One night in a prison cell in Slovenia

Well, we've been back in London for almost 2 weeks now. We spent 10 glorious days soaking up the history of old walled cities and lazing on luxurious beaches on mediterranean islands in Slovenia and Croatia. Now we're back to the "real world" of the 9 to 5 (charming) where I've got over a week's worth of stuff to catch up on, and where Tam's been busy hitting the pavements and cyber-pavements seeking a new job. Enough of that for now, here's what we got up to...

First stop was to Ljubljana ('loo-blee-arna'), the capital of Slovenia, frequently described as "the new Prague, without all the tourists". Ljubljana is definitely beautiful and Slovenia would be one of the places in Europe I would consider moving to. Lush and green with amazingly picturesque vistas, mountains, lakes, castles and clean fresh air. The locals appear to be very outdoors-y and active, and a lot of things are less expensive than London (which is always a good thing).

This is the pretty Frančiškanska Cerkev Marijinega Oznanjanja (Franciscan Church of the Annunciation) on the Prešernov Trg (Square) with the cool little tourist train (for those of us who are too weary to walk) that takes you up the hill to the Castle.


We arrived in the early afternoon and were all set for a cheap feast on fresh seafood but we got barred from the Lonely Planet recommended restaurant under the Tromostovje (Triple Bridge) near the Square as they were (almost) closing, so we popped into another local favourite for some Slovenian cuisine.

We had the exquisite garlic squid...


And Tam thought we should try this 'interesting' Slovenian Krvavica sausage with cabbage and turnips - which unfortunately happened to turn out to be black pudding (gross!)


Slovenia has a healthy fascination with dragons (well, doesn't everyone? Dragons are cool). And the green dragon is symbol of Ljubljana. This is one of the dragons on the Zmajski most (Dragon Bridge).


This is the Rotovž (Town Hall) with the (currently under refurbishment) Robba Fountain encased in perspex on its left.


We strolled inside the Town Hall building (like we owned the place cos we weren't sure if we needed to pay or whatever)...


And we found some cool and weird art exhibitions.


A very cool piece of art.


Up the Ljubljanica River.


The next day we joined a small tour group for a day trip to Slovenia's number one tourist destination, Bled (about 54km north of Ljubljana), to visit Bled Castle (on top of a 100m high cliff - no need for moats here!) and the blue blue lake with the tiny island of Blejski Otok which pretty much only has a church on it. The extreme blue-ness of the lake is due to the funky algae there.








After visiting the castle, our tour guide decided to take us for a walk through the Vintgar Gorge.


A dragon's head peeking out of the Radovna River.


The water is so clear you can even see the fishies!


And then we went back to Lake Bled for a quick rest and some sustinence.


This is the famous Bled Kremna rezina (cream cake) - Mmm tasty.


Afterwards, she drove us to a small village where we sampled some traditional Slovenian food, including kaša or buckwheat groats and some kind of curdled milk. We also tasted some delicious complementary home-made Blueberry schnapps.


After our 'snack' (and feeling pretty much full) we set off for Bohinj where our tour guide had a nap and we went wading through Lake Bohinj.


A mixed grill plate from the Raca (Duck) on Lake Bohinj. No, that's not poo poo on my plate. That's Čevapčiči, a Slovenian delicacy similar to shish kebab that you eat with chopped raw onions and that red sauce. Nice :)


And Tam had the freshest of trouts.


After "lunch" it started to rain heavily. And it was time to head home to our hostel back in Ljubljana, just out of town where we watched some Italian diving and Zinedine Zidane headbutt an Italian man on TV.

The next day we planned another excursion to the Postojna jama (Caves, 50kn south of Ljubljana), a huge underground network of caves. We had to catch a little train to through the tunnels to get inside and deep into the caves where there are heaps of stalacmites and stalactites. Which is which again?

"Stalactite: Hold on tight! Stalagmite: Might poke you in the ass" - Tenacious D









Oh, and the bit about the prison cell? Well, we stayed in our little hostel outside of town for the first two nights and then we spent our last night in Metelkova near the train station in a "cell" at Celica Hostel, a former military prison.

Well, it's been a year...

Hiya,
It's now been a year since the London bombings (I was totally anxious on the tube this morning), which means we've been here almost a whole year now. On Sunday, it would be our one-year anniversary of being in London. How quick has that gone?!

So, to celebrate, we're getting outta this place. Tomorrow, we get up at 4am to fly out to Slovenia, where we'll spend 3 days before catching the train to Croatia to backpack around a little bit, laze on some islands and just disconnect from the world (I know, how will I cope without internet!?). We'll be back in about ten days, so we'll catch up with y'all then.

