The trip started in Munich last weekend, where less than two
hours after stepping off the plane, I was sitting in the Englischer garden with
a liter of beer in my hand. Next day it
was off to do what turned out to be warm up hiking in the Volderalpen
(foothills) in southern Germany. I am
told that Bavaria is apparently the Texas of Germany. And hiking for Germans is a bit like fishing
for Americans (in that it is an excellent reason to be drunk before lunch). Our 9:30 am train to the mountains certainly
had its share of the “it’s noon somewhere” crowd. But the day was complete with lederhosen (not
on me), hills, cows, and all other things lusty and robust and Bavarian.
Then it was off to the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana. Now admittedly this is a consequence of
growing up in the ‘80s and coloring all those countries with the same red
crayon, but I was expecting amber glass and overpasses (the staples of my
post-communist stereotypes), but I was shocked to learn that no one actually
mentioned to Slovenia that it was supposed to be behind the Iron Curtain. My tour guide explained that Slovenians had
always considered themselves to be much more like their nearby cousins in
Austrian and Italy (which, if you were a robust Bavarian hiker, got an early
start, and packed a full six-pack, you could reasonably walk to). And perhaps not surprisingly they were the
first ones over the boards into the EU, a choice that they are perhaps
rethinking these days.
So Slovenia has beautiful architecture and a wine
industry. And, since it is Europe and
you can do these things, they permanently closed the downtown to traffic,
making it essentially a walking and biking city. They have a massive city park that you run on
wooded trails until it is prudent to take the “bear warning” signs
seriously. Plus they have a castle and a
dragon bridge, which links to the city’s history in that it is supposedly where
Jason (of Argonauts fame) slew a dragon (or, if you are Catholic and willing to
allow a healthy amount of suspension-of-disbelief in your miracle stories, St.
George).
But that is not even remotely the best bits of
Slovenia. After wrapping up at the
conference, I decided to take a two-day stop in Bled on my way back to
Munich. Bled is famous from having
Slovenia’s only island (which they of course put a church on) and for being
close to Slovenia’s only national park, Triglav, which contains the incredible
Emerald River and numerous ways for your knees to remind you that you are no
longer 20 years old.
The Emerald River is named for the Wizard-of-Oz color of the
water (which I tried to capture with the camera but could not get the color
quite right). And my 12 hour day tour of
the park included hiking, swimming, rafting, viewing of ruins of WWI
fortifications (when Triglav was very close to the front lines), waterfall,
taking a train through the center of a mountain, and, as I mentioned above,
jumping off a bridge. The bridge jump
wasn’t an obligatory stop on the trip, but we were going anyway because the two
20 year old Australians with us were quite keen on the idea. They say the bridge is somewhere between 35
and 50 feet above the river, depending on the water level in the dam. And, as there was no additional charge for
this little adventure, and the van was going to be stopped anyway while the
Aussie kids jumped, what excuse did I really have not to? (It is the same rational that leads me not to
count the free oatmeal raisin cookies at the lunch seminar towards my daily
caloric intake.) And I guess it was a
long way down, but I don’t really remember, because I was too busy focusing on
the fact that my heart stopped the millisecond that I hit the water. Jumping off bridge – not a problem – landing
in 100 ft deep snow melt – huge problem.
Though it either effectively iced my aching knees, or temporarily shocks
my system into worrying about other things.
So how to follow that up the next day? Well, the tour company offered half-day “Intro to Rock Climbing” lessons. The class was taught by a guy named “Boogie,” who was closer to my father’s age than mine, had a steel gray crew cut and not an ounce of fat on him, and was clearly at least partially descended from the mythical wood sprites and faeries, because he was small enough that he and I wore the same size shoe. I didn’t fall off the mountain – mainly thanks to ropes and Boogie. Boogie’s assessment is that I had some natural ability, but that I needed to do more push-ups. This coming from a guy that probably does sets of 10 in between mouthfuls of his morning muesli.
Then it was a bit more hiking on the afternoon, and an
evening at the annual Bled Festival, which featured a Rolling Stones cover
band, sausage made from every sort of woodland creature (aren’t black bears
endangered?), and capped off by thousands of candles being floated in eggshells
on Bled Lake (which looks incredible and photographs like crap).
And now I am on a train back to Munich and then back to the
really real world of Washington DC.
Every time the train doors open I take huge gulps of Alpine air, as I
have heard reports that the weather in DC has been a bit “sunny side of hell”
lately…
