despite the cold outside, we ventured out for food and pictures of the christmas lights :)
it feels so nice to just stroll around the streets and check out all of the christmas market “little houses” :) they smell like waffles and mulled wine, yum! :)
friends have been asking for piiiiiiictures, but i’ve been laaaaazy to take them. truth is, we really like it here. we’ve visited lakes, castles and thermal spas, drank gluhwein, done some geocaching, and even went to austria! slovenia feels easy and relaxed, and that’s how we’ve been enjoying it. i plan to report on ‘our life on slovenia’ in more detail… but i’m postponing that to 2010 since we’re leaving for portugal next week :)
i took some photos of the karavanke mountains though, because they were the first thing that made us go “wow!” when we got here. on nice days, you can see them a bit from everywhere in the city, and if you climb all the way up to ljubljana’s castle, you can have a really good view at their snowy peeks in the distance.
last friday we had a close encounter with them, while crossing the country on our way to austria (ikea!). they’re magnificent, like a children’s drawing of the perfect mountains!
what was not so magnificent was the 7.8km tunnel we had to drive through to cross them…
when i think of european cities, i think about intimate cafés. lovely, warm and cozy cafés, with steaming expresso machines, newspapers and a crowd of happy people, sipping their cups of coffee and eating chocolate cake. do you have this mental image too? i was secretly hoping ljubljana would be a bit like this, having heard good things about its cafés.
so on sunday, we tried le petit café (trg francoske revolucije 4).
the place was crowded! and no wonder: good food, good coffee, nice decoration, not expensive… it was perfect. well except… the cups and mugs. sorry to be this picky, but it as if they got the whole supermarket shelf of cheap luminarc mugs (plus a few spare they had at home) and put them to use. they don’t look so nice on a café and almost ruined my bohemian vision of this brunch…
…almost. :) it was a good start, i’m looking forward to more “café testing”!
and now that we’re out of the house searching loop, i can finally breathe better. we got a slovenian phone number, called dozens of landlords and real estates, saw quite a few houses and ended up scoring a little apartment that we can just barely spot on some of the city’s postcards. :) right now, our fridge magnets are holding our favorite polaroids, there are maps on the walls, the table is a mess of postcards and notebooks and there is a cat (i don’t know who the owner is, but he likes belly rubs) sleeping on our patio chairs. it feels like home.
as a reward (or perhaps because of my persistent nagging), we went to see new moon on the cinema, yesterday. the room was filled with giggly teenagers, who clapped during the kissing parts and sighed loudly on the sight of their favorite shirtless character (vampire or werewolf), but all in all, i had a nice time. to me, new moon felt much more coherent with the books than twilight did and so the whole story felt familiar, matching what i had imagined when i read it. i can see why people dislike it, especially if viewed as a standalone movie, which it is not meant to be…
…frankly, i can’t wait for eclipse! :)