Excuse me as I stir this with my Slovenian Spoon!

Monday we had a meeting with Doctors without Borders or Medcens Sans Frontier (MSF) and of course class. Tuesday was mostly spent reading and a trip to the United Nations Library for some fun and enjoyment-the library has no wireless so you have to use desktop computers which of course have "easy to use" European keyboards. Wednesday was more reading and planning for papers-which was made especially easy by the fact that library resources despite being all online were not working remotely. Thursday morning Grace and I went to the train station to get our tickets for the weekend. Then we rushed back to the Cite to pack and book a hostel. We visited the ICRC (The Red Cross) which mostly involved a few select individuals arguing animatedly about whether or not terrorist are protected under the Geneva convention. Grace and I had to duck out early (although really it was on time and everyone else stayed late) to catch our 5:45 train to... LJUBLJANA (Loo-blee-ah-nah). We were on a quick train to Zurich and then transfered to a night train to Ljubljana, Slovenia. However, unlike previous night trains that had had at least reclining seats or something this was a regular train car with regular seats, luckily we had 4 seats to ourselves and I brought my sleep sack so I made myself at home in front of two very large eastern european men and dozed off. Going to Slovenia we were expecting something very baron, gray, run down and all together scary-but something new.

We arrived in Ljubljana at about 8:00 o'clock in the morning and checked into our hostel-which we were luckily able to get into right away. Our room was an 8 person dorm (though we were only sharing with 2 Fins who were there for job training?) and very spacious and clean. We left the hostel and made our way to the center of town where we found a place to sit down and have breakfast-toast (toasted ham and cheese sandwich) and a cappuccino. Our whole bill was 5.40 euro-that's together. Then we went to the tourist office to ask what the main attractions of Ljubljana were (since I very smartly forgot my guide book) We were given a nice little free booklet of the main attractions of Ljubljana as well as day trips etc. So we started visiting the famous sights. We started with a really cute outdoor market of mostly food and weird clothes. Then the castle-we rode a funicular up the hill-very cheap-and got to the castle, it was FREEEEEEEE! We only paid a small amount to get to the top of the watch tower. The castle was interesting, it had an art exhibit. Then we funiclared down to see the other famous Ljubljanan sights. There were lots of churches, the town hall (with an art piece of half circles and pyramids representing the breasts and uteri of women...), a library, and a dragon bridge. Everything was really cute and quaint. After we walked around everything we got some lunch. The woman told us the specials were pumpkin soup and pumpkin risotto-which we ordered and turned out to be zucchini. Again amazingly affordable. After lunch we took a break from the cultural stuff to do some shopping for Grace's birthday.

We stopped back at the hostel to shower and then went to dinner. We ended up going to a "Mexican Fusion" restaurant-which was actually just Mexican, I had a chicken burrito and Tequila disguised as a Margarita and a maple syrup crepe for dessert. After dinner we were strolling down the street by the river that had all the bars on it and it was very lively and everyone was outside drinking. Then, accidentally we walked by this bar Grace had found on the internet before we left that had buy one get two drinks and a "mystery bathroom" that was supposed to be difficult to find so we went in. The drinks were all inappropriately and sexually named so we of course proceeded to order the most offensive ones we could find. The bar was decorated with skeletons and was very crowded-it had a very cool vibe to it. Being tired from our night train we just went home afterward and passed out.

