Slovenian Pride -- Day 17

It truly is so crazy thinking about the days passing by because they are both incredibly long & short, but wow, now there are 2 days! Today's walk was fairly easy & brisk & honestly a lot of fun! Fly and I walked the entire way together, taking our time whenever needed and "making the world right," as Brigid put it.

We started off the morning walking out of Postojna and mostly on flat ground, passing through a neat little village; in high spirits as we reached the next coffee shop, meeting up with the rest of the group as we enjoyed the morning rest already having done a third of the walk! Wahoo! The day seemed to have been broken up in 4 segments, where we took 3 rest stops, meeting up with the rest of the group during those times. The sun was beginning to get quite hot, so when we stopped the second time, there was a little napping done on this grassy & shady spot, exactly what we needed (although always can nap for forever)! On the third stretch, the sun really started beating down, and I could feel myself getting sticky & sweaty & sunscreeny (not the best combo) but Fly & I kept each other in engaging conversation where we just kept on unpacking the various folds of life and beliefs.

The last part was through a road, which luckily was not busy so we were not that bothered. We went through a true emotional rollercoaster in the span of a few minutes, as we discovered a hat that was left behind a stop sign, decided to take it along with us, found out that there were a lot of spiders on it, quickly decided to leave it, saw a spider decoration that seemed mocking & got scared by a dog barking. Honestly all of it was quite comical, and the last uphill to our accommodation, we powered on through with some good throwback music, finally arriving to the beautiful accommodation around 2:35 PM (another early entry! whoop whoop!)

As soon as we came in, our hosts offered us homemade blueberry schnapps, and we showered, chilled, and napped until a delicious dinner of vegetable soup, fresh salad, mushroom gnocchi, and amazing dessert prepared by Borut's mother in law. In fact, our accommodation is Borut's family house, and he is the 5th generation in it, which is amazing! After dinner, we got a tour of the church from Franco, one of the locals in the village, and he showed us the building dating back to the 1600s. Afterwards, he invited us over to see his house, and he showed us around his vineyards, his woodshop (where he makes pillars, doors, chairs, etc.), his workplace (where he makes 60 L of homemade fruit alcohol during the wintertime!!), and finally his personal church.

We were led into this basement (that he had made the ceiling for, and upon opening the door, we saw a wine cellar/drinks all arranged in bottles on the shelves. He offered us drinks, and while he took it down like a pro, it was definitely much stronger than I think any of us had anticipated!
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"For my friends and I...after two drinks we pray!"

It was extremely interesting hearing about Slovenia/that particular village from Franco. He told us that they are completely self-sufficient; there is no need to import or export anything because people grow different fruits, the community guts and cleans chickens together, and they really share everything. From what I understood, there was no unemployment because everyone was either studying or working and oftentimes, kids come back to the village to live, even after spending time in big cities. You can tell how proud the community is of their area and their country as a whole.

It is definitely important not to forget Eastern Europe.

Tomorrow is our second to last day, which is honestly surreal. It's a tougher day so we will start out earlier, but ready to take the day--bring it on!

xx,

​cat