{"id":547,"date":"2014-10-19T14:23:37","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T19:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/?p=547"},"modified":"2023-12-10T21:31:43","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T02:31:43","slug":"day-14-sun-oct-19-road-into-and-out-of-slovenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/?p=547","title":{"rendered":"Day 14: Road into and out of Slovenia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The church bells of the city of Pula mercifully\u00c2\u00a0didn’t go off at 7:30 this morning. Having been awakened many times during the night by the boisterous\u00c2\u00a0participants of parties\u00c2\u00a0going on somewhere nearby, it was a relief to sleep in for just a little bit longer today.<\/p>\n

The party started at about 9:30 p.m. with male voices singing and an accordion player joining\u00c2\u00a0in along the way, then the crowd joined in with clapping and singing along. When each song was finished there was loud applause, hoots, yips –that might be akin to our yeahs– extremely long versions of yips, and whistles though the teeth, kind of like the ones sheepherders use to direct their dogs in the field. It was all very interesting to hear from our attic room, where the\u00c2\u00a0windows were in the ceiling, so there was no way to peer out to find the source of the night’s revelries. \u00c2\u00a0If your neighbors were having such a party, you might invite yourself to it, unless you were as tired as I was.<\/p>\n

Intermingled with the party was the occasional sound of volumes of bottles being tossed into bins and motobikes racing up and down the streets and alley ways, cat fights, and seagulls landing on the nearby rooftops. I think the party finally broke up at about 3:45 a.m.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a>Our now usual early pre-breakfast walk around the town took us to some interesting Roman ruins, circular alleys\u00c2\u00a0with little steep-stepped alleyways, where feral city cats appeared at ever turn and watched from garden walls from behind tree branches.<\/p>\n

We returned to our hotel for our breakfast and made a seemingly simple request for two lattes. \u00c2\u00a0The waitress nodded and returned with\u00c2\u00a0one cup of hot milk. \u00c2\u00a0We tried again, saying latte = milk + espresso. \u00c2\u00a0She dutifully returned with two cups of coffee. \u00c2\u00a0We improvised something that resembled a latte.<\/p>\n

We asked our car lady to show us the way to Piran and she dutifully did so as we headed north along the coast to Slovenia. \u00c2\u00a0The landscape again made a big change, as did the architecture and construction of the homes and farmsteads. We made it to the Croatia – Slovenia border in little\u00c2\u00a0time presented\u00c2\u00a0our papers again and got another stamp for the passports. We rolled into the seaport city of Piran and started gawking at the beautiful details all around us. The buildings, boats, water, people, and reflections in the water all beckoned us to linger a while, which\u00c2\u00a0we did.<\/p>\n

Our chosen caf\u00c3\u00a9\u00c2\u00a0on the town square had\u00c2\u00a0caff\u00c3\u00a9 latte on the menu, so that was a great start. \u00c2\u00a0It also offered a hot\u00c2\u00a0\u00c4\u008dokol\u00c3\u00a1da, so perhaps it was not out of the question that\u00c2\u00a0a favorite drink, caff\u00c3\u00a9 \u00c4\u008dokol\u00c3\u00a1da, could be had. \u00c2\u00a0Communicating the ingredients wasn’t enough –it was as if we had just arrived from the New World on one of the boats in the harbor\u00c2\u00a0with some otherworldly invention that would take a long time to be accepted here.<\/p>\n

\"image\"The town square was large and made of large and very smooth and even blocks (an apparent ‘upgrade’ compared to other town squares). It was a hive of action. This is a city of boats and wheels. \u00c2\u00a0Mostly pleasure boats, but also many working fishing boats. \u00c2\u00a0All manner of wheeled mobility could be seen whizzing about. Older folks in three wheeled contraptions that resembled tricked out wheelchair scooters, kids on their foot scooters, bikes of all shapes and sizes, rollerblades and old fashioned skates, biker dudes and dudettes of all ages, inked and un-inked. Then there were the usual cars and busses. People were bathing in the sea and sunbathing on the concrete beach, the little ones in nothing but their birthday suits. There were lots of shadowy alley ways that lured\u00c2\u00a0us deeper into the city, to keep us exploring the mix of architecture and details, light and shadow, and the curious things the town was hiding there.<\/p>\n

We wanted to stop for a late lunch before leaving Slovenia, so we thought we would try Bled. We had read that the\u00c2\u00a0place was beautiful, a wondrous place with a lake, an island, and a castle, it looks like a fairytale location. Too bad we don’t have any photos of it.<\/p>\n

You’ll have to look it up on the web. The place was jammed packed, cars, people, families, people with dogs in tow. It was a madhouse. There was nowhere to park the car to get out and walk. So we tried to get out of there as fast as we could. We headed out for the main road again to make our way to Austria. We stopped at the city of Vallach for a bit to eat and get our bearings.<\/p>\n

Like so many caf\u00c3\u00a9s on this trip, food was not something they concerned themselves with. \u00c2\u00a0In this case, the drink menu was 10 pages long and the food choices were toast or pizza. \u00c2\u00a0Paul pressed his coffee-ordering luck (only 2 strikes so far today) and asked\u00c2\u00a0for a decaf latte, but ran into another cultural\u00c2\u00a0barrier. \u00c2\u00a0Knowing\u00c2\u00a0entkoffeiniert in German might have helped, but\u00c2\u00a0our server, who had a good command of English, just couldn’t fathom there was such a thing as coffee without caffeine, even at 8:00 at night. \u00c2\u00a0 In the earlier conversation, the server couldn\u00e2\u20ac™t imagine another ingredient being added to caffe. \u00c2\u00a0Here, she couldn\u00e2\u20ac™t fathom something being subtracted. \u00c2\u00a0These exchanges are all very quick and rather amusing, as long as you’re not too concerned about what you end up getting.<\/p>\n

We finally settled in for the night at a place called the Hacienda Mexicana where all the rooms are decorated in some sort of Mexican theme and named after Mexican cities. The wifi\/whiffy\/wifey\/why-fee or whatever the vernacular is for this part\u00c2\u00a0doesn’t reach our room so we are in the busy bar trying to get this blog post up for your reading pleasure. The restaurant and bar offer all sorts of Mexican fair and beer and is painted in bright festive colors. There is a large poster on the front of the building announcing that bikers are welcome and you could rent a Harley\u00c2\u00a0here if you cared to.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The church bells of the city of Pula mercifully\u00c2\u00a0didn’t go off at 7:30 this morning. Having been awakened many times during the night by the boisterous\u00c2\u00a0participants of parties\u00c2\u00a0going on somewhere nearby, it was a relief to sleep in for just a little bit longer today. The party started at about 9:30 p.m. with male voices […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[205,50,102],"tags":[96],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-205","category-austria","category-slovenia","tag-europe-2014-2","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1863,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/1863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}