131 days since my last post. Even for someone as lazy as me that's pretty slack. I guess the Spring was pretty uneventful, so none of you really wanted to read about my largely fruitless search for work, which nearly came to piling the whole family on the back of a truck and heading for 'Californie' in search of employment. I finished my Slovene course, and despite having improved greatly, I'm still not that hot at speaking the language, it's all practise I guess.
But, like buses, happenings vaguely of note all come along at once. May brings holidays to Slovenia, as it does the U.K. Tom, Christophe, Christophe's missus Kristina and I decided to head down to Croatia for the early May long weekend. Once the gents had belatedly crow-barred me out of bed, we got the chauffeur treatment in Tom's Beamer and joined the crowds on the autocesta cruising to Istria.
Our destination was just outside of Poreč, a kind of Butlins style holiday camp, but not as crap as it sounds. The first day was spent getting our bearings, essentially by getting pissed at the restaurant by the sea. We also met up with Brad, another Ljubljana fugitive, and his better half. Tom proceeded to imbibe most of Croatia's wine reserves by himself, and all sorts of silliness ensued. Even by the poor moral standards of this blog, I feel that a more detailed expose would be a breach of the first rule of road trips - what goes on the road stays on the road, for Tom's sake. As much as I can say is that I've now learned some particularly useful Croatian phrases, and that the Tom Furness scale of drunkeness has been adopted across the Balkans.
The next day I got up and made my way the few yards from our apartment to the beach for a swim. It as pretty cold, but an otherwise excellent cure for the mysterious bad head that I was dealing with. This does slightly tie in to some extensive scientific research that Christophe and I conducted: Slovene beer gives you far worse hangovers than those produced in other countries, fact. Drink Croatian beer and I can hop out of bed and do some mild form of exercise.
We travelled into Poreč and had a wonder round the town, it's a very nice place as long as you ignore the poor quality food that is subject to some sinister Albanian administered price-fixing cartel. I'll put some photos up when I've sorted my camera out. It voluntarily became part of the Venetian empire a few centuries ago, and as a result is a very attractive place.
As a result of deciding to have a quiet night, we got up reasonably early the next morning and went to lounge around by the sea for a bit. Despite the sun being very warm, the sea was still what scientists refer to as chilly. Due to being in possession of a pair of testicles I again went for a dip, but as my French colleague Christophe isn't so lucky he again stayed land-bound (for those interested in the unnecessary offensiveness of the above passage I refer you to the entry from last May)
That evening we were joined by some Slovenke in the form of Katka, Irena and Marina, three friends from Ljubljana. We travelled back into Poreč for some vino and pivo and then back to the holiday camp to experience the local 'culture' at the Nightclub on the road leading into the camp. Taking advantage of the cheap beverages we cut rug until the early hours before rolling back for a few hours sleep.
On the way home we got stuck in the inevitable traffic jams, so I took the opportunity to catch up on some much needed sleep. We stopped off on the way back to have a wonder around the top of the hill overlooking Trst/Trieste on the Italian border, and to risk getting our ear-drums perforated by the world's noisiest frogs.
I had a few weeks of relative quiet after this, aside from getting my flowing locks chopped off. My hair had reached my shoulders, and in the hope of improving my employability it had to go.
At the start of this month Ljubljana braced itself for the Hooky/Chippy invasion. I was joined on the Tuesday by my old housemates from Oxford, Ben and Pinks. They arrived in town in the early hours of Wednesday, but I performed my duties by promptly taking them to do an Union v. Lako comparison at the bar near their hostel. The next couple of days were spent viewing the sights of the city, including the obligatory walk up to the castle (complete with being taught some Finnish by someone I'll patronisingly refer to as an 'old-timer'), and feasting on horse (that's the animal, not slang for heroin).
On the Friday Pinks was hastily escorted from the city in order to make way for the arrival of a crack force of my old school friends celebrating Charlie's stag-do. Ben and I were joined by Charlie, Fletch, Ollie, Adam (on his second tour of duty), Dan and Pete. The request had been made by Fletch in his capacity as best man to organise a kind of 'Fear and Loathing in Ljubljana'. I think I was successful.
The first night we stocked up on Pizza and Beer and I took the boys to Metelkova, despite the high-spirits most of the party decided to hit the hay for a bit of sleep, with the exception of Ollie and I who hatched a plan to go and find a coffee as the sun came up, big mistake. We found a beer outlet and carried the party on until my body gave up and I had to return to my flat for a bit of rest. I'm only an amateur at this, but Ollie has been hardened by London life.
On my return a few hours later the boys had established a base at Premier, the bar where my housemate Neja works. Accusations of blame were circulating regarding who exactly was responsible for Ollie, but all we knew was that he had disappeared. I reviewed mobile phone clips of his behavior during the day, and it was quickly established that he was on the wrong side of 'mental'...
Eventually he re-emerged from some fox-hole or other and we continued the party in slowly decreasing numbers of personnel. I lacked the energy to head back to my flat so I kipped at their hotel and escorted them to the station the next morning. It seems that despite some short-term memory loss and the misplacement of several items of clothing a good time was had by all. The wedding is in August, so hopefully everybody will have totally recovered by then.
We had been joined in our exploits by quite a few of my local friends, and I circulated the idea of having a week or two off the booze. The following Friday I headed out with Christophe and Jure to have a couple of quiet beers. Following our decision to go to Metelkova I thought I could stretch the number a little, but a definite early night was on the cards.
I first began to question my lack of self discipline as I crossed the Italian border on foot, and hungover, about 7 hours later. On leaving Metelkova at about half four in the morning we passed the station and just out of interest thought we'd have a look at the timetable, this was followed by a swift trip home to collect my passport and then bundling on the train to Seana, a Slovene border town. We walked through the border and were luckily picked up by a bus and taken to a town just above Trst/Trieste, then we hoped on a tram and snaked our way down into the city.
Despite my slightly sore head, the city was beautiful. A cup of coffee and the bracing Burja (a savage wind that blasts down from the Alps) picked me up enough to happily do some sight-seeing. Everything was fine until we were making our way back and we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. Jure and Christophe order a huge plate of mixed pork and my stomach promptly went on strike.
After we made it back I slipped in a couple of hours sleep and then we headed to Katka's for a house party. Well, you're only young once... Last weekend we had a party just outside of Ljubljana to celebrate Irena's birthday, it was another late one, but I have been abstaining this week. The madness had to end sometime. Anyway, my travelling chronicle has been a bit of a piss-up diary this time round, but every man needs a hobby. Summer has hit Slovenia big time, and the weather is really hotting up. Hopefully I'll get some work in the very near future, and then there should be some more adventures. I'll be heading back to the U.K. in August for Charlie's wedding so hopefully some of you will be around then. Otherwise, I hope all is well with you all, Peace.
n.b. As my Dad has passed on the address of this blog to my grandparents in Australia, I should add some sort of disclaimer: Any similarities in on this blog to actual people, places and events are entirely coincidental... 
