Slovenia

July 9, 2019: Tolmin, Slovenia. We have spent the last six days in the north eastern part of Slovenia around Triglav National Park. We entered Slovenia from Austria on the Russian Road via the Vesic Pass. This road was built over the mountains by Russian POWs. There were stunning views from the top and loads of sheep roaming the street. Once we were over the pass and lower into the valley We explored several suspension bridges over the amazing Soca river. We checked out WWI bunkers and trenches and stopped many times to dip into the water.

We drove into Tolmin to meet our hosts at 6:00pm. We were met by Katja and drove to their house. They live in a beautiful and modern home over looking the hills. We had three rooms in the lower level to spread out. They have four kids. The two boys are abroad learning English and the two girls Jana (age 10) and Maya (age 8) returned home from a week at camp on Friday evening. We ate a small but topical European dinner of meat and cheese. Rudi came home from a work dinner later and he was great. On Friday morning we went to Kolovrat which is an open air museum on a hillside with many WWI trenches and bunkers. We actually hiked into Italy as this part of the front was right on the border. We spent many hours there. When the kids were playing tag in the bunkers James and molly were running through a pitch black bunker and molly ran right into a wall scraping up her face and arm. Later casey fell off a stone wall and scraped up her elbow, leg and stomach! Rough outing! It was a hot day and after four house exploring we went down to the river to a suggested swimming spot. There was a sketchy, rickety looking platform to jump from and James and JJ tried it out successfully. We swam awhile there then stopped at a few different places along the river on the way home. One had a rope swing. The Soca river is an incredible color blue but it is also very cold! We got home and had a wonderful dinner with everyone in the family out on their back terrace. We had potatoes and lamb kebabs. The kids played badminton together and our girls held their pet baby turtles. One of which peed about a gallon of pee into my hand.

On our third day in Slovenia we went to the Tolmin gorge. This is a tourist attraction but a beautiful gorge to check out. We spent the morning there and had fun. Later we drove deep into a valley to find a remote swimming hole. This was incredibly beautiful. There was an old trolley to pull yourself across the river in lieu of a bridge. James casey and I swam despite the frigid temperatures. Later we hiked up a little further and discovered the strangest swimming pool on a high mountain farm pasture. There were Slovenian college students spending a weekend in this farm house. It was very out of place! After we made our way home we cooked dinner for the family and had another nice meal together. We planned to leave on the fourth day but decided together with Rudi and Katja to spend another day together. The children have been playing nicely together despite not being able to speak at all. They play Uno, memory, tag, hide and seek, badminton and dance to music. They even put on a show for us to the cup song. We all went by car up a windy road up a mountain. We parked and hiked to watch a man make cheese from that mornings milk haul. The cows spend their summer up on these higher pastures and he makes the cheese every day. At a second cheese hut we tasted some one day old cheese and the farmer basically forced us to take shots of some alcohol he made on the mountain, which is apparently very common. Eww! We then hiked a few miles up to an old WWI chapel made by the soldiers high in the mountains. We picked wild strawberries. We hiked back down and had traditional Slovenian food for lunch at a mountain hut. James has Jota which is a vegetable stew with potatoes and a sausage in it. We tried frika which is a potato, cheese and egg dish (basically like an omelette). And I also had goulash with spaghetti. We had some delicious sweet dumplings for dessert. After filling up we headed down the mountain. They took us to see a nice waterfall and James had a good jump from a high rock into the river. Casey took a dip too then we headed home. Couch surfing with this family has been really wonderful. We all get along very well and enjoy spending time together. We are really grateful for this experience.

Monday morning we woke the kids up at 6:15am which is MUCh earlier than they have been getting up this entire trip. We wanted to get an early start for our hike. We drove up to the same hut we had lunch at the day before and began our hike from there. We took 3:45 to get to the top. It was a gorgeous morning; sunny but not too hot. We took lots of breaks because it was a steep hike. We got up to the hut around 11:45am and had a snack. I was so happy to take my pack off. We dropped our stuff and went out to explore the area. One of the nearby peaks was the site of some of the most intense fighting in that area during WWI. We hiked over and explored caves, bunkers and treasure hunted for WWI relics. We found LOTS of stuff, bullets, rifle clips, parts of old boots, lots of shrapnel, buckles from belts and backpacks. There are a million old cans and old barbed wire around. We spent about 3 hours exploring and once the weather started to change we headed back to the hut. The hike back to the hut takes about 40 minutes and we left just about 10 minutes too late as we got caught in the storm. We were soaked and the kids (and I) were nervous with high mountain thunder roaring over head. We hustled the last little bit to the hut and dried off. We spent the rest of the time warming up with hot chocolate, blankets and playing cards and pictionary. We were the only people staying in the hut that night so we had the place to ourselves with our hosts Mojca and Thomas. They were so nice and were wonderful to talk to. We ate Jota (cabbage and potato soup) and sausages for dinner. We headed to bed in our bunk room. Tuesday morning we went back to the peak and explored around for a few more hours and then began our long hike down. We took a different route to the bottom so we could go see a mountain lake. In the lake we found unexploded grenades from WWI. We didn't dare touch them but it was so amazing to see. The hike was long and the downward walking for 3:30 hours wiped us all out. We went back to our friends house to pick up our stuff and we decided to cut Molly's cast off ourselves because we could not make it back to Munich in time. It took awhile but the garden shears worked well! We said goodbye to Rudi and Katja and the girls and drove two hours east to a tiny town. Slovenia is beautiful and the people are very nice!