What's up with all the orange?

One thing I noticed in Vienna: They love the color orange. Not the macho burnt orange of the terrific Texas Longhorns, but a bright uh....what's the word I'm looking for here...more wussy flavor of orange. It was everywhere. In any group of 5, there was guaranteed to be at least one person wearing the color. I'm not sure what the connection was, if it was the official color, or just made that way by populist actions, but it was different. Maybe that's the key.

Cheese's apartment

Several shades of orange for the bedding

The Metro

Cinema Ceiling

Bears!

Back in Vienna, the world-wide Buddy Bear exhibition had made a stop. You can find out more about the bears, and the idea they represent here. No Stephen Colbert am I. Indeed I'm a big fan of bears. Below are some of my favorites.

Cuban Cigar Bear

The Moldovian bear answers the burning question:
Where the Heck is Moldova?

UK & US Bears

They were all pretty cool in one way or another. It was quite a fun exhibit.

Zagreb

We got into Zagreb, Croatia's capitol, around rush hour. Despite the crowded conditions, we were able to locate a Rough Guide recommended hotel for the evening fairly quickly. After some parking instructions, we were able to secure a room normally meant for three. The Rough Guide says make your reservations early. as this place is a favorite. No doubt the big bonuses are its sophisticated beauty and high speed internet connection. It didn't hurt that we had a big flat screen TV in the room either. The return to technology was making cheese quite happy and I finally found out my beloved Buckeyes had beaten Texas.

Techno-geek approved

I think Cheese was happy to be back in the familiar surroundings of an older Europeon city, with public transportation and coffee shops every twenty feet. I think this picture gives the best feeling of the place, more so than any I took. We hiked around quite a bit and finally found a bar recommended by the Rough Guide and had several local brews. If we'd been on top of our game, we probably would have asked a couple of the local ladies who seemed curious to join us, but alas we just enjoyed the beer. Also, we were in a german car, and the locals seemed to enjoy a more traditional type of vehicle:

Crusing Zagreb Style

(Having spent several hours driving, riding on, or trailing behind a tractor, I'm allowed to make that joke. And make no mistake, chicks dig farm equipment!)

Sadly we didn't have time to stick around the following morning to check out much of the town's historical site, or learn much about what actually happened there damage-wise during the war. There did seem to be a number of buildings that had some external damage of some source.

Back to Vienna...

Return of the Olive

We left the beauty of the Pula and sadly headed back towards responsibility, albeit a day later than we told Cheese's boss. This was some incredibly green and unspoiled country, made even more striking by the clear sunny sky. This is one of the things I live for, The Drive: good tunes, good company and the world laid out in splendor just for you to drive by and appreciate and no place to be in a hurry.

If you look at the map of the Croatian province we were in (Pazin) you can see a big river that cuts into the country side around Rasa. Along this river was set a huge power plant:


It did remind me a little of the Kyger Creek or the Simpsons-like Gavin plants I grew up around, but not enough to bother me. Where the river met up with the sea, there were some stunning views. There was also a little circular restaurant on property that would be worth millions in the states. Being the only place for miles, they really gauged the customers. I mean it cost cheese and I nearly $10 to have some beer & pizza (olive included) and gaze out upon this:

Million dollar views, $4 dollar pizza

If you look close you can see a sailboat in there. Go enjoy this before some developer gets his grubby hands on it.

Crashing Croatia

After escaping Trieste, we headed into Croatia, land of limestone and tree covered hills. Now any caver can tell you that lotsa limestone means lotsa caves and sure enough, the Rough Guide directed us to the spetacular Skocjan Caves. I could not have been more happy we made the effort to see them. I've been to lots of caves in my life, from Kentucky to Texas and places in between, but the Skocjan Caves are among the most impressive. The sheer size and beauty would make Peter Jackson reshoot scenes from Lord of the Rings in envy. They wouldn't let us take pics inside (but you can find some on the web of course!) , so here's the exit:

Look close for the Hobbits

Luckily we made the tour of the caves in time. We weren't so lucky with lunch. Given the time restraints and one waiter to handle everyone, we only had time to order some fried potatoes. I asked for some ketchup, at which point Chesse told me I'd have to pay for the packets (God Bless America and Free Condiments!). Sure enough, he was right. Also, Croatian Ketchup is a little different than what we're used to. In fact, we'd probably call it 'mayonaise'. This little mix-up didn't keep Cheese from slothering it on his psuedo-fries.

At one point in the cave, you are several hundred feet above a river cutting through before it disappears even deeper into the earth. At one point in the cave's history, someone thought it would be a good idea to dam up the river. Turns out it wasn't a good idea and the local vally got flooded. Now they just give tours of the place. Standing there in a cave larger than the Horseshoe, I could not imagine the amount of water that had been contained, and the damage it must have done when released.

There's a map of the cave system. Here's a view of the church depicted on the map, as seen from the cave exit.

As close to Church as we got on the trip.

