We got a ride to the bus station from the owner of our apartment in Bled. On the way over we asked where most of her guests were from. There was the obvious – Austria and Italy, Slovenia’s neighbors – and to our surprise, she gets a lot of Israelis, Australians, and Brits. We have met a lot of Brits and Aussies in our travels, but we haven’t met any Israelis. She doesn’t get many Americans.
A group of strange dark-colored ducks was swimming around on Bohinj Lake, a new kind of duck for us. They were mostly very dark, almost black, with dark green necks. The aggressive birds were constantly on the offense, chasing and attacking the mallard ducks.
Lake Bohinj is much less built up than Lake Bled. Bled started out as a prime tourist destination over a century ago, so it’s had much more time to overdevelop with large hotels. Bohinj doesn’t have any of that. It’s still touristy, but there are very few people here! Our hotel is so empty, reception knew who I was! Most of the area is encompassed by the Triglav National Park so it has a nice wild feel about it – a good change from Bled. Even though Bled was plenty interesting, the town was bigger and more crowded /trafficy than we anticipated.
We’ve caught on to a few very basic Slovene words. The Slovene equivalent of the Italian “pronto” is “prosim,” used in the situation: “Yes? Go ahead / Can I help you?” People say zeveo (the z sounds like the second “g” in garage) for informal hello’s and goodbye’s; we have often heard “ciao” for goodbye too, an obvious Italian influence. Also heard “adieu” for goodbye and “dobro” for thank you /alright? The Slovenian equivalent to “bon apetit” is “dober tek.” The formal greeting is “dober dan.” We’ve been able to pick out “hvala” for “thank you” the most frequently. We’ve had to ask many times, “govorite anglesko?” (s has a carat over it, pronounced like “sh”) / “Do you speak English?” And the answer is always “yes” in English.
The lake and river in Bohinj are a similar glacier-like color, but markedly greener, not sure why.
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Today, we made the quick bus journey to Lake Bohinj, about 25 km west of Bled. Amazingly, it didn’t rain on us all day, despite rain being nearby. We were up and about at 0930, and scraped up a breakfast together of what food was left, which wasn’t much. We paid the owner, and that was only the second time we had seen her the whole time. She offered to take us to the bus station, which we readily accepted. That helped us out a lot because the station is almost 1 km away. We got on the 11:20 Alpetour bus to Bohinj with no problem, and oddly, you pay the bus driver directly. The ride was beautiful, and lasted about 40 minutes. The bus route ended in Ribcev Laz, the village on the east end of Lake Bohinj. From here it was a 1km hike up to the next town, Stara Fuzina, where Residence Triglav is located. It turns out that the reception desk is open all day except Wednesdays when it is closed from 1100 to 1500, and of course we got there at 1230. Fortunately, there is a restaurant downstairs, so we had lunch to help pass the time before we could check in. I had a pasta dish with salmon that was ok, and B had a salad that had turkey, corn, and pickles in it, among other things. Nothing special, but relatively cheap. We dragged it out until about 1400, looking at the Nat’l Park map and watching the weather unfold over the lake. We eventually moved to a bench next to the road, where B studied some Swedish while I talked to mom and dad on the phone for a bit. Mom told that gas prices in Meadville have hit $3.82…absolutely crazy. I’m not looking forward to having to pay that much for gas. When we left it was $3.30 in Raleigh. 1500 finally rolled around and we checked into the apartment; it is not nearly as nice as the one in Bled though. We dumped our stuff and headed back to Ribcev Laz to get groceries. Along the way we watched two small snakes duke it out on the side of the road, and ducks fight over territory on the lake…fun to watch. We spent about 45 EUR at the Mercator, getting some pretty weird stuff this time, including chocolate with cinnamon and tarragon flavor. Back at the apartment, we managed to cook some rice and veggies with one burner in the teeny kitchen. It is a poorly equipped kitchen, and we had to ask for a pan from a vacant apartment! We watched some more CNN while eating…Obama and Clinton split Oregon and Kentucky, oil prices passed $133/barrel, and Manchester United and Chelsea are playing in the European soccor final in Moscow tonight. I wrapped my hurt foot with duct tape; hopefully we can go hiking tomorrow.
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