The next morning we woke up as late as we could to still get our free breakfast-cereal, bread, nutella, and milk that wasn't refrigerated. As they only had instant coffee we decided to wait and spring the one euro for the cappuccino later. After breakfast we spent some time on the computer looking up day trips and settled on one to a cave. We had some time before our train left so we got our cappuccinos and then revisited the outdoor market which had many more exciting booths as it was now a weekend. We got ourselves some lovely souvenirs (how many times are you in Slovenia??) including a free wooden spoon that was being handed out to promote a Slovenian cooking company and the cinema-why both with a wooden spoon? Your guess is as good as mine. Then we walked back to the main square. We heard some music so we walked over to see what was going on and it was men in wet suits jumping off one of the bridges into the river, on the same bridge were some people in old fashioned clothing dancing. The men made quite a splash (ahahhahahahhaha) and it was a very fun lively environment. We only left because we had to catch our train to the cave. When we got to the train station we went to tourist information to try and figure out how to get from the train station to the caves. We asked the man working there and he joked with us that it was too far to walk (though we didn't pick up on his sarcasm). We got on the train and I put my feet up. Then, one of the conductors passed by and goes you can't put your shoes on the seat, that's one hundred euro. I just looked at him with a blank face. And he asked, "do you do that in your country?" I responded truthfully-yes. Then he goes that's one hundred euros-now I have to call the police. And then he walked away. My heart was beating fairly quickly at this point but the police never showed up.

We got to the town-Postojna, where the caves were and walked toward where the signs were pointing-we only got slightly confused but found them fairly easily. We bought our tickets to our tour and since we had some time, we enjoyed a pre spelunking beer. Once you enter the cave you get on a little train that goes much faster than one would expect and enter deep into the middle of the cave (that's what she said). A tour guide takes you through pointing out the various kinds of Stalagmites, and Stalactites which are EVERYWHERE it was SO cool-the cave was over 10,000 years old and everything was so amazing. After the tour we took the little train back to the exit and were both very pleased with our day trip decision. We returned to Ljubljana and had Kebab for dinner, and went back to the hostel to shower and then to go explore as much of the nightlife as two girls in Slovenia can. When we got to the city center we heard loud music and we went to check it out. It turned out to be a giant free concert. We walked over and went to listen for a little bit. As we were leaving to go find some dessert a man called out to us, "Did you get to Postojna?" we were confused and I'm sure our looks showed it-so he repeated, "Did you get to Postojna?" still confused he tried again-"the caves?" It was the man from tourist information earlier! We told him we did and went on our way with a new understanding of how few tourists must frequent Ljubljana. We bought some nutella crepes off the street and went back to the skeleton bar for some more inappropriately titled fun. Afterward we went back to the concert where a man was playing some kind of turtle shell looking instrument and another a flute. We watched for a while intrigued by the foreignness of the instruments (and the significantly smaller crowd) and then headed back to our hostel.

We woke up early the next morning to begin our twelve hour journey back to Geneva. We got from Ljubljana to Austria fine (I had a morning Kebab for breakfast) and then due to construction-and maybe the giant Icelandic ash cloud we were about 20 minutes late getting into Salzburg-we arrived about 3 minutes after our train was supposed to have left so we ran to the departures board and luckily it was running late as well and thus we didn't miss it! A long train from Salzburg to Zurich-still late, and then our sprint home from Zurich to Geneva, a quick ride on bus 3 and we were back in the cite 13 hours later in time to do laundry and have a very late dinner while ringing in Grace's 21st birthday.

Monday morning Grace had a meeting with our internship coordinator so Melissa and I surprised her with her Starbucks drink of choice. Then we threw Grace a small champagne brunch with mimosas and fruit and little cakes while presenting her with an array of "Hello Kitty" gifts. A fairly strung out visit to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and class and then we had our class party at Professor Shain's apartment. We had raclette, chicken and an amazing birthday cake for Grace. We played never have I ever and stayed for a couple hours-how one poor professor and his wife managed to host 17 college students in one small apartment I'll never know but it was very, very nice of them. Tuesday more class and a long nap and now we are all preparing for our upcoming Eastern Trip-which means Mom and Dad-I will not be able to post pictures for about 2 weeks so hear me now that is why-I'm not bringing my computer!

Highlight: Visiting somewhere completely new and learning that it wasn't a scary place but actually really cool and cute and safe and one of my favorite cities.

Lowlight: Not have Melissa along as she was off in Paris being cultural and sophisticated-kind of like missing my right arm and left leg.