Lake Bled, Ljubljana, and Venice

Around this time of our trip Ellen acquired what was lovingly referred to as the Contiki Cough. It’s a gross little cold you get from breathing in other people’s bus breath and not drinking enough water or sleeping properly. T’was a common affliction that Ellen had even read about ahead of time, so we came prepared and every day she and I took two Vitamin C tablets with our bread breakfast. I’d argue that 90% of people had The Cough at this time so I suppose it shouldn’t have shocked her the way it did. Ellen was truly appalled by her own congestion and threw several mini-tantrums about it over a three-day period. She coughed and moaned and sniffled and if she snapped at me for unrelated reasons she would apologize by re-acknowledging that she was sick.

From Budapest we drove through Slovenia to Lake Bled, a fairytale setting that was, in fact, a very pretty lake surrounded by very pretty trees that grew up into some very pretty mountains. We dangled our feet in the water and ate gelato in ice cream cones. It was toasty out though so I brought out my snappy towel. I’m realizing now I’ve never written about my snappy towel here before. It’s a lime green shammy-like hand towel that Omar bought to help keep me cool. It has magical properties inside that when dunked in water and snapped tight, will release cooling chemicals that feel good against your hot skin. Don’t ask me how it works or why but know that they are used by professional athletes in the midst of a battle of scores, so, that makes me pretty tough by proxy. Anyways, the towel fascinated the Australians. News of the towel spread like wildfire and young folk flocked and lined up to touch the towel. I’ve had the towel for three years. It rides in my purse everyday and on the rare occasion that I think of or use the towel, I’m humiliated by it’s attention grabbing color. Here, in Lake Bled, Slovenia, the towel made me famous. Here, in Lake Bled, Slovenia, surrounded by sparking blue water and a red roofed church on a fantastical island in the middle of the lake, the Australians gathered around my little green snappy towel. 

From the lake we drove to the capital, Ljubljana. I’ve heard of Ljubljana before in learning the capitals of all the European Nations. This one stuck out because it looks and sounds silly and as a seventh grader, the day after I got my braces removed, (don’t know why I remember that) I said to myself, I’ll go to Ljubljana someday. Well folks, that day came, and it was my favorite stop of the whole trip. This is a gorgeous and minimally discovered gem. I want to go back and I also want no one to ever find out about it so that chains and corporations won’t buy up the land and change it forever. Ljubljana is Italy without the crowds, traffic, and litter. Now look what I’ve done, making Italy seem awful. Italy is one of my favorite countries…but imagine if tourists had never discovered it. Tempting huh? Ljubljana is peaceful and beautiful. A river runs through the town center so it’s dotted with pretty pedestrian bridges that take you from one restaurant patio to the other.  Ellen, Bradley, and I, and two other friends took our evening here and quietly sat outside next to the river laughing and snacking until bedtime.

I stole this next photo.

Up early and en route to our final stop, Ellen and I were giddy about Venice. We’d both been once before and loved how different it is. On our way here, Ellen coughed into my face for several hours. It’s almost as if she’s never heard the concept of covering your mouth and each time she coughed on me I would give her a look of scorn and say, “Please cover your mouth. I don’t want to get sick.”

Naturally this is the polite thing to do so Ellen continued to let her coughs bellow throughout the bus and settle anywhere there might be moisture on my face.

I had a sore throat by dinnertime and a real bruiser of a cold by morning. In case you’re wondering, Ellen did not take responsibility for this nor did she feel remorse. Instead she was still fixated on the fact that she got sick in the first place.

Venice is still beautiful but it was a net-neutral for us. Here why: 1.) It was so hot. Not just for dainty Lu but for everyone. Uncomfortably hot. The kind of hot where you’d rather sit still than roam and discover – that’s really saying something. 2.) It was amazingly crowded. Disney World on Spring Break crowded. Some unknown human is touching you at all times crowded. You’ve got to wait in line for a half hour to be seated for lunch crowded. 3.) We had nowhere to go. Our hotel was on the mainland and not on the island of Venice. Because of this, the lot of us had to take a ferry to Venice where we were dropped off for 9 hours before they were coming back to get us – something about scheduling and boater rules. Nine hours is a long time in a two-mile area. It was nine hours living in an ant bed in the Sahara. So we sought shade, ate lunch in an air-conditioned restaurant at a strategically glacial pace, and then I made Ellen try on tons of dresses in a chilly shop with a lounge sofa. Try another one. Try one more! 

