Seeking the Sun in Slovenia – CopperLioness Roams

Morning in Mainbernheim

CopperLioness — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:26:40 +0000

Woke up and had the van ready to go by 9, without really rushing, and with packing things up in their stuff sacks since this was our last morning, a time we’d never achieve in a tent. Then our breakfast, one of the kids’ favourite: yoghurt and granola (crunchy muesli for the Europeans): Then, as we’d promised Sprocket, we got a bit of time in at the playground outside the medieval city walls: Yes, as DutchBoy read there, and as...

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Run through Regensburg

CopperLioness — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:50:19 +0000

We woke up in rainy Lienz at another almost abandoned parking lot by a athletic facility only open by appointment, another find from our guidebook (though, having lent the non-Germany volume of the guidebook to our new friends since we only needed it one more night, I was going by my notes – I’d noted down only the GPS coordinates, which turned out to be wrong and led us down a dirt road to nowhere in the rain – I’ll...

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‘Pelunking in Postojna

CopperLioness — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 07:42:42 +0000

OK, that’s stretching the alliteration thing a bit (which I have to admit started quite by accident in Strasbourg), but spelunking in the longest cave in the world is the main reason people, millions upon millions of them (34 million since 1817 as a matter of fact), come to Postojna. Oh, and there’s a castle, but we didn’t go there. I would like to get there when they have their medieval days, with jousting and all, but for this trip...

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Lazy in Ljubliana

CopperLioness — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:55:35 +0000

I forgot to say we did find the sun in Slovenia, at the campsite in Bled: This was Sprocket’s favourite facility, it had kid sized toilets as well, and he used it often and requested it by name – the joys of a toilet trained toddler. The inside also had suns: (I forgot to take pictures, so went surfing online, you don’t want to know for how long, until I found those pics here). But the sun took a vacation...

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Replete in Radovljica

CopperLioness — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:49:00 +0000

In one of the many tourist brochures we got in Bled, we saw a description of a nearby town that had a cool medieval centre. Suckers for such things, we thought we’d make a quick stop there on our way to Ljubljana. Of course, it didn’t turn out that way. It did have a cute medieval centre, at least one street of it – this is pretty much it: So I did as I normally do, and asked in the...

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Beautiful Bled

CopperLioness — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:41:07 +0000

Leaving Oberaudorf, we took a bit of a detour to avoid a traffic jam, and were treated to another random castle. OK, it probably isn’t random, it probably has good geographical and political reasons for being there, but we didn’t stop to find out: Then back into Austria for the straight shot to Slovenia. The kids fell asleep, tired out by their morning on the mountain, but when Sprockette woke up she wasn’t happy. That is, until we went off...

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Overnight in Oberaudorf

CopperLioness — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 09:48:01 +0000

There are two kinds of free campsites in the guide. Really free, and free overnight parking if you buy dinner in their restaurant. Austria doesn’t have either kind, but Germany is littered with both. We decided to try the second kind, in a little place called Oberaudorf, which is in Germany, in the little corner surrounded by Austria (near Munich and Salsburg). It turned out to be a good choice. The beer was local and good: And the food was...

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Lunch in Liechtenstein

CopperLioness — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 21:46:40 +0000

Many years ago, my parents hitchhiked around Europe with me and my sister, then almost 3 and less than 1. They hadn’t planned on hitchhiking – they bought a car in Amsterdam and planned to drive to visit my grandparents during my grandfather’s sabbatical in Nice. But the car broke down soon after they bought it, and being the early 70s, hitchhiking was the next best thing. At the time, my sister and I shared a passport and my father...

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Free in Freiburg

CopperLioness — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 09:29:01 +0000

Feeling somewhat trepidatious, we left the dealer in Strasbourg. We went to a discount electronics store we’d spotted and then while waiting for them to come back from their two hour lunch, we again bought good bread from (another) Lidl, and threw in a car dustbuster for good measure. Man these Lidls and their random junk aisles can suck you in. While there DutchBoy also called the VW dealers in Freiburg, and luckily enough, one of them had the part....

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Stuck in Strasbourg

CopperLioness — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:12:39 +0000

I really should know better. Years of travelling should have taught me not to be so effusive in my gratitude for something, praising the GPS twice in 24 hours of all things. That just attracts the trickster god (of whatever pantheon), who clearly is behind my dropping of said item as I tried to pass it behind myself and into my purse, and its subsequent transformation into a brick. Not even a whimper as it died. Now, neither DutchBoy nor...

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