Wednesday, June 23, 2004
In the Zone
Time is a very strange thing, especially when its been rolled up and used to bash you over the head. Sorry about the lack of apostrophes: Im using a Slovenian keyboard and I cant figure out how to make them happen. Some of you will realise that this is very frustrating for me... how sad.
I cant decide whether I was actually in Singapore this morning or not. If I was, this has been an incredibly long day... Ive flown from Singapore to Frankfurt, to Graz (Austria) and taken a bus across the border to Slovenia, where I am now, in a town called Maribor. In all that, I only had about four hours sleep, bringing my grand sleep total to 10 hours since I left Auckland on Sunday.
I have been learning some Slovenian, with the help of Amelias guide book and the cleaning lady on our wing of the University hostel, who speaks no English. Zdravo is hello, adio is goodbye (not sure of spelling), and hvala is thank you. Drek is a swear word (of course, you always learn at least one of those on your first day in a strange country).
The Austrian countryside blends straight into the Slovenian - they both look very similar, scatters of houses all over the place so that it is semi-rural for mile after mile, not suburbs at all, and not rural at all either because the houses neighbour each other too nearly. Maribor itself is BEAUTIFUL. Most of the buildings and the roads look very old, and the city (pop. 96,000) have very few tourists, so it feels very natural and laid-back and under-commercialised (thank goodness). The entire town centre is basically pedestrian, a flow of wide boulevards, alleys, streets and squares without a car in sight; just a few bicycles. Most of the buildings have reddy tiled rooves (is my English imploding?). There are a number of huge and beautiful churches, with amazing altars, and towers you can climb for free, offering a wide view of the rooftops, replete with domes and spires and statues on pillars (on a small scale).
Ahhhhh! I miss my apostrophes! I can see them here on the keys, but those keys have three or more symbols on them, and I dont know how to make them come out!
Ive taken some awesome photos and as soon as I run out of space on my memory stick, Ill email some to Nathan to put up on here.
Im in Maribor until Sunday morning (its Wednesday today) so I should be able to post regularly until then - the uni hostel has free internet facilities that we can use between certain hours. Unfortunately, they dont have any DIY laundrey facilities, so we cant wash anything except by hand until we get to Ljubljana.
The weather is fantastic, by the way (DOUG is SMUG).
The ice cream here is far too sweet, but VERY creamy.
I have caught some rays. Oooh, sweet sunshine.
I cant decide whether I was actually in Singapore this morning or not. If I was, this has been an incredibly long day... Ive flown from Singapore to Frankfurt, to Graz (Austria) and taken a bus across the border to Slovenia, where I am now, in a town called Maribor. In all that, I only had about four hours sleep, bringing my grand sleep total to 10 hours since I left Auckland on Sunday.
I have been learning some Slovenian, with the help of Amelias guide book and the cleaning lady on our wing of the University hostel, who speaks no English. Zdravo is hello, adio is goodbye (not sure of spelling), and hvala is thank you. Drek is a swear word (of course, you always learn at least one of those on your first day in a strange country).
The Austrian countryside blends straight into the Slovenian - they both look very similar, scatters of houses all over the place so that it is semi-rural for mile after mile, not suburbs at all, and not rural at all either because the houses neighbour each other too nearly. Maribor itself is BEAUTIFUL. Most of the buildings and the roads look very old, and the city (pop. 96,000) have very few tourists, so it feels very natural and laid-back and under-commercialised (thank goodness). The entire town centre is basically pedestrian, a flow of wide boulevards, alleys, streets and squares without a car in sight; just a few bicycles. Most of the buildings have reddy tiled rooves (is my English imploding?). There are a number of huge and beautiful churches, with amazing altars, and towers you can climb for free, offering a wide view of the rooftops, replete with domes and spires and statues on pillars (on a small scale).
Ahhhhh! I miss my apostrophes! I can see them here on the keys, but those keys have three or more symbols on them, and I dont know how to make them come out!
Ive taken some awesome photos and as soon as I run out of space on my memory stick, Ill email some to Nathan to put up on here.
Im in Maribor until Sunday morning (its Wednesday today) so I should be able to post regularly until then - the uni hostel has free internet facilities that we can use between certain hours. Unfortunately, they dont have any DIY laundrey facilities, so we cant wash anything except by hand until we get to Ljubljana.
The weather is fantastic, by the way (DOUG is SMUG).
The ice cream here is far too sweet, but VERY creamy.
I have caught some rays. Oooh, sweet sunshine.
# posted by Doug @ 18:23 
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I so want to travel! Instead I have to sit here studying for my polsci exam, reading Marx until I become a communist. So good to hear what you're up to Douglas (ha! I get apostrophes!), have a whole lot of fun for me too. See you in Dushanbe in November.
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