We had spurts of adventuring here and there and the weather became tolerable somewhere around dinnertime. While I would never claim to understand life on the streets, I now feel I vaguely understand what it must be like to be a homeless person. All those hours to fill each day mixed with all those needs you have – food, water, bathroom, shade. That’s a long, tough day.

Our group slowly met again just before dark. Everyone asked everyone about their day in Venice. Some people took gondola rides, some people ate gelato and drank Bellinis all day, and one group of girls showed up in striped shirts and masquerade headpieces. 

“How’d you hold up in the heat?” one guy asked me. 

“Did you use the towel?” another girl wondered. 

“Did it still go cold?” the first guy asked. Again I pulled out the towel and passed it around to the astonishment of my new friends. Then they taught me about “Slip, Slop, Slap!” the Australian marketing campaign for sun safety.  “Slip on a shirt. Slop on some sunscreen. Slap on a hat.” Though they all hailed from different Aussie coasts, they all joined in for the “Slip. Slop. Slap” jingle.

This night was my bed bug night and the next morning Ellen and I hugged our new friends goodbye as they boarded the bus heading for Rome. Ellen and I stayed behind, spent an entire day in bed (in a different hotel) coughing and sniffling, and finally boarded a plane bound for London…

Banska Bystrica and Budapest

The bus ride to Budapest was the worst day of the entire venture. Ellen and I were tired, dehydrated, and carsick. In bad situations likes these, one encounters people that handle things quite differently from your preferred method of survival. Now, I enjoy complaining. Ask any friend or boyfriend and it’s likely they’ll tell you that I voice my negative opinions with gusto. I enjoy playing the pessimistic devil’s advocate in situations that are bad but not terrible. Despite how it sounds, I’ve found that it gives me a platform to voice my concerns while still eliciting laughs via dramatic displays that, in turn, will lighten the mood. It’s altruistic evil genius, if you will, and I’m a not above telling you anytime I’m hot, cold, and then hot again. But if something is really wrong, I go very very quiet. I suppose this falls in the same category with telling people how I really feel. It’s a rare day that I’ll expose my true feelings. Too vulnerable. Too dramatic. So in the presence of a potential disaster, silence convinces me that I am just fine. “You don’t need to point out what’s wrong, Lu. You got this. You’re not vulnerable, there’s nothing to see here. I’m good. I’m fine. It’s all fine.”

So I made but a few small peeps on this ten-hour ride. In fact, one peep was simply to inform Ellen that I wasn’t feeling well and the second peep was asking for Ellen’s thoughts on going to the airport when we got to Budapest and booking a flight straight home. I could try to describe the agony of those ten hours but I don’t wish to revisit the memories. I do remember telling Ellen simply that “I just can’t do this.”

Let’s make a bad a situation worse, shall we? Ellen, my seatmate, travel partner, and only link back to America should I go unconscious and need to be air-lifted from a highway in Hungary and flown to the Embassy for processing, well she is also whiner. We were both raised by a delightful pessimist (that’s Mom) who instilled in us the ability to foresee all possible bad outcomes in a situation. It’s a gift really. Ellen has always been a vocal person. She will openly tell you how she feels, what she likes, what’s bothering her and what she would do differently. Ellen will also look at you for affirmation anytime she makes a particularly dramatic statement. This is because she is aware that it may have been too much, but still, it’s how she feels.

Ellen added monumentally to the agony of that day. It wasn’t strategic. It’s just her coping mechanism. But for every minute I spent chanting, “It’s fine. You’re fine. Nothing is wrong. We’ll be out of this twisty mountain range soon.” Ellen was next to me sighing and groaning and cursing the day she signed us up for the bus tour. “I’m never doing another crappin’ coach tour ever!” and she looked at me to agree. But if I agreed, I’d be admitting that something is wrong, so I simply looked at her and then stared forward again, keeping my eyes on a big cloud, the only stable thing around. Then Ellen would be bothered that I hadn’t said anything and she would lash out at me.

A few people threw-up on the bus this day and there were minimal guest DJ’s and bus games. It was a tough ride, made worse by having no water and sitting upright on hard, terrycloth seats. “Seriously Laura, this is not good. I’m gonna throw up. I’m gonna throw up and that’s that. Do you have a bag?” 

