Summer of my German Acrobats

Krisztian and I made friends with two German backpackers when we were at the campground in Bled- Larissa and Sonja. They are on break from school- one is studying nursing and the other physiotherapy. They happened to be heading towards Hungary too, so we have been hanging out for the past couple of days.

As the biking as impossible, we took a train from Bled, intending to get somewhere near Lake Balaton in Hungary. To get to the right train, we had to go to Ljubljana and spend a day. Having seen all of Slovenia, I am really confused. It seems to be full of big houses, perfectly clean and modern cities, and devoid of all Eastern Bloc-type architecture, spare some industrial buildings (still in use) near the train tracks. How did a country transition from communism in less than 20 years to look like this. In almost every way, it looks like how I would imagine Switzerland.

We didn´t have much time to spend in Ljubljana, but it was really nice- perhaps a little too nice. Everything was pedestrian and bicycle-friendly, it was full of British and German tourists, and the canals were lined with cafes, restaurants, and cultural establishments. It felt fabricated and I wish that I had been able to stray from the tourist spots.

We and our friends walked up a hugely steep hill to get to a park and castle, and our attempts to push the bikes up a steep gravel path were comical and painstaking. when we finally got to the top we ate lunch and Krisztian and I tried to teach ourselves to walk on our hands and do handsprings on the grass. As it turns out, Larissa and Sonja were on a high school circus team, and they had plenty of acrobatic tricks, which they could actually do, to perform for us. It was so cool that I had to take a nap in the grass.

They took a 2 am train to Hungary, but bikes were only allowed on the 7 am train. We slept on the edge of a park across the street from the train station. Rather, Krisztian slept and I laid there and resented him. We had managed to become official vagrants in Ljubljana in less than 24 hours. This city seemed so safe that there was something a little creepy about it- people didnţ even bother locking their bikes.

After a long train ride, a two hour bus detour, another train ride, and 60 km of biking, we arrived at the campground on the Northern shore of Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe. This trip, it seems, is becoming a lake tour, and I am totally fine with that.