Birthday in Bled

Slovenia really is a beautiful little country.  We've moved on from Ljubljana to Lake Bled. Currently between tourist seasons, it's a sleepy little town on a beautiful lake with a hillside castle and a church on an island.

See church on said island, the only island in Slovenia.  This is the lakeside view. We're hoping to row out to the island today. 

Lake Bled selfie

Note the hillside castle now in view on the left

The foliage here, though wet, is beautiful

We hiked up to the hillside castle

And sampled the "creme schnitte", or Bled cream cake for Jim's birthday, but they didn't have candles. 

So with some help from our new hostel friends, we managed some surprise candles and ice cream from the grocery store.  Happy Birthday Jim!

I feel sLOVEnia

We are very much enjoying in our time in Slovenia, an incredibly beautiful, charming, and easy to navigate little country. Here are some highlights from the capital,  Ljubljana:

The Baroque ceiling fresco in St. Nicholas cathedral

The new friends we made on our walking tour. Shout out to Simon and Emily on their silk road trek, check out their blog here: arcadiagardendesign.co.uk/blog.php

The St. Martin's day festival on the Triple Bridge. We lucked into this one as it was supposed to be the day we arrived, and we would have missed out, had it not been rained out. The rain date made it delightfully accessible to us. St. Martin's day is the celebration of grape juice turning into wine, and is a large wine tasting and cultural event. Slovenian wine is excellent.

See the cultural element, local folk dancing

The Dragon Bridge. Dragons are the symbol of Ljubljana.  It is rumored that Jason and the Argonauts slayed one here, way back in the day. And of course, patron saint of Ljubljana is St. George the dragon slayer.

View of the castle overlooking the city from atop the Skyscraper terrace. We're not totally sure why it's  called the skyscraper seeing as its only 12 stories tall, and is definitely not the tallest building in the city. Regardless, the view is pretty excellent.

Our dragons at night selfie

A note on some Slovenian food:

Berek: A sort of Philo dough snake filled with either spinach, meat, or "pizza". Heavy, cheap, and tasty.

Horse burger: More a curiosity than a culinary delight. A distinct taste, and a little rubbery.  Worth a try, but not something we'll be craving a taste of later.

Prekmurska layer cake. There's no cake, just to be clear, just layers of soft philo, cinnamon apples, walnut butter, poppy seeds and sweet cheese. Dense, and tasty, but you only need a piece half this size to be satisfied.

Also, we're very excited about the videos we've been receiving. The competition is getting stiff. Today is Jim's birthday and we intend to celebrate with a castle hike and some Bled cream cake, and continued video viewing. Thanks for all the love from abroad!

Live Sports Abroad Part III: Women's European Handball Federation Champions League

Continuing our series, we went to a women's handball match in Ljubljana, Slovenia. This was fun because it's a sport you really don't see in the States.  You may catch a game or two during the Summer Olympics, but that's it.  Let's get to the questions.

Seriously, Jim, are you trying to go to the most random sporting events you can find?

Well, maybe.  I'm equal opportunity on sporting events of all kinds.  Weird and mainstream.  Basically whatever we can go to that has a cheap ticket.

So, what the heck is handball?

The best way I can describe it is sort of like a cross between lacrosse and basketball.  I don't have a full grasp of the rules, but basically teams pass a ball between players and try to throw it into the goal.  Contact usually resulted in a whistle and play being reset for the team with the ball.  I believe there are rules about how much you can travel with the ball.  Nobody seemed to get called for anything like travelling, but I'm pretty sure it exists.  There are two 30 minutes halves with not much stoppage, so the game moves quickly.  Here's some shots of the action:

OK, who was playing?

First a quick word on the league.  It is a yearly tournament comprising of the respective national championship winners of the top European countries in handball.  We saw the Slovenian national champs, RK Krim Mercator from Ljubljana take on the Russian champs, Dinamo-Sinara from Volgograd.  Krim has won the national championship in Slovenia every single year since the 1994-95 season.  The league has only existed since 1991 when Slovenia gained their independence from Yugoslavia.  So, they are 20 for 23 in national titles, but have won the Champions League only twice.  Still, they are basically a Slovenian handball dynasty.

How was the game?

It was really entertaining.  It's pretty fast paced and it was close throughout.  Going low seemed to be the usual strategy for scoring goals.  It appears you can bounce the ball off the floor into the goal.  There is an area around the goalie you can't touch with your feet, but you can jump over it and shoot so there are lots of entertaining jump shots.  Krim had the lead by a point or two for most of the match but Dinamo-Sinara tied it up around halfway through the second half and ended up winning 26-24.  The whole thing was over in a brisk hour and 25 minutes.

Mascots?

Nope.

Any good Jumbotron action?

There was one, but it just showed pictures and videos of the team and random ads.

