˝You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted.  But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out?  Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...˝


Well, fearless readers, it has now been about 2 weeks since that fateful night on the train.  When last we wrote, Will and I were gung-ho about hiking in Slovenia.  We hopped on a train with only the shoes on our feet and our lives in our packs and found ourselves in Ljubjlana, the capital of Slovenia.  This is when we realized that we know absolutely nothing about Slovenia.


Slovenia is a beautiful country.  Wonderful people; more mountains, trees, and crystal-clear lakes than you could ever want.  Slovenia is also extremely expensive when you are on a dirtbag cycle-tourists budget  (and yes, i do know there should be a possessive apostrophe right there, but these keyboards are a bit weird and I have not yet managed to find that particular punctuation mark).  The real killer for us?  You cannot camp in Europe.  Real camping, that is-- they have plenty of huge compounds with showers and restaurants and live music in the evening, with hundreds of your fellow travelers near and dear to your tent.


What followed was what I call our ˝sadding˝ period.  We went for a few day hikes, but we couldnt afford to stay in the mountain huts that were required for doing anything longer.  Essentially, we sat around and felt sorry for ourselves while we tried to figure out plan C.  We were in the waiting place... everything we thought of was impractical or expensive or just not possible.  We had no idea what to do, where to go, or how to stop the trip from continuing to unravel around us.


I know... poor, sad, travelers...


But we have recently found a wonderful new thing... maybe you have heard of it; a little thing called couchsurfing.  We met a wonderful Slovenian named Polona who took us in for a few days and took us hiking.  We are headed up to Italy tomorrow to stay with another woman up in Trento.  We are currently in Koper, on the coast of Slovenia.  We have now spent more time in Slovenia than any other country.  We are going swimming in the sea, hiking in the hills, and generally just running amok and having an actual vacation.  Will is trying to improve my swimming skills (not an easy task).  We found a dorm that rents to tourists for super cheap, so we came for an afternoon and decided to stay for four days.  


Next, we head to Trento.  After that, we are actually not sure.  We have been talking about possibly moving our flight up a week or two-- with what we are spending here since we cannot camp, we think it may actually save us money in the long run.  That, and we are tired.  We are, just a little bit, ready to head home.  But dont quote me on that-- we still need to make the change.

So, in sum:  We are still in Slovenia.  We have not hiked the Alps.  We have had a good time at the beach, and plan on continuing to do so until we head up north to enjoy some delcious Italian food.  After that... well, we will see.