18 spots left

ciao! (i am keeping ciao, even when i'm no longer in italy),

I hope everyone's easter holiday went well. i celebrated by eating chocolate. i'm not sure where to start with slovenia, so i'll go with today.

I left Bled this afternoon, but before Damien, the cool old guy that runs the hostel, suggested i hike up to a church up in the mountains that was built in the 1300s. i say yes and his directions:

go up this street
take a right at the top
take a left and cut across that field
then cut right across the same field and you'll be there.

this seemed all easy because we were standing at the bottom of the mountain and i could see the street, the field, and the church. so, i go up the street, cut across the field and then i can't see anything,--no path, no church, only trees. i cut right and end up in the middle of the forrest just kind of walking around. after a while i end up back at the village, but on the complete other side. i gave it another shot but this time at the end of the left cut across the field there was an old man with crutches sitting on a rock. i do the praying symbol (its the only thing i can think of with a church) and he points to the path right behind the rock he was sitting on. i don't know how he got there or what he was doing, but it was a bit strange.

the church was small and closed but i could see in the window. had it been at the bottom of the mountain it would have received a low church appeal rating, but after everything it took to get there, its one of the best churches i have ever seen.

yesterday i went to the Bohinj valley. i took the bus to the last village and walked an hour to a giant waterfall. i remember being so excited about seeing waterfalls in new zealand, but i'm beginning to get waterfalled out. the cool part was walking back along the lake (its about 4 km.) on this trip i've seen "mirror lakes" but usually they are small and ducks always ruin it. This lake was of good size--i would call it a medium sized lake-- but with only one visible duck and absolutely no wind, it was a mirror. i could see every detail of every tree and all the clouds by looking into the water. it was amazing.

the day before that i spent in the town of Bled. its a small lake, that has an old church on a tiny island in the middle of it, a castle way up high on a cliff, and a cool cathedral. it just feels really old (because it is). its a bit touristy but all of the tourists were from italy so i was happy. it was just a nice place to sit and read/write/think by the water. at night Damien would tell me what it was like in slovenia after and during wars and all sorts of things. also, his wife would cook me slovenian meals (well, one dinner was serbian but with a slovenian twist to it--some kind of bean and ham stew).

Ljubljana, the capital of slovenia, is the next prague (in feel, not in price). it was good and bad being there on easter weekend. good because no body was there and i got great pictures; bad because everything was closed (which includes any place to buy food). i was incredibly hungry all weekend holiday long. my chocolates from italy kept me going and i found apples at a gas station but it was tough going for a few days. on easter (actually every sunday) they had one of the best antique markets ever--from russian communist war helmets to way old video cameras and postcards. i got two buttons since they are easy to carry.

now i'm back in ljubljana (and its not too difficult to pronounce), and it is a completely different place. there are so many people everywhere its a bit overwhelming but a lot more fun and there is less hunger.

i've had to change my schedule some and i'll be leaving slovenia to go to croatia in a few days, and then i'll come back and finish the west side. its going to make it easier to catch my flight to portugal.

my mind had an incredible difficult time of deciding what language to speak my first few days here. it was telling me "they don't speak english here, change languages" and all i have is italian, which is alright here, but they know i'm not italian because i can't hide my hair anymore. so i would end up not speaking any language and just mumbling and pointing. it really was akward. however now i have convinced my mind to speak english first and everything is flowing much smoother.

tomorrow i'm going to the u.s. embassy here to find out if "hypothetically" i run out of space in my passport for stamps. i'm sweating a bit because there are only 18 spots left and i think (think) that i only will get 17 more. thats really cutting it close, and i need to know what my options are.

ok, sorry for such a long post, the next one will be from croatia! sweet!

have a good day
your friend
chad

stick-shift, make-shift

ciao a tutti!,

Happy Spring!! the last farm was wonderful and having it be hot hot was an added bonus. for the last ten days i was part of a really cool italian family. (husband Luca, wife Chiara, kids Giacamo, Elisa and Alice) In the part of italy where i was they speak with a lisp, which threw me off my italian for a few days (i would only focus on the lisped words). this farm was what i imagined "farming" was going to be like--the plant kind, not the animal kind (although there were animals too). every morning i would feed the animals: pot belly pigs, cats, chickens, ducks, tibetan goats, and some freaky cross of a chicken and a turkey. my favorite animal, by far, is the tibetan goat. they're like normal goats, but they are small and have cool calico coloring. i was sad, though, when one of them went on a hunger strike and didn't eat for a week (i think it was pretty sick, and i'm not sure how long its going to live) the afternoon would usually be filled with raking the cut branches or apricot and peach trees and then a huge lunch that would always last over an hour.


the tibetan goat.