Anything good at halftime?

Not much, some kids played a mini game of handball for a bit.

How was the crowd?

Small, for an arena that can hold over 12,000, but Krim did have a modest fan section that was into it complete with drums and noisemakers.

What were the concessions like in a Slovenian arena?

For this, they were basically non-existent.  Two stands open selling drinks and no merchandise whatsoever, but here's a giant Krim shirt that was in the stands:

Anything strange worth mentioning?

The referees were twins.  At least I'm reasonably sure that they were.  The following pictures are two different people:

What's part IV going to be?

I have no idea, but if I can find something you'll hear about it.

Memories of Budapest

Besides eating ( Lángos,  Turtlenecks, Goulash, Foie gras, pálinka, fried cheese, chicken paprikás, porkolt, etc...) and staying in interesting apartments, here are a few of the other things we did in our week in Budapest.

Went for a walking tour and crossed from Pest into Buda via the Chain Bridge

Visited Markt hall for some Lángos,  the best mulled wine we had in Hungary, and souvineirs

Soaked in the Szechenyi Baths warmed by natural hot springs for well over 4 hours.

Went to the ballet at the National Theater. Copellia, one of the stranger plots for a ballet.

Pedaled Bubo around Margaret's Island

Walked along the magnificent facade of Parliament

Climbed to the top of the Citadel in the Buda hills

Admired the view of Pest and the mighty Danube

Made a grumpy face

Admired the hike up to the Citadel

Got on a train to Vienna for a 36 hr layover before heading to Ljubljana

Apartments in Budapest

Jim couldn't resist the opportunity to book us the "Retro" apartment in Budapest. Retro meaning circa 1960. Here's a peak.:

This is our tub couch in the kitchen. The kitchen also supplied GDR cups and plates.

Fun family photos.  Love this boy's stockings.

The living room. Note the giant stereo on the right. Pretty cool, except it didn't work. Also note the classic wallpaper and upholstery. 

A birthday request

So soon, on November 13th and 18th respectively, Jim and I will be celebrating our birthdays. He will be 31, and I will be the big 30.

Since if I were home, there would be booze, food, a waffle show and general hosting merriment,  and you would all be invited, but we're not home and we can't see your warm smiling faces,  I would like to make a request for a possible substitute.

I miss you, so send me a video with some birthday love, and be sure to show off your new apartment,  latest baking endeavor recent crafting find, favorite new book, loved old spots that remind you of us ( bonus points for a video from the BU pub), adorable cats, new offices, TV clips, etc....

Send via email,  YouTube link or Skype message by November 18th  and be sure to attach your current mailing address, and as incentive, we will try to find the most ridiculous post card and send it to you.

Missing you,
Christiana and Jim

Eger and the Valley of the Beautiful Women

Eger was a really cool day trip we took.  It's a two hour train ride from Budapest into Northern Hungary.   Above you see the minaret that is the northernmost such minaret left from the Ottoman Empire built when the Turks invaded back in the late 1500's.  A minaret is a narrow tower often connected to a mosque.  I suspect we'll see more once we make it to Turkey.  It is crazy narrow inside with steep steps that you can climb up.  I thought parts of the belfry in Bruges were narrow, but this was ridiculous.  Here I am at the top of the steps:

At the top, you have a great view of Eger Castle where the locals actually successfully defended the town from the Turks in 1552 despite being outnumbered by about 20 to 1.

This is a point of pride and the date is found on a lot of the souvenirs.  Of course, they were attacked again and defeated in 1596 (leading to the building of the minaret), but that's beside the point.  We played cribbage inside the castle walls and had a pretty sweet view there as well.

Now, my last post talked a bit about food here but the best tasting thing we've had in Hungary is the red wine.  In Eger there is a section of town about a 20 minute walk from the center called Szépasszony-völgy, or in English, the Valley of the Beautiful Women.  The signs pointing you in that direction helpfully call it Nice Woman Valley which I enjoyed.

I have no idea why it's called this (besides the fact that my wife was there) because it is a horseshoe shaped street of wine cellars that have all types of wine.  There are over 40 so you kind of just pick one that looks good and ask for whatever suits your mood.  It's kind of like a pub crawl except with wine and they are all right next to each other.  It would be a really fun place to go to on a summer night with a group of friends.  You can enjoy glasses at the cellar or buy the typical bottle, but you can also get big plastic jugs.  I heard you can just ask them to fill up whatever bottle you have with you but the one I asked about that said no.

The most famous type of wine from this region is a red wine called bikavér or bull's blood.  The story behind the name goes back to the aforementioned defense of Eger in 1552 where the Turks saw the red, wine stained beards of the locals and believed they were drinking bull's blood for strength.  It's really good and we particularly liked the one from cellar 45 which you can see Chrissy enjoying below.