happy for someone to speak to and thank God we weren't Australian. Two minutes later we decided to leave Younni to his own devises (he was tackling a nasty bout of man flu, or over exposure to sunlight, not too sure which) and head down towards the lake.

Lake Bled itself is absolutely gorgeous and so so peaceful, knowing we only had a day in total there we decided that we would squeeze as much as possible into our first afternoon. So after purchasing some roasted chestnuts we took a gondola to the tiny island that sits in the middle of the lake upon which stands a church and a tiny little museum that seemed to house a selection of different Nativity Scenes (what with roasted chestnuts and all it was a bit festive). The boat trip to the island takes about 45 minutes, yo then get 30 minutes in the island before making the trip back. The outbound journey was pretty uneventful, however the return was a totally different affair. When we boarded initially to go to the island the last people picked up were 3 Slovenians, one of which happily toasted the boat with his bottle of Sljivovica before boarding. On the return journey the same Gentleman had obviously been toasting every tourist, church, tree, chestnut, bird and step as he was completely wasted much to mine and Ninas amusement and initially the Americans who shared our boats concern.

As we set sail the toaster continued with his Sljivovica and tried his best to get the oars man to indulge, he politely decline advising, much to every ones amusement, he was driving. The toaster then put the drink away and proceeded to pull out another bottle, this one was even bigger, he took a long swig before letting out a howl, this had the Americans puzzled and maybe being slightly over inquisitive they set about finding out what it was. The next thing we knew was the toaster had taken out a set of plastic cups and was explaining via the oars mans translation that this was wine that he had made and that he had 500 litres of it at home. This got the Americans very excited and they were all taking there sips before gagging, it appears the wine was nowhere near ready to drink. The rest of the journey involved the Americans also getting to sample the Sljivovica, the toaster trying to get the oars man to drink some, the toaster pulling our more alcoholic beverages from his bag and me and Nina wondering whether wetting ourselves in these circumstances meant we lost any dignity at all.

We landed save, sound and sober and went for a quick drink just to allow what we had experiences to fully sink in and then decided to take the walk around the lake. Nina did initially try protesting advising that it would be getting dark soon, but as it was only 5pm and the walk was only 6km I was pretty sure it would be fine, in the end I tempted her with a meal at the fish restaurant which reportedly was cheap and tasty, that did it and of we set. The walk was absolutely gorgeous, the lake on one side and woods on the other. We took a leisurely stroll round pausing to much more chestnuts and take photos, there were plenty of others doing the same and we really enjoyed being able to just chill out. about two thirds of the way around the lake is the boat house and a plaque which highlighted the achievements of the Slovenian Olympic Rowers team, turns out they aren't half as bad, but not as good as Redgrave and co.

We got back to the main part of Bled by about 7:30 and were ready to eat so after little struggle we found the fish restaurant, the temperature had dropped so I was stunned when Nina asked to sit outside. I did try a meagre attempt at protesting but lost we ordered our drinks and once they arrived Nina had cooled down from the walk and was ow shivering away, I got to say ' I told you so' and we moved inside. We had opted for the soup to warm us up as a starter and when it came we were delighted with our choice, it did however mean that our mains went relatively untouched. After the meal we decided to head back towards the hostel and to the local 'George Best Inn' (not sure what connection he held with Slovenia but hey).

After a few drinks Nina went out for a smoke (they have the smoking ban too) and shortly came back with a new friend Nicky the Aussie, she told us there were a group from our hostel around the corner so we decided to tag along. We spent the rest of the night drinking pints of Union beer (which is too easy to drink), discussing travel experiences and plans and shouting at the blind dog as it constantly walked into our dog head height table. We had a really great night eventually we decided to head back to the hostel (actually the pub was closing so we didn't have much choice) only to find that Nicky was our other room mate, we opted to refrain from sharing Younnis aussie comments but did spend a good hour or so ribbing her about the recent humiliation of her boys by Wilkinson and crew.

The following morning after waking up with a stinking headache we decided we would head up to the mountain to castle before catching an early afternoon bus back to Ljubljana and then onto Munich. We went down to the reception and explained our plans to the host who helpfully looked up bus times back to Ljubljana, he then noticed we were having a trouble finding accommodation in Munich and offer to do a ring round for us. Turns our because the beer festival had only just finished pretty much everywhere was full (best laid plans and all that). Nicky joined us half way through our dilemma and we got talking and found she was actually heading to Ljubljana in the afternoon too, we decided therefore that we would hit the castle and then catch a bus with Nicky back to Ljubljana and stay there for one night before going on to Munich.

The walk to the castle did wonders to get rid of my hang over and the view from the top was spectacular, you could see mountains (some snow capped), the lake,and even the toboggan (its a very popular winter ski resort), whilst at the castle we visited Ye Olde Print shop and picked up a few gifts, we also went to the castles own wine cellar where yo can bottle and seal your own wine (we also did this). There is also a museum of various artifacts found around Lake Bled, which to be honest was a bit dull but the views them self make trekking up the hill to get to the castle well worth while. We got back to the hostel just in time for or host to give Nina, Nicky and I a lift down to the bus station so that we could head back to Ljubljana, Nicky advised that she was staying at the Celica Hostel which was the one we had wanted on our initial trip to Ljubljana so we decided to see if we could also get a dorm there, for one we had a bit of luck and set on our way. The plan was one night at the Celica, a cheap meal and night out with Nicky and then a midday bus to Munich for which Nina had managed to book us a hostel for 3 nights, as it happens things didn't really work out as planned.