I did not have a bag and reaching down to feel around for something she could vomit in would have resulted in my own expulsion. I said, “Nuh” all breathy and faint while staring forward. I hadn’t moved an inch in an hour. The truth is I worried for Ellen. I felt awful but I had me under control. My silent statue act was going to get me through. I wanted to comfort Ellen, find a solution, walk up front to get a bag for her but I couldn’t. Ellen huffed and puffed and made lots of noise just to remind me that she was in bad shape. She said lots of negative, hateful things that day. The kinds of things you can’t take back and pretend aren’t true. “I was just upset.” she said later when she was fed, watered, and rested but wounds take time to heal.

A high point in the day was stopping in a little town in the middle of Slovakia, called Banska Bystrica. I know nothing about this place, only that it felt like the Garden of Eden when we were let out here for an hour long lunch break. The entire vibe changed as soon as we were let off of the bus. People rushed off for water and food and thirty minutes into our break, it was like the last five hours had never happened. Ellen felt better as soon as we sat down in a little tavern off the main square. We sat with Bradley and four girls we were building slow friendships with. Five days into this venture, my stomach turned on me and I could no longer eat hot meat chunks and potatoes. It’s hard to find salads or chicken and/or light fare in this part of the world. I don’t know about you, but I’d never try to feed a piping hot pot roast to someone with motion sickness.

We ate and we felt better and when we emerged from the dark tavern, we realized what a beautiful place we were in.

Here's a line up of good friends. The two girls in the middle, in the green and red shirts, that's Lauren and Olivia and they became my best friends on the trip. I'm pointing them out because they are really great girls worth acknowledging. They were quiet and polite, quick to laugh, and had sunny dispositions. I spent most of my time with those two and boy do I miss them.

These are our swarthy dude friends that we would go out with at night. From left to right we have James, Steve, Rob is hiding behind him, Mario, Felix, and Mufaro. I'll briefly tell you about them. James took a liking to me (after the Auschwitz fiasco) and followed me around and grinned at me for the rest of the trip. He's a good guy and I liked him fine but the grinning made my toes curl. The bald fella, Steve, he brushes his peach fuzz hair. He insists it makes his head look better. Behind him, Rob, was a highly coiffed and perfumed and fixed-up man. While that raises a number of red flags, he was  kind and easy to make laugh. He and I ganged up as the go-to problem solvers on the trip. He would giggle at my solutions to things and then wholeheartedly dive in to see how it would turn out. Mario is someone I would adopt as my own son, obnoxious and endearing, Mario does his own thing and enjoys every second of it. He was highly amused by Ellen's bossiness. Felix was a shy sweetheart who hung out in the background but was always smiling. Lastly, there's Mufaro, and if I was going to marry a British African man, it would be him. He's got a beautiful mind.

After another five hours we arrived in Budapest. It was dinnertime and we all had recovered from the windy mountains and were feeling more energetic and hopeful. “We made it!” someone in the back shouted. Before heading to our hostel, we made a pit stop at Fisherman’s Bastian, an old pretty structure/castle thing with turrets and towers and a whole bunch of stairs. The view really made an impression. Actually the whole place did. There are so many old cities in the world and you see the pictures and acknowledge that they are old and beautiful but they are also strategically preserved and maybe some areas are painted and coiffed just to look nice for the tourists who come there to see the ancient city. Budapest puts up few facades. It’s really beautiful but not because people paint their front door bright colors and section off areas to preserve the aesthetics. They use their city and their buildings and they just happen to be ornately built from ages ago. Budapest is an old place that houses modern life and that’s a really interesting mix. I’d venture back to Budapest without second thought.

While in town, we had a dinner cruise on the Danube and floated past their famous parliament building as well as other noteworthy spots. We ate chimney cakes, goulsh, chicken paprikash and bought a little tin of their beloved paprika. They put paprika in everything there. We visited some famous nightlife spots (that I particularly did not enjoy), we went out dancing, found great little cafes, and Ellen spent an afternoon at the Roman baths. I thought this was a really neat place. It's a sizable city though and we stuck to one small corner of it. 