In keeping with our run of good luck thus far (we're only a quarter of the way through our two cases of Nastro Peroni Azzurro), tonight we went to the Tower of London Music Festival. I won tickets (again - £55 worth in fact, that's about AU$135!) to see Mr Randy Newman and some dude who calls himself Dr John. We were really there for Randy, who is utterly amazing and incredibly funny and insightful. If the name rings a bell, but you're not sure who he is, he's the guy who's been singing songs on the opening title sequences of lots of movies (e.g. Toy Story, Meet The Parents, Meet The Fockers, the theme for the Monk TV series, Monsters Inc).

Here's some quick pics.

The Tower of London - (no Tina, we still haven't been inside yet), the concert area is just outside...






"Are you ready to rock!?" - spot anyone under 40?


Randy! (sorry about the poor quality blurry pictures... i guess i was really excited!)


Dr John...


...and band


Due to our early wake-up and as we still have to pack, we left after Randy's set and a couple of songs into Dr John's. It was a mostly older crowd. Quite different to what we're used to, but still was enjoyable.

What's even more British than curry?

(aka Strawberries & Cream at Wimbledon)





I'm writing this in the middle of a five-day heatwave. The mercury has been coming up to 30 degrees! We even went and bought a cheap fan yesterday from Argos! On Saturday we woke up early (well, for a Saturday anyway) and left the house at 8am to catch the tube to Southfields to join the queues of thousands of people to buy tickets to get in and watch the tennis at Wimbledon. The Wimbledon Championships Tournament lasts for a fortnight and this Saturday was known as the "Middle Saturday" (it being the Saturday right in the middle of the tournament). It's early enough in the tournament for you to catch some stars and up-and-coming stars on courts other than "Centre Court" or "Court no. 1". Its also the one where thousands camp out the night before in an attempt to get in.

Thinking positively, we saw England still being in the World Cup (we're talking soccer/football now) as a good thing (since we're over here and keep up the excitement vibe).

This is how the England captain, David Beckham, keeps team spirit and morale up.


Even better for us was that they had a game scheduled for Saturday as well and we had our hot little fingers crossed that most people would be more interested in watching the soccer/football than the tennis (they DO call it football here... my boss didn't even know what I was talking about when I asked her about "soccer" - Soccer? what's that?). We now know that England has also been bundled out of the Coupe du Monde by a plucky Portugal side and now things will probably go back to normal here. [Tam just mentioned now that if we thought about it more we could have reasoned that more people may have turned up as they would have been thinking along the same lines as us!]

Anyway, hoping that the World Cup would draw away a major slice of the crowd, we made our way to Southfields (the closest tube station) to join the end of the extremely long line to try and buy tickets. I will be a bit boring here so feel free to skip over to the photos, but to anyone who's thinking of going to Wimbledon one day, you may find this helpful...






Tickets are available for purchase by ballot at the start of the year. We didn't know this so we thought our chances of going were screwed. Then we found out you can buy tickets on the day. They hold 500 tickets for each of Courts no. 1 and 2, and Centre Court, and also 6000 Ground Admission tickets (which allow you pretty much anywhere except Centre Court or Court 1, and only to the standing area on Court 2). These are sold at 10:30am each morning (games start at 11 or 12) from Gate 3 and they have two queues (one from the south near Wimbledon tube station and one from the north near Southfields tube station). And yes, people do camp out the night before. It's a crazy system, but it seems to work. We arrived about 9:30ish and joined the end of the queue, which was actually about the fifth queue. We received a booklet about the queueing and ticketing system and also a queue card announcing that we were numbers 4728 and 4729 in the queue. We tried to do the math and had our toes crossed that the queue on the southside was shorter than ours.

LONG story short, we made it to the turnstiles at Gate 3 (cash only) and bought Ground Admission tickets (£17) made it in just before noon and most matches had begun. We knew that Lleyton "C'mon Balboa" Hewitt was playing on Court 2 after the first match so we tried to get into the "Free Standing" area.

We also knew that the other "stars" playing that day included Andre Agassi, Andy Murray, Andy Roddick, Marcos Baghdatis, Amelie Mauresmo, Sebastien Grosjean, Rafael Nadal, Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams, and Martina Navratilova.


