When my husband married me, he knew I was an international woman of mystery.
I felt compelled to remind him of that this past month while he was herding our three teenaged children on his own, desperately trying to guide the flock safely through the perilous landscape of the last weeks of high school here.
Yes, three -- we picked up an extra child in January, an independent and good-natured 17-year-old boy from Italy, our exchange student Andi. Our own two were also busy with their activities -- baseball, the championship season in track, a piano recital, a musical review, and of course schoolwork, and although we have loved hosting Andi, we may have underestimated the logistics of three children, especially for a (temporarily) single parent. (We did this three years ago with another exchange student, Tina from Thailand, though that was a little easier because the children were younger. If I remember correctly, I also left the country in May that year...)
May is a month that requires a lot of coordination and organization -- out of town sporting events, rescheduled lessons, final projects, rides to appointments and parties, and high school graduation, which always takes place in the evening (our exchange students get to graduate with the senior class, and this year they had a very special addition to the ceremony). As a school board member, my husband sits on stage -- though I think our own children were home studying that night.
I say "I think," because I was away in May, traveling in Europe. I wrote a number of blog posts during my two weeks in Poland that you can read below; I then spent a week biking through Slovenia with my sister. In all, I was away for three weeks.
Yes, three -- and everything was fine on the home front, although three teenaged children do eat a lot, and they don't always put their dishes in the dishwasher. We were in pretty constant communication, thanks to all the new technologies, and for part of the trip I was feeling guilty about missing some of the important events (the conference, district, and regional track meet; the recital; the musical review) as well as not being around to help drive and cook and nag. It may be that I won't go away for that long in the month of May again.
My visit to Poland was brilliant and productive, though, and Slovenia was amazing.
I met my sister in the Ljubljana airport and we went to the mountain resort town of Bled, in the northwest corner of the country. This is an area that calls itself the "sunny side of the Alps." Technically known as the "Julian Alps," mountains rise around and to the north of Lake Bled, including the tallest, Triglav, which gives its name to the only Slovenian national park, many restaurants, and the swank hotel from which we began our bike ride. The Hotel Triglav was founded in 1906 and boasts that it was visited in 1908 by Archduke Franz Ferdinand -- just a few years before the event in world history which made him even more famous.
May can be a tricky month in Central Europe.
In Poland I borrowed an umbrella and a warm scarf to negotiate the changeable weather; when I arrived in Ljubljana, the first thing I did was to buy an umbrella. The skies around Bled were gorgeous on our first evening there, and as the touring company transported us to the Pokljuka Plateau the next day, we worried about whether we'd freeze while biking, or whether we'd be caught in heavy downpours during the week. We did both, of course, but dramatic and rapidly moving clouds of the first few days eventually gave way to gorgeous sunny days. We got lucky.
Slovenia retains the traces of its history throughout its landscape, everything from plaques honoring the odd archduke to WWI cemeteries to villages destroyed by Nazi troops. We saw the Planica ski jumps near Kranjska Gora, home for many years to world records and currently being renovated in hopes of reclaiming the world record from Norway, and the enormous stockpiles of firewood that were apparently even huger than usual because of the storms in winter that downed many trees. We saw bridges and factories and monuments, including a bust of a famous "alpinist," as well as bee boxes, part of the extensive apiculture of Slovenia.
Touring a country at a bicycle's pace means you really see both the details and the big picture. The views throughout the trip were fantastic; though we biked up a number of inclines (17% at one point!), they were worth it. (As the staff at Hotel Triglav told me: "we are perched up here above the lake in order to grant you those views.)
The first day was easy, biking down from the plateau, and we traced the path of another archduke, John of Austria, who visited the Savica Waterfall in 1807. Slovenia's most famous Romantic poet, France Prešeren, set an epic poem at the base of the falls, which flow into Lake Bohinj. I dabbled my feet in the lake, thinking of Prešeren's pagan hero who was immersed in a ritual baptism that marked the Christianization of the Slovenian people. Now a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist rises at the end of the lake, not far from the park honoring the "four heroes" who first climbed Mount Triglav. Myths of national origin -- important to learn, important to think about when traveling.
