Island in the sun

Zdravo dear friends, I’m back. Actually, I’ve spent a lot of time being ‘to’ and ‘back from’ places recently so, I’m gonna sit here until I’ve filled in the gaps since I last wrote anything here in June.

This time I’m gonna work backwards starting with the oldest news first and the newest news last. If you’re lucky I might even go into future plans but we’ll see how it goes.

The impossibly difficult to pronounce island of Cres

‘Eh? What? Difficult?’ you say. Well, now try saying it again in Slovene where, the C is pronounced like the ‘ts’ at the end of cats and, the ‘r’ is rolled like the Scots do.

Anyway, phonetics aside, Cres is a small Croatian Island (small compared to England but large compared to other Croatian Islands) about 3 hours drive from Ljubljana and, it was the destination of our next day trip.

So, once again, Obi was loaded, me Christophe, Jaimie and Alenka climbed in and we set off in search of sun, sea, sand and swimming. We didn’t find any sand but we did find the rest. We also found white-headed Eagles, stunning views, funny bars selling the worlds smallest beers, good food, men in white shirts with white vests underneath (it’s an eastern thing) and lots and lots of jelly fish. Actually, the jelly fish were the weirdest thing I’ve had to deal with for a while. Pioneering the way into the sea on Saturday morning, Alenka discovered that she wasn’t alone. Actually she was in the company of thousands (possibly millions) of little squidgy clear things about the size of a jelly bean.

Either, our bay was pushing for a part in the X-files or, the island of Cres had provided the perfect conditions for jelly-fish baby making. They didn’t sting but it did feel like you were swimming in baked beans.

The weeks that followed Cres (I bet you still can’t say it) Island were pretty much like most other weeks here. They involved a little bit of teaching, a little hiking, drinking, talking and a lot (infact more than usual) of swimming. I discovered outdoor swimming pools you see – what more do you need in a heatwave? Oh, we also conquered Skofja Loka and Kranj (pronounced without the ‘j’) and joined the flag-wavers for the Slovene ‘National Day’ on the 25th of June.

This brings us nicely to the end of the academic term (end of July) and the emotional conclusion of my teaching career in Slovenia. I survived, it wasn’t so hard – in fact I really enjoyed it and I wouldn’t know half as much about Slovenia and the Slovenes if I hadn’t done it. On the last day, I was given 3 ‘free’ tickets to a sex club by one of my students. See the members section for photo’s 😉 (no mum I didn’t really go)

With all that out of the way it was time for a holiday, a trip to Norway and short visit to the mainland – England. I’m gonna write about that now but, I’m gonna bag that post for a future update. For now, I’ll let your rest the reading part of your brain and enjoy some pretty colours…

The sun sets over Cres town, Cres.