Other points of note; The weather took a turn and the mild, sunny weather we had enjoyed so far turned into a sweltering, summer heat. There was a perfectly timed heat wave moving through the area and Ellen and I were well aware that I'd have to sit out some of the upcoming activities. On the hottest day in Budapest, I hung back in the hostel while Ellen and our roommates went to the baths. During this time, I Facetimed with Dad, scribbled some trip notes, took a shower, and ate some delicious red cherries. Three times the maid barged into the room and seemed to be stunned that I still hadn't left. This was not a hostel where maids come through and make your bed and leave a towel animal on your pillow with a chocolate on it's head so I wasn't entirely sure what the maid wanted with our room. She did not have a cleaning cart or an armful of fresh towels to help pull off her ploy. I convinced myself she was waiting for me to leave so she could rummage through our things. "I'll beat you at this game." I thought to myself and I sat proudly on my dwarf-sized bunk bed. She still managed to frighten me each time she would swing open my door. Also, three large men barged in once to check the smoke detector. I believed them because they had a big smoke can on a stick and a plastic hood to put over the detector. Also they were very apologetic about barging in there and they scampered off as soon as possible. I settled back into my bunk. "It's a good thing you put on pants today, Lu"

Twenty minutes later, the fire alarm system in the entire building detonated and all the mid-day slugs like myself filed out into the hallway looking just as aggravated and confused as I was. 

But don't read into all this. Budapest is a pretty neat place.

Poland

Our time in Poland was a gripping juxtaposition of tragedy, annoyance, and contagious giggles. We entered the country and immediately went to Auschwitz, an interesting choice for a first stop, a real mood setter, a real kick in the pants after a night of befriending Aussies and discussing topics like fruit juice and ‘who wore it better’. Our tour guide through Auschwitz was a tiny Polish woman with bright orange hair and a thick Slavic accent. I couldn’t understand a dern thing she said but she looked at you intently while she spoke of the horrors of the past and that’s no time to be caught off in distant thought or intent on pushing back your cuticles. There were a few troubles here on this day. For starters, a mob of 50 kids around a tiny, incomprehensible woman made for a difficult situation. You couldn’t get close enough to hear her or translate her garbled tongue. If you did get close enough you could almost see the holocaust playing out on a filmstrip in her shiny eyeballs. She had sad, pained eyes and I worried that anyone the group would offend her by looking away or wandering off while she was talking.

Trouble number two was that the little orange lady was a bit long-winded. By all means, pour your heart out, BUT there were other tour groups behind us and we were holding up traffic. Now I know I’m not the only person who noticed the pile up forming behind us but the larger it grew the more antsy I became. I started dancing around in place, scooting forward an inch at a time hoping it would push our guide along. I find it incredibly burdensome to hold up other humans in any capacity. Should I ever crash my car on a busy highway and it takes the Jaws of Life to carve me out, I’m certain I would still shimmy out the window and use that 'Baby Trapped Under a Car', Mom adrenaline to push my totaled vehicle to the side of the road with my broken leg dragging behind me. Wouldn’t want to hold up traffic. Another great example is airport security. All those angry humans waiting on me to disrobe, unpack my bags, strike an awkward pose, and then put myself back together again… I’m so terrified of being an airport nuisance that I take extreme measures to blow through there like a seasoned pilot with a security clearance, but that’s a tale for another time.

So I was getting antsy and I started to wander a few steps past the guide. A few kids took my lead and the little lady would then walk backwards while she spoke and allow for more groups to come in. It settled my nerves for the next three minutes of her muddled spiel. Around this time, trouble number three set in. It was really hot that day and Aushwitz is… like… not air conditioned? Yes, yes. I know. Of all the places in the world were I’m disgruntled for being hot, this is not the place to complain. “Oh you’re hot here? I’m so sorry you’re uncomfortable. Perhaps you’d like to lay down over in the human oven for a few minutes!” So I didn’t say anything but when we left the shade of the Auschwitz buildings and ventured over to the open field that is Birkenau, I really started to get woozy.

So far, I had learned nothing about the concentration camps. This is partially because this was a heavily covered topic in school and I’ve read an awful lot about it but mostly it was because I couldn’t understand the Polish woman. No one could and all of us shot glances of annoyance and guilt at each other for the duration of the two and a half hour tour. I had hoped that visiting would not only make it feel more real but also offer some new information. The order and normal appearance of the buildings in Auschwitz made it look less like a death camp and more like a campus of buildings, each designated for a different faculty head. Birkenau was a big empty field with train tracks running through it and a few piles of rubbled stone.