Each village we passed through had its parish church, and we used the shrines and crucifixes along the roadways as signposts. ("Turn right at the white crucifix," our instructions read. Of course, had they said "first ignore the white shrine that precedes it," we might have avoided one of our many accidental side trips along a gravel road and into a forest...) We admired the unique Slovenian-style hay racks, the farmers' fields and village gardens, the fast-rushing rivers and what looked like fairly environmentally friendly factories along their banks, the horses and cattle and sheep and goats grazing in pastures and on mountainsides.
Bucolic. No question about it. But with a long history. Grad Kamen ("Stone Castle") supposedly dates to the twelfth century; much of the intact downtown of Škofja Loka is from the 16th century. Slovenian towns are built around central and other market squares, often near the church and frequently featuring a gorgeous old tree in the center -- a linden in one case, in many other cases a majestic elm, something we Americans haven't seen in a long time.
At Grad Kamen we were alone, crawling through the ruins and imagining not only the people who might have lived there, but the thousands of tourists over the past centuries who had climbed those steps before us.
Every coffee or glass of wine we had at a village bar, every Slovenian cake we indulged in, every museum and square and shop and view we experienced, we thought about another traveler. My sister and I were taking this trip in honor of our mother, who really loved international travel.
Always intrepid, my mother climbed the narrow 16th century steps of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow with me, picked her way along a cliff path on the Tom' River in Siberia to see prehistoric cliff drawings, visited a Siberian prison and had a picnic in the woods with the prison's administration. On her own she went to Berlin not long after the wall came down to a conference for journalists who explored the meaning of democracy. With her husband she went to Turkey and Ecuador, Japan and Italy. She loved a river cruise and took several -- down the Volga River and the Danube, and maybe a few more that I have forgotten.
While we were gone, we talked with her on the phone and sent her pictures of what we were experiencing. Technology is amazing -- the last time my sister and I were in Europe we wrote postcards, and now the phone rang while I was biking along a dedicated bike path near Ribčev Laz, and my mother's voice was on the other end of the line. Our mother was delighted to share our adventures with us, and excited that we had taken the trip.
We had contemplated canceling, because our mother was ill, and in fact she died while we were gone. But she was adamant that we should not rush to her bedside. She knew that on this adventure, and on every one we take in future, we will have her with us. And though I've lost one of my blog readers, I will still write for her. I wish she could have seen Slovenia and Poland. I look forward to thinking about her as I travel to new destinations in the years ahead.
I felt compelled to remind him of that this past month while he was herding our three teenaged children on his own, desperately trying to guide the flock safely through the perilous landscape of the last weeks of high school here.
Yes, three -- we picked up an extra child in January, an independent and good-natured 17-year-old boy from Italy, our exchange student Andi. Our own two were also busy with their activities -- baseball, the championship season in track, a piano recital, a musical review, and of course schoolwork, and although we have loved hosting Andi, we may have underestimated the logistics of three children, especially for a (temporarily) single parent. (We did this three years ago with another exchange student, Tina from Thailand, though that was a little easier because the children were younger. If I remember correctly, I also left the country in May that year...)
May is a month that requires a lot of coordination and organization -- out of town sporting events, rescheduled lessons, final projects, rides to appointments and parties, and high school graduation, which always takes place in the evening (our exchange students get to graduate with the senior class, and this year they had a very special addition to the ceremony). As a school board member, my husband sits on stage -- though I think our own children were home studying that night.
I say "I think," because I was away in May, traveling in Europe. I wrote a number of blog posts during my two weeks in Poland that you can read below; I then spent a week biking through Slovenia with my sister. In all, I was away for three weeks.
