One week, three countries

Neda and Sasha took me to see a secret WWII hospital in the mountains near the border with Italy. It was intentionally built to be very difficult to reach, which is why it was never discovered by the Germans or Italians. The cabins of the original hospital were washed away in a flood in 2007, but they were all rebuilt. There were different cabins for the living quarters, surgery room, quarantine, etc. There were posters of Tito and Stalin, and a letter from Dwight Eisenhower thanking the staff for helping a wounded American pilot. The hospital treated Yugoslavians, Italians, and a few Poles, Austrians, and two Americans. They had to sneak the supplies in without buying things from the locals, so the Axis couldn't track the movement of goods. There were defensive bunkers all up the valley, and the area was attacked twice and defended successfully both times. I really enjoyed the trip.

For lunch we stopped at a Serbian restaurant that had all sorts of meats to choose from. I tried a beef patty cooked in cream, pork loin, and pork/veal sausages, as well as a good salad. When the bill came out, there were three tiny mugs of schnapps on the tray with it.

I left Slovenia heading for Venice. I ended up taking train, bus, taxi, and another train to get there with a five hour gap in between. When waiting for the bus to cross into Italy a driver said he wasn't going to Italy and we should wait ten more minutes, but he was lying, so the retired Australian couple next to me bought me a beer while we waited for a taxi to pick us up. They worked on movies before retiring. She was in casting for Mission Impossible 2 and The Thin Red Line among others and he was a cameraman for Pitch Black and Mad Max as highlights. They said I should look them up if I go back to Australia. Very nice people and they didn't let me pay for the taxi.

When I finally got to Venice, I stayed at a hostel outside of the actual town because it was much cheaper, only ten minutes away by train, and a good hostel. They had a ping pong table and I went to dinner with a few other guests at a nice little pizzeria full of locals. The spaghetti was good and the tiramisu was great. The waiter didn't speak much English but he understood "pasta". When two of us showed up the next evening with groceries and two bottles of wine he looked at us, smiled, and came back with a corkscrew. The wine was less than $10 and good which is the most affordable item I'd seen.

Venice was an incredible city. I'd never seen anything like it and was blown away by all the cool buildings and narrow alleys, great park, and huge cathedrals. I had a great salami sandwich and would definitely go back some day. I could walk around for days. I saw one of the many instances of an old man seeing two younger women walking by and saying, "Bellisima! Mi bella!" I heard one girl say it was flattering even if they say it 15 times a day.

I travelled to Graz, Austria by bus and Fabian, who I met in Fiji, picked me up and took me to his apartment. The mountains in northern Italy were beautiful. I got my own room for the weekend. We had some wine for happy hour then went for pizza and beer nearby before walking around the center of the city. I even tried a girly beer: radler of beer + lemonade, and it was good. The architecture was similar to Ljubljana although Fabian said, "Graz is nothing really special."

We went to a wine region south of town to spend the night, stopping at a small lake for a swim on the way. Most of the wineries were on ridges with great views of the green, forested valleys and steep vineyards. We got a tour of a small cellar and tasted through several white wines. Dinner was a big plate of bread meat and cheese with a few veggies thrown in for appearances, and dessert was delicious cakes. The wines were all good and affordable, $11-16. We enjoyed the wine and views all evening.

In the morning they served breakfast of another plate of good thick bread, meat and cheese. Fabian drove us to Maribor, Slovenia only 15 miles away where we saw the oldest grape-producing vine in the world: 400-years-old. Other than that the town was unspectacular, deserted and a little run down. I did taste a good wine though and got to show off my knowledge of the language after staying there for a week already. Fabian had never stopped in Slovenia, only drove through it. On the way home, we stopped for coffee in a castle and for a swim in another lake. It was a good week.