Accidental Lonely Planet Tour

In our last episode, we were excitingly hanging around a suburban internet Cafe in Vienna. Tonights episode comes from our hostel in Ljubljana.

We finally boarded our train for Maribor and arrived fairly latish in the city, having heard from the German-Croat in our carriage about how strange Slovenians are.

Maribor was a nice small city nestled near mountains and vineyards. In the morning we did a tour of the castle which was more of a palace. Due to the massive influx of tourists, one of the currators had to turn the lights and heaters on for us in each exibihition. The most interesting fact learned was that the castle was fortified due to the ˝thread of the Turks.˝ Hopefully in Turkey we will discover why Turkish thread required fortifying a castle. After this we wandered around the park and the old town in the city.

Maribor is home to the worlds oldest vine (still producing grapes) and one of the largest under ground cellars. I must say that the Slovenian wine tasted fantastic. We will surely share a bottle or two with our Italian friends when we get to Milan.

Our second day in Maribor was our day of outdoor adventure. We went to a mountain called Pohorje. To get there, we caught a suburban bus in the morning and caught a cable car up to the top. I went snow boarding while Thora sat in cafes and got a massage. The ski field was essentially one main run with a few shorter tributories. Having said that, it was a fairly long run with a few rather steep sections. On one of these sections there is an annual womens world cup ski event (The Golden Fox) so the mountain has a bit more street cred then Perisher. I certainly enjoyed myself.

After the event, we found out that we did exactly what the Lonely Planet guide recommended for Maribor. Maybe we should become travel advisors?

One of the reasons for travelling to Maribor was to catch up with a family of missionaries supported by our church. We spent a bit of time with Kingsley, Roni (Veronica) and their children Zachary, Sammuel, Timothy and baby Sophie. We had dinner with them a couple of times and walked around town with Roni and Timothy. It was interesting to see how they operated in a foriegn country with differences of culture and language. Did you know Slovenians have a morbid fear of exposing wet hair to cold weather? Tea is also the cure for nearly anything. Their work seems to be quite hard in terms of both working within the church which they belong to in Maribor and in reaching the lost. It was a bit of an eye opener for us and we will continue to pray for their work.

I´ve mentioned before that Slovenian wine is rather nice. Their beer is nothing amazing but thatś Ok as Germany and Poland are well placed on the itinary. Cake seems to be readily available at reasonable prices and is absolutely delicious. Our resident food critic Thora will no doubt fill you in on this culinary delight. This goes well with the porrige thick hot chocolate readily available. We have also been enjoying a lot of bread and bakery products.

Reports on Ljublana and Bled coming shortly.

Dean