After the caves, we headed onward until we hit the city of Pula on the coast. I was super excited to finally see a real Roman Coliseum, the inspiration for more modern sports complexes (such as The Horseshoe). Pula is blessed to have a fairly large and well preserved one:

If I knew HTML, this would look better

There were relics of the Roman era scattered throughout town. Old buildings, gateways etc. Most had seen better days, but I still loved looking at their intricate details and imagining Roman times.

A funy thing happend to the forum: Acid Rain.

We decided to stay in the more touristy beach area rather than downtown. So after yet another delicous ice cream treat we headed out to the island-like outcroppings on the outskirts and scored a really spiffy hotel room. Spiffy, except that the blankets had been washed not in water, but in perfume. Nasty 2-dollar hooker perfume. I had to throw mine out on the balcony in order to sleep. Cheese can sleep through anything after a big enough ice cream. The place was beautiful dear reader:

Morning in Paradise

I really want to go back so I can do things like this:

Afternoon in paradise

Now I won't lie to my good friend, I am the hot-blooded Aries, but really, look at the following picture. All I caught was her foot! I didn't even know she was topless! (at first anyway) Still I didn't know how to say "I only got your foot" in Czech so I tried to indicate I was Canadian so impressions of Americans wouldn't take another hit.

Despite the lack of upper-wear
Girls are not so Gone Wild in Croatia

Triste Trieste

I'm the sort of person that really took the whole, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" lesson to heart, so expect this section to be brief.

Trieste sits on the Adriatic Sea, about as far east in Italy as you can get. The people there have highly developed brains that let them navigate their incredibly complex roadway system.

I thought Trieste was just horrible. It took us forever to drive around and find anything, even with a highly detailed map of Trieste. Of course it was super crowded and full of zipping Vespas everywhere. Maybe you could go there and have a great time dear reader, but I was ready to leave about 15 mins after arrival. Compared to the nice tranquil pace of Ljubljana, this was sheer hell.

We finally scored a hotel after Cheese satisfied himself pricewise. Checking out hotels was complicated by the fact that you had to illegally park on the sidewalk, abandon the car in the street or perform some other complicated maneuver to allow you time to run in and make inquiries. Now I love my dear pal Cheese dearly, but his insistence to invest a lot of time to save a few bucks on a hotel doesn't entirely jive with my "Now!" Arian nature. Add that onto the parking problem, and you can see me and Trieste just started off on the wrong foot.

We unloaded our stuff (from the street) and drove the 2 miles (one block as the crow flies) to our parking spot. One bathroom break later and we're ready to go exploring, and I believe I discovered why the hotel met with Cheese's price requirements. It was a House of Freaks:

The Tip of the Freak Iceberg

Actually, the Freak show that happened later in the lobby was probably the highlight of the evening. I must have been missing San Diego a bit, as I was determined to see the sun set against the ocean. We walked quite a bit through the town, and it just wasn't exciting. The food wasn't all that great either. (Excpetion: The Ice Cream treats we had rocked!) The following day, we tried to check out the old castle, but it was under repair. So we set off to leave and faced another hour or so of backtracking and cursing at the map. We finally found our exit and headed down into Croatia.

No Place Like Home

Between the Ohio-like country side, the Euro-Buckeyes and Jenny Holzer's art exhibit, it was clear the Ghost of Gallipolis was following me through Europe. However, I would have never guessed that the iconic Gallipolis Gazebo would show up in a one square block in downtown Ljubliana.

Oddly Like Odd Home

My maternal grandmother had taught me to yell at pesky poltergists in sets of threes to get them to leave you alone. So after a cry of "GAHS! GAHS! GAHS!" and a monster sized breakfast provided by the hotel, we set out for some exploring.

After trolling through some local stores (including a nicely stocked record store) we headed up to the old castle that used to dominate the local landscape. And it's quite a landscape:

OK, so it's bigger than Gallipolis.

The castle was pretty cool for an old D&D geek to see, but not out of this world. There had been a wedding there that day with traditional dancers and singing. Sadly we missed crashing it by about 5 mintues or so. After the hilltop hike, I convinced cheese to go and inspect the ruins of the Roman wall that had surrounding the old part of town. Sadly, there wasn't a whole lot left and it was more like a Roman low fence that might have kept out some rabbits in a pinch. There were bigger parts where some gates had been, and some benches, but nothing terribly exciting. Here's a Roman feature:

Not my graffiti, despite what the
spelling might lead you to think.

We explored the old part of town the rest of the day, got accosted by some young Euro-Christians and ended up drinking some more beer by the river to end the day. It was pretty easy to see why so many young people came to the place for a week or two, it was a beautiful relaxed setting. I certainly could have stayed there for several more days happily. I guessed the Gallipolis gremlins were gone after I found convincing evidence it wasn't small town Ohio after all:

"Shameless Hussy" defined.

We bulked up the following day at the local Mexican restaurant (not bad, but service was suh-low!) and then took off for the Italian coast. What a mistake that was.