While we were walking farther into the sunny field, I realized this venture wasn’t going to pan out how I hoped and more importantly to me at the time, I’m going to faint soon. If you’re wondering where Ellen is while this is happening, well I’m happy to tell you that she spent the duration of her visit through Auschwitz flirting with an attractive, Lebanese paramedic. It wasn’t until Bradley came up to her and said, “Ey, where’s ya sistah?” that she came to and noticed that I wasn’t with the group anymore. I watched her, Bradley, and the paramedic scan the field for me. I was hiding in a narrow strip of shade created by an electrical pole near the train tracks. I stood sideways, sucking in my stomach to keep in line with the ribbon of shade. To me, it was a last resort and a godsend. To anyone who didn’t know me, I assumed I looked like a social recluse or lousy spy with a Clouseua-like ineptitude. 

I smiled and waved at them when they finally noticed me.

“She must be too hot.” Ellen said and she shrugged and flipped her hair back towards the paramedic. A half dozen or so people became concerned when Ellen told them I’m a fainter. The little orange guide noticed the commotion and shot an irritated glance our way. I spent the next hour skirting around the tour group to the next small patch of shade I could find. I was always at least twenty yards away from the group and the guide could see me loitering around and blatantly avoiding her tour. She looked at me a shrugged once when she walked past a trash can and found me squatting behind it. Her shrug nearly killed me. “I can explain!” I wanted to shout but I was too weak and embarrassed. I had been so concerned that some fool in my tour group would offend this woman with disregard and indifference and it turned out to be me. I made it though the tour with the help of an Aussie fella named James that gave me a bottle of water and stood behind barrels with me until the tour ended.

Later that day we drove into Krakow where we spent two nights. We had a peirogi dinner, visited a giant salt mine, and went out dancing with our new friends. The Wieliczka Salt Mine is one of the world’s oldest mines and only stopped production back in 2007. We ventured over a thousand feet down (by stairs) and wandered all through the corridors and chambers. There’s a salty cathedral way down there where they have Mass every Sunday. Bradley was in my tour group and he convinced me to lick various walls (they all had different flavors) and taste the salty brine water being pumped through old wooden buckets. It was so salty it burned. At the end of the tour, our guide, Sylvester, crammed fifteen of us into a rickety elevator for six and rocketed us up one thousand feet to the surface. Each of us agreed that it was the scariest forty seconds of our lives.

That night a group of us went to a local club and danced the hours away. Ellen and I decided to leave around 2am and we gathered up Bradley, James, and four other fellas and tried to navigate back to our hotel. We got very lost. We wandered in circles in a really dark city park and had to stop often to let the fellas go to the bathroom. When we finally recognized a road home, they decided they were hungry and so we stopped for pizza slices and sodas. We made it back to our hotel at 4:30 and had to be up and on the bus by 6:30 for a ten hour ride into Budapest.

Vienna

As a spoiled traveler type who got an A in Geography and can identify all 40+ European countries by their capital city in under six minutes, I’m ashamed to tell you that I spend an entire day thinking Vienna was in Switzerland. As I noted before this trip, I hadn’t paid attention to where we were going. Ellen simply told me to pack for moderate weather and to bring a swimsuit and so I did. If you had ever thought to ask me where Vienna is, I’d have told you it was in Austria. While my plane ticket said Vienna my brain was registering Zurich and I told numerous people that day that I was on my way to the Swiss cheese capital. Imagine my confusion to discover that I was actually a whole country to the right.

I found out I was in Austria because of a cab driver name Gunther. Gunther met Ellen and me at the airport under the guise of driving us to our hotel. Ellen had arranged this before we even left home and while Ellen is a magnificent trip planner she is not immune to scams and general gullibility. (Did we ever tell you she tried to order a puppy from Africa?) So when Gunther stood happily with a sign that said ‘Villard’, Ellen galloped towards him, handed over our luggage, and followed his lead.