Court 2 was already packed with other keen Aussies (still in their Socceroos supporter gear) and the 'one-in one-out' queue to get in was way too long) so this wasn't an option. We'd noticed that almost everyone who was in the back row of seats on Court 3 (adjacent to Court 2) were standing on their seats and could get a good view of the action on Court 2. So we lined up for Court 3 and managed to get in. We got as far as the third row near the back, but everyone else had the same idea and we had no chance of watching any of Lleyton's game. So, we contented ourselves with watching the action on Court 3, which was a Women's Singles match between Shaney Perry from the USA and Sybille Bammer from Austria.



Miss Bammer


Miss Perry (the winner)


After this match finished we looked for any opportunity to catch a seat up on the back row, but those guys were in it for the long haul. We settled in watching some of the next match between Flavia Pennetta from Italy (and who did not dive) and Shuai Peng from China (who fell over a bit and had a few time-outs) before hunger and thirst took over and we had to go and find some food and re-hydrate ourselves.

Miss Pennetta (the winner)


Miss Peng (after falling down)


"I'm alright. I can play. It's just a flesh wound."


We also spied Andy Roddick making use of a free court to warm up for his match against local boy Andy Murray on Centre Court.





"Why does everyone always ask me to sign my name as Stifler?"


After a bit of sustenance we resigned ourselves to the fact we would not catch any of Lleyton's match. We could hear the spontaneous singing of "Waltzing Matilda" though. But we thought we may stand a chance in getting into the Free Standing area of Court 2 for the Women's Single match between Venus Williams and Jelena Jankovic from Serbia and Montenegro straight after his. So off we went to join the queue. At Wimbledon, there is a fair amount of queueing. The stewards were even ordering people NOT to join a long queue as "This queue is CLOSED", and then going as far as to say that he didn't want any SECONDARY queues forming of people forming another queue to join the end of the first queue. Barmy? Yes indeed.

We did manage to catch a glimpse of Lleyton at the end of his win against Olivier Rochus from Belgium.


Our luck had returned and we did manage to get up on Court 2 in the Free Standing area, and after a bit had managed to get some decent views of the Venus match. And yes, there is a LOT of grunting in women's matches. It was a terrific fight and we even had some Mexican Waves going around! Shockingly, last year's champ won an early flight home (as did compatriots Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick)! Who knew we'd get to see one of the upsets of the tournaments!

Jelena the champion-killer


Displaying her unbeatable crouching tiger attack




Venus' "Blanka" electric shock serve




I can't think of anything funny for this one. But Venus does look really fun here...


Venus wins a point! "Serena can have Hollywood, THIS is what I'm talkin' 'bout!"


Venus' mighty serve


"Whoa, I know kung fu"




Shock Horror! Venus in beaten!


Our sources (the Wimbledon website in fact) had indicated that veteran Martina Navratilova would be playing in a Mixed Doubles match after the Venus game, so we secured spots at the front of the area. We then realised that they'd amended the schedule of play and that she was no longer playing on Court 2. We spied a Mixed Doubles match-up on Court 7 featuring Aussies Alicia Molik and Wayne Arthurs.


So, we left Court 2 and hurriedly made our way over to get some good seats to catch some Aussies play.

Go Australia!


Alicia Molik


"Old Man" Wayne "I've Still Got It" Arthurs


They were playing a Czech team (go the Praha Drinking Team!) of Lukas Dlouhy and Eva Birnerova. After word had gotten around, Aussies from all over the place crammed in to give their support. We started off good, and the crowd gave a very overwhelming Aussie atmosphere, but then Wayne and Alicia seemed to get a bit casual and complacent.

Team Czech. Seemed to enjoy just being out on the court. High-fiving each other even when it appeared they would be losing.


This guy was really funny. He played up to the Aussie crowd and won us all over.


The beginning of the end... The ball was IN.


This was probably also to do with the efforts of the Aussie crowd:
"Not bad for an old man Wayne" (after Wayne aced his way through one game)
"Bring home the trophy guys"
"Bowling Wayne" (after Wayne threw a ball down the court to a ballboy)
"C'Mon!"
"Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!"

Our strong service game




We won the first set convincingly, but then gave the Czech's a bit too much of a chance in the second set (which they won on tie break), and then we fell off the horse in the third and final set. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie...

Man of the Match


That was our last match of the day. The sun was still shining at 9:30pm. It had been a very long day. We didn't get to see any superstar Mens' Singles matches, but we did manage to catch some exciting games with some famous tennis stars, witness some upsets, cheer for Australia, and have strawberries and cream. How British.



Here are some action snaps of the court officials and ball boys and girls.

Watching the line with intense concentration


"The ball was GOOD"


"I've only got one ball..."


"I have no balls..."


"That guy is like so hot *drool*" (honestly, every change of sides this ball girl kept checking the Czech guy out - you could see her eyes always on Lukas)