English shortcut

Ok, so we left Villach with a well working car. Headed south to Slovenia again and drove in direction Logarska Dolina, a nature reserve in the northern part of the country. It kept raining. We didn’t make it all the way, so we stopped in a place with a few houses and I took Lilja on my arm and the dictionary in my hand and went to ask for permission to camp. I tried to communicate with an old and very skeptical man, but I guess my pronounciation worked, because he nodded and said “da”. The next day, we drove in to Logarska Dolina and went up to the tourist information. We’re a little bit ahead of the tourist season, so many places aren’t open. But Elena who works there invites us to her home to see her new born goat-babies later the same day. Vida will never stop talking about when she got to hold the goat baby in her arms.

It keeps raining during the days we spend up there and we head south to a Flower park called Mozirski Gaj. It’s absolutely beautiful there, with tons of tulips in bloom. We continue to the Scocjan caves, a Unesco Heritage in the south of Slovenia. Amazing caves, with the biggest “cave room” in Europe. Then comes Vida’s big goal on this trip – Lipica. This is where the lippizaner horses origin from and they still breed them and have shows here. We spend a full day here enjoying the horses and their beauty, going for a carriage drive and watching the shows. It’s a very good day.

The next day, we leave for Ljubljana and meet our new friends Robert and Marjeta. Although they just arrived from the USA and are jetlagged, they invite us to their home, we camp on their parking, use their washing machine, go for a walk in Ljubljana and learn tons about Slovenia, old Jugoslavia and traveling around. Truly great people!

Croatia is our next country on the trip and we head for Cres, one of the islands. We spend five days here. The weather has finally gotten better, we have sun all the time, and as we find two campspots right next to the sea, we decide to stay and have some vacation. Also, we decide to clean our mattresses, which turns out to be a not so good decision. They never dry, so that’s part reason we stay so long here. They lay out in the sun all day for a few days to dry up.

Driving south, our car makes a really bad noise, and then black smoke starts coming out from the back. The words I used are not appropriate for this blog… We end up getting an address for a VW service workshop from our friend Hartmut in Villach and arrive there just 15 minutes too late. But they promise to look at our car the next morning. We go around trying to find a camp spot and end up in a park, which doesn’t really feel good, but we can’t drive further. The next day, they find the problem, order the spare parts and we will have to come back in two days to get our car fixed again. I’m glad this happened close to a big city. We find a calm and small camping where we spend two days and meet a new friend, Bernhard, who is traveling to India on his motorbike. When the car is finally fixed again, we head further south. One goal is the Krka nationalpark, where Vida and Pär go bathing in the waterfalls.

I’m a bit homesick after this last car breakdown, so when I finally meet my friend Sanna in Montenegro, I start to cry a bit. She takes care of us, we pass one of her friends who invites us for an afternoon snack with delicacies from the region. Then we end up in an olive “field” (I know it’s not field, but I don’t know the right English word), with a beautiful view of the sea. We spend a few days in Montenegro, find a place where we get our gasbottles filled enough to last us the rest of this trip, and just enjoy ourselves on the beach and in the surroundings. We take one day driving tour to the old city of Cetinje and visit the monastery where the hand of Saint Johns is supposedly being kept. The we drive to Lovcen, a mausoleum situated on 1749 metres above the sea. 461 steps to climb from the parking, Vida, Isar and I do it and its breathtaking. The view over a big part of the country, all the way to Albania. The mausoleum is a piece of art in itself, and has wonderful acoustics. As we are pretty much alone here (thunder, lightning and rain keeps most tourists away from a point like this), I sit with the children in there and sing, and it sounds like angels. What a memory!

We continue to Albania – once Europes most closed country. It’s interesting to see, but we don’t get a good feeling from the country. Street kids attack the car and Pär just manages to lock the doors half a second before they start pulling the door handles and bang on the windows. There are no campings and we end up being allowed to camp on the back side of a hotel, which should be pretty safe. But my sandals get stolen. It’s a country full of great contrasts though and we are glad having seen it. The next day we continue driving and in one place, I see two women sit on a field, guarding their cows and knitting. Pär stops the car, I run out and try to communicate with them. I bring a sock-knitting and we compare techniques and exchange smiles.

We enter Macedonia and find a good place for “bush” camping. It’s not really in the bush, it’s an old parking in a closed down road, but pretty far from any city. Later in the evening, right after our dinner, a truck comes by and parks a bit away. We see ice-creams on the commercial on the outside, and I walk up to them with some money in my hand, thinking that, if it’s an ice-cream car, I can always ask. I end up getting five BIG ice-creams for the family and we have a party out there in the bush. They just stopped there to have a break and reload a bit. We talk as one of them speaks English. When they are about to leave, they back up to our spot, jump out of the car and comes and gives us a sun shade umbrella and a waste basket with commercials for their ice-cream brand. This is so cool! Would anyone ever have imagined that to happen in the Macedonian countryside? We love it here!

We use our sunshade when cooking lunch the next day. We have continued into Greece and this is truly beautiful. All over are fields and flowers, olive trees and other trees, there is a mango tree right where we’re having lunch! We have decided to try to go down to the Greece coastline and spend a few days there.

So, all the great anecdotes and small things are only in the Swedish version, but, when you stop by, we’ll let you hear all the stories!