Prior to leaving for this trip Mom and Dad switched roles. Mom told us to have a great time and make lots of friends while Dad pointed out lots of negative and potentially dangerous things. And I quote:

“Listen girls, you two, you’re targets. Pretty American girls on vacation - they’ll see you coming. Now, Eastern Europe, it’s a mecca for trafficking. They take women and children and they sell them to the sex trade. Keep your eyes open. Watch people. Ask questions. Why is that guy wearing a big coat if everyone else is wearing t-shirts? Know where your exits are. Watch traffic. People are driving over tourists now. Remember, you are a target. Have a great time!” and he kissed us goodbye and sped away from the airport curb.

Gunther hastily lead us in the opposite direction of the airport exit signs. He hustled passed the taxi stands and airport shuttles and corralled us into a long, dimly lit hallway where there were no other signs of human life. I became suspicious of Gunther. Ellen looked at me with false confidence. I’m certain she was reading my face for worry and we both gave each other fake encouraging smiles.

Gunther was sweating. “Ever been to Austria before?” Gunther asked, slightly out of breath. Thinking I was in Switzerland, I thought this was an odd question. I didn’t respond to Gunther. Instead I glared at him, hoping he would rethink his plan to kidnap us because I looked mean and capable. Ellen partook in chitchat with Gunther while we hurried down the hallway. I was just about to pipe up about my worry when Gunther suddenly picked up our suitcases and darted down a staircase as fast as I’ve ever seen stairs descended. Something came over me and I became enraged by the gall of Gunther so I took off after him. I shouted, “Ellen! Hurry!” and I jumped down stairs two at a time trying to catch up to him. Ellen seemed confused, possibly because she’s never seen me react to anything in the last 27 years. I was closing in on Gunther, determined to get our belongings and rid us of his presence. Now I’m not exaggerating here, I reared back when I had four stairs left. I was preparing to lunge onto Gunther’s back. He’d never see it coming. And as my momentum shifted and my first foot left the stair, Gunther turned around to wait for us. Suddenly tackling Gunther didn’t seem like a necessary activity. He’s just standing there, smiling politely. Though my feet were soaring over the bottom three stairs, I reached back for the handrail and whipped myself around and slid down those last few steps.

Gunther rushed over. “Oh careful. Don’t go so fast!” and he helped me to my feet.

As it turns out, Gunther is a real sweetheart. He parks somewhere farther away than the taxi park because it allows him to go around airport traffic. Gunther told us all about Vienna and his daughters and he felt like an old friend by the time he dropped us off at our hotel. I spent the rest of the day quite tickled that I nearly tackled that man.

Ellen and I came into Vienna a day early so that we had a moment to get adjusted and look around before we took the bus out of town. While extended periods of time on airplanes can’t be ideal even for the overachievers up in first class, my flight over was easy and went by fairly quickly. Ellen forgot to take her contacts out and they shriveled and dried and stuck to her eyeballs (or something like that) and she had a red eye for several days. Ellen became consumed by her red eye and spent all down time staring at it and asking me if it was less red now. How about now? Is it still red?

We decided Mom would be disappointed with us if we didn’t use our one full afternoon in Vienna to go out and look around. We were both dreadfully tired and the last thing I felt compelled to do was wander aimlessly with a sleepy Ellen. (A volatile mix.) But as luck would have it, we suited up, headed out, and immediately found ourselves as serendipitous onlookers of the Naked Gay Pride Bike Parade.

I had always wondered how men sit on bike seats. Turns out there is myriad of ways.

We wandered, snacked, tried schnitzel (Ellen choked on some sauerkraut and I was nearly hysterical with terror), had an Austrian beer, and were back in bed by 8:30.

The next day we made a trip to the royal family’s summer palace and Ellen was surprisingly delighted by it. We really went there for me to see the flowers but Ellen came alive and took tons of photos.

In the afternoon we went over to the hostel where we met with our tour group. Meeting 50 people in one day is a tough undertaking but the lot of us went to dinner and Ellen and I met an important trip character, a 20 year old yankee boy named Bradley.

Bradley is so hopelessly Yankee that you can’t avoid loving him. He has slicked back black hair, a reactive disposition, and an accent that would rival Ray Ramano. He is a caricature and a cliché and I wanted nothing more than to be near Bradley when he experienced something new for the first time. Bradley loved Ellen and me and followed us around because “we gotta represent da USA baby!” We were all instant pals and I’ll tell you more about him as we go but here he is giving Ellen a look.