Waiting on baby news, we took the Deutsche Bahn train to Maribor via Vienna, which took about 6 hours. The train ride was amazing though—Burke and I woke up after a brief nap to snow capped peaks and green valleys dotted with houses and towns. Austria’s scenery does not disappoint.
We arrived in Maribor and had a short walk to the Lollipop Hostel, where we stayed for the night. The owner of the hostel, a classic, mildly pretentious British ex-pat, gave us some much needed coffee and told us about the town. We started off by hiking up to the top of the Piramida, a hill covered in 17,800 grape vines that yield award winning Riesling—and provides a phenomenal view of the surrounding area. When we reached the top it started to drizzle, and by the time we made it back down the winding paths it was full on raining. We stopped back at Lollipop to change our shoes and grab some umbrellas, and wandered into town.
The town has about 120,000 people and a fairly large university. Like so many of the beautiful, small cities in this part of the world, the downtown is pedestrian only. Unlike Szeged, there was awesome shopping, including an H&M, which gave us a nice break from the rain—even if our budget does not allow for new clothes. There are tons of restaurants and outdoor cafes that were busy despite the rain because of the warm Mediterranean air. (The temperature was in the high fifties yesterday and was quite comfortable). Maribor has the requisite churches, a castle, a water tower, bridges, and boasts a very unique attraction as well. The Stara trta (the old vine) has been confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the oldest grape vine in the world—440 years. While in the US the vine might have been morphed into a Disney like attraction, in Slovenia it was basically an understated, dry looking branch wrapped around the outside of a small house that contains a wine cellar and museum. Sadly, we miss the big festival celebrating the moment when the grape juice from this year’s harvest turns into wine on November 11. Apparently it’s a huge drunken celebration that sounds right up our alley.
We had a great meal at Ancora—calamari and pizza!!!—that ended up being quite cheap and delicious. We had one of the greatest cappuccinos of all time in one of the little cafes along with a scrumptious piece of chocolate cake. Afterwards, we stole WiFi from McDonald’s on my iPod so that we could check on the news from home about Burke’s new niece to be. We were thrilled to find an email and pictures of the new munchkin (9 lbs, 1 ounce, 20.5 inches) born at 6:01 am. Everything went well and the only complication is naming the poor kid! Apparently 9 months wasn’t long enough to come up with a name…
In all the excitement, we decided to call it a night because we were so exhausted from the long day of travel. Waiting for us at the hostel was a collection of strange people: a 20 something Swede studying the use of corners in preschool classrooms; a 30ish obnoxious Australian know-it-all who teaches Home Economics in Scotland; and a random 50 something Irishman who claims to own a house in France...but was staying at a cheap hostel. We tried to be social and hang out a bit, but the Australian woman kept forcing conversation in the direction of why she hates America and Americans. She’s never been to America, obviously. She was quick to cite the right to bear arms and the 21-year-old drinking age as reasons why we suck. Great. We put up a good fight but eventually decided bed was the way to go, so we went to our 4-person bedroom. Shortly after, our 30 something Serbian lush of a businessman roommate clumsily burst through the door, holding a beer. He tried to talk to us but was completely ridiculous, so we decided to drop the hint that we wanted to sleep. Before retiring to our bunks we looked at each, fear in our eyes, and I said—what are the odds that this guy throws up tonight?
About twenty minutes later, we awake to the hideous sounds of Serbian upchuck coming from the top bunk across the room. We immediately walked out of the room and ran into the owner of the hostel, lounging around with the other guests after a night out. She tried to get him to clean up his mess but he seemed to want to stay in bed more. She grabbed a mop and forced him to deal with the consequences of his messy actions—but finished off the job herself. We went back to our bleach scented room and the drunk Serb commenced snoring like a chainsaw.
You get what you pay for I guess, for $25/night.
This morning we woke up, showered, and have been on another gorgeous train ride ever since. We’ll arrive in Ljubljana in about half an hour!
Congrats Lex and Nick!!!
UPDATE: Welcome to the world Olivia Rhiannon Roberts! Fantastic name.
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