Weekend[9]: Slovenia

I decided my summer hadn't been adventurous enough, so I decided to squeeze in the furthest place possible into a 2-day weekend. A friend and I decided to go to Slovenia mostly for the heck of it, and partly because they have the world's number one caves (we had to justify 13 hours each way on a train somehow). We ended up making really good use of our train rides. Lots of studying, especially in the lit department (see left)... Each part of the board is dedicated to one of the countries we visited. Can you guess what the bottom right corner represents? :)


I decided to put a map of Slovenia's place in Europe considering how few people actually know where/what this country is. No, it's not some third-world country. And yes, it's part of the EU. And doubly yes, there IS stuff to see there. Seen the ads for vacations in Croatia? Imagine those views, but better. The lack of ads for Slovenia means there are fewer tourists and pickpockets, and more relaxation and people-meeting.

All in all, Slovenia was amazing. We stayed in a top European hostel, saw the world's number one caves (AND got the added bonus of the lights going out for a few seconds to experience actual total darkness). I wish we could have taken pictures in the cave, but if you look up Postojna caves, I think you'll get a decent idea of what we saw.
We also traveled to Lake Bled that same day to make the most of our 24 hours in the country. The lake was beautiful and we were bummed we couldn't stay for the festival that was happening that night -- they light floating candles and send them out on the lake! We did get to see some festivities, though, and got a great view of the city by finally tobogganing! (Something I'd earlier been told was a must in Europe)






(Picture of the tobogganing track)













In Slovenia, graffiti is largely overlooked by the police as long as the artists don't cover up the numbers on the trains. The graffiti artists are extremely respectful, and they even have their own section of the capital city (where we stayed, amazingly enough) that is dedicated to graffiti art. It is a pretty big attraction.







My mom pointed out my seeming obsession with cars and motorcycles, so I figured I had to include another motorcycle picture just to continue the trend :)










I'll close with a picture of the lake because it was just so beautiful there, and I hope anyone traveling to Europe (especially future GTLers) plan on going there at some point. It has great views, incredible people, and it's cheap! I really hope I get the chance to go back to fully appreciate the sights we managed to squeeze in and see the rest of the country.