Yes, three -- and everything was fine on the home front, although three teenaged children do eat a lot, and they don't always put their dishes in the dishwasher. We were in pretty constant communication, thanks to all the new technologies, and for part of the trip I was feeling guilty about missing some of the important events (the conference, district, and regional track meet; the recital; the musical review) as well as not being around to help drive and cook and nag. It may be that I won't go away for that long in the month of May again.
My visit to Poland was brilliant and productive, though, and Slovenia was amazing.
 |
| View of Lake Bled in the evening from the restaurant also visited by the Grand Duke |
May can be a tricky month in Central Europe.
In Poland I borrowed an umbrella and a warm scarf to negotiate the changeable weather; when I arrived in Ljubljana, the first thing I did was to buy an umbrella. The skies around Bled were gorgeous on our first evening there, and as the touring company transported us to the Pokljuka Plateau the next day, we worried about whether we'd freeze while biking, or whether we'd be caught in heavy downpours during the week. We did both, of course, but dramatic and rapidly moving clouds of the first few days eventually gave way to gorgeous sunny days. We got lucky.
 |
| At Savica Waterfall |
Touring a country at a bicycle's pace means you really see both the details and the big picture. The views throughout the trip were fantastic; though we biked up a number of inclines (17% at one point!), they were worth it. (As the staff at Hotel Triglav told me: "we are perched up here above the lake in order to grant you those views.)
The first day was easy, biking down from the plateau, and we traced the path of another archduke, John of Austria, who visited the Savica Waterfall in 1807. Slovenia's most famous Romantic poet, France Prešeren, set an epic poem at the base of the falls, which flow into Lake Bohinj. I dabbled my feet in the lake, thinking of Prešeren's pagan hero who was immersed in a ritual baptism that marked the Christianization of the Slovenian people. Now a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist rises at the end of the lake, not far from the park honoring the "four heroes" who first climbed Mount Triglav. Myths of national origin -- important to learn, important to think about when traveling.
Each village we passed through had its parish church, and we used the shrines and crucifixes along the roadways as signposts. ("Turn right at the white crucifix," our instructions read. Of course, had they said "first ignore the white shrine that precedes it," we might have avoided one of our many accidental side trips along a gravel road and into a forest...) We admired the unique Slovenian-style hay racks, the farmers' fields and village gardens, the fast-rushing rivers and what looked like fairly environmentally friendly factories along their banks, the horses and cattle and sheep and goats grazing in pastures and on mountainsides.
 |
| Grad Kamen near Begunje na Gorenjskem |
At Grad Kamen we were alone, crawling through the ruins and imagining not only the people who might have lived there, but the thousands of tourists over the past centuries who had climbed those steps before us.
Every coffee or glass of wine we had at a village bar, every Slovenian cake we indulged in, every museum and square and shop and view we experienced, we thought about another traveler. My sister and I were taking this trip in honor of our mother, who really loved international travel.
Always intrepid, my mother climbed the narrow 16th century steps of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow with me, picked her way along a cliff path on the Tom' River in Siberia to see prehistoric cliff drawings, visited a Siberian prison and had a picnic in the woods with the prison's administration. On her own she went to Berlin not long after the wall came down to a conference for journalists who explored the meaning of democracy. With her husband she went to Turkey and Ecuador, Japan and Italy. She loved a river cruise and took several -- down the Volga River and the Danube, and maybe a few more that I have forgotten.
While we were gone, we talked with her on the phone and sent her pictures of what we were experiencing. Technology is amazing -- the last time my sister and I were in Europe we wrote postcards, and now the phone rang while I was biking along a dedicated bike path near Ribčev Laz, and my mother's voice was on the other end of the line. Our mother was delighted to share our adventures with us, and excited that we had taken the trip.
We had contemplated canceling, because our mother was ill, and in fact she died while we were gone. But she was adamant that we should not rush to her bedside. She knew that on this adventure, and on every one we take in future, we will have her with us. And though I've lost one of my blog readers, I will still write for her. I wish she could have seen Slovenia and Poland. I look forward to thinking about her as I travel to new destinations in the years ahead.
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