the real fun was working with Luca, the farmer guy. about four hours after arriving at the farm, i was driving around a stick-shift, make-shift tractor (seriously, he made it himself) with a palet lift attached to the front of it. it had no brakes and i didn't tell him that i didn't know how to drive stick. that time everything went relatively well, but two days later i broke it so it could only go forward in fourth gear but was pressed up against a trunk, so it wasn't going anywere(Luca was at work, and his dad, who visits to work on the house, asked me if i knew how to drive it, so i said, "sure, its no problem at all."). the next day i opened the transmission, realigned the gears, and let luca do the rest of the driving. (i did feel better though, because he broke it two days later).

the other tractor that i drove almost daily had tred like a tank instead of wheels. it took a few trys but i figured it out and had a much better time driving that machine (even with a trailer) than the other tractor of doom.

it just felt really good at the farm and i hope to go back someday. that was probably my last wwoofing experience for the year, depending on money, so i'm glad things ended so well.

tomorrow i head out to ljubjana, slovenia. i'll be in slovenia and croatia until april 15, then its portugal and spain.

Also, the start of the end of my trip occured today. i have my dates and times for coming back to america:

July 1st London - New York (arriving in new york at 7:15pm)
July 16 New York - Chicago (arriving in chicago at 7:32pm)
July 19 Chicago - home (arriving in las vegas at 8:27pm)

so there it is, i will be arriving back home exactly one year and 14 hours later.

i hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the official start of spring and all that is warm (except for everyone in the southern hemisphere).

have a good day
your friend

chad

emilia romagna

Ciao a tutti!

I hope the rest of the northern hemisphere is warming up like florence is. i've still got a few layers on but not that "its really cold outside" pain that has been lingering the last 4 months. there have definitely been moments where i wish i didn't give Dani's jacket back after iceland. i knew it was going to happen, but hopefully the hard part has past and i may even be able to leave a layer or two along the way.

it has been great the last week in florence staying with my friend ashley from university. a few days ago we went to the most extreme hill town in tuscany--civita di bagnaregio. its this ghost-townish place that is falling off the pedestal of land that it sits on. there's only 14 people that live there permanently and i think we may have met one of them at the restaruant/bed and breakfast that was there. other than that we've just been hanging out at the apartment and around florence. its definitely made me more prepared to live in a place again (at some point, not quite yet).

i go to my next farm on sunday. they only speak italian, so i should probably start thinking in italian again. that way i won't get sleepy when i arrive. its in the emilia romagna region of italy--north of tuscany (its the one with Bologna in it). but tomorrow i leave for ravenna; i guess thats also in the same region. i've never been there and it sounds like its got a lot of cool history.

i just finished The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. the way he used words was amazing. Grace, one of ashleys roommates, lent me the Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara. it looks really good and hopefully it won't turn me into a communist (although i think he was a good one).

maybe the next post will be from Slovenia!

have a good day
your friend

chad

rooster and a peacock

Happy Spring!

i know its not officially spring, that happens on the 21ish. but its march and thats good enough for me. at the farm near siena, i kept saying "happy spring!" and "this isn't winter snow, this is spring snow. its much different." so its been dang cold lately. i arrived at the farm in a furry of snow and left in the same way.

the farm was a good place, with excellent food, people, and strange events. also, in addition to being a farm its a meditation center too. the source of money comes from different groups that stay for a week or more and work on being higher level meditators (i really don't have any idea what the levels mean or what they do). but, on sundays the group gets tested and they need people to work on (me). i found out what it means to truly meditate. i guess the simplest way to describe it is to be awake but completely void of thought. i felt like i was awake, but after the hour long session i definitely "woke up" and felt like i was drunk. definitely a strange feeling, and it made it even more strange to be getting a healing meditation session in a giant villa in the middle of tuscany.

i didn't get to ride any horses but i spent a good amount a time feeding them (and sometimes cleaning up the crap, but its really not that bad at all when everything is frozen). not a fan of geese--they are animals of the devil. this farm gets the weirdest animals-that-are-friends award: all day a rooster and a peacock hang out together. i didn't know those two birds could be friends, but i guess its possible. one cool event was driving a bobcat (i really small bulldozer type machine) during an all-the-water-pipes-are-frozen-and-the-animals-need-to-drink-water crisis (those don't happen to often). i grated my thumb while trying to zest a lemon and burned my fingers on a lid that i just removed from a giant stone oven--not my most shining moments.

now i'm neosporined in florence at ashleys and am going to go to another farm soon--maybe somewhere in bologna. i would like this one to be an only italian speaking place since my italian didn't really improve much with them speaking perfect english and me spending most of my time with a german wwoofer. it was a good week but i'm ready to focus on italian again.

i haven't cut my hair since new zealand (october) and i finally have wings. i think its taken so long because hair grows slower in winter--and i've had a lot of winter.

happy spring
ciao ciao
your friend

chad