As we grew bored of the gestures spining in circles we headed out of the square and saw a little man with a free tour sign.. So instead of waiting an hour we joined on.. It wasn't goin so great as Adam talked more about himself and Scotland than munich or anything German for the first few stops.. But he got better as time went on so we managed to stick it out through the full tour, seeing this huge Ludwig mansion, a church that was actually a house, or j guess it was a house that was actually a church, a cool market, a maypole that is how you pick up a girl in Bavaria, and really special little things that only Adam could tell us, like pointing out the cannonball in the side of a church, telling us about the beer stein that dropped from the clock tower that didn't break, the window where hitler decided to start the holocaust, and the lions to rub for good luck. Cool. Munich in a nutshell. Thanks adam! After our tour we headed to the English gardens where Susann told us we could find surfers in munich... Awesome! Adam did warn us that the beginning of the park is quite a bit of a nudist colony... He was right.. But as we wandered further into the gardens I spotted a surfboard out of the corner of my eye! Sweet! We watched the surfers surf the magical never ending wave almost under a bridge that was on the edge of the park.
K maybe it was time to head to Salzburg.. So we went back to the applestore to draw up a plan.. And since we had not heard back from the obermiar family who runs a hostel there where aunt Jean Jean used to work watt back in the day, I sucked up my fear of calling strangers and gave Philip a ring.. The convo started out pretty rough and awkward trying to explain who I was and why I wanted to stay there, and yes I know it's Oktoberfest. And then it got better and he offered us a free room! So mere and I went back to gather our things and head to Salzburg while Andrew hung back to hang out with some new Oktoberfest friends. We made some Austrian friends on the train..
The hostel was so nice and generous to us, and is even one of Europe's famous hostels, which is kinda a bug deal... It's like a status marking in the hostel world and means it's def the best in the area.. It was great. We meet a handful and a half of Aussies in the bar, and even a girl from Montana, scrapping up all the info we could get on croatia. Mere and I did a little more book research waiting for Andrew to get in, and then I crashed!
As a group we failed to get up and out of our room in an efficient manner. Somehow we made it out in a whirlwind by check out at 10 and enjoyed our complimentary standard breakfast buffet. We didn't get to thank Philip again in person, but we hope to send a postcard soon!! We went exploring in salzburg, a city I've been in 8 years ago, and only the skyline looked the same.. Maybe it's the difference of exploring oN foot vs car, or with other kids vs ur mom, or my memory is just that bad, but it was cool to see somewhere again in a different way. We struggled with the map at first, but eventually wandered into the old town, climbing the hill to the fortress, but we were too cheap to go in, checking out the main church with the cool dome that was bombed and rebuilt, and wandering through the adorable little cobblestone streets with the hanging signs. Mere and I tried on some €200+ dresses. I can't ever remember the name, but they are the dresses that are the girl version of liderhosen. Taking pictures was forbidden. After strolling a little more and wandering over to mozarts house, we headed through some pretty gardens and decided we should catch the fast train to Bled, Slovenia. We really didn't have much of an idea of what bled had to offer other than a lake with a church in the middle... But who really goes to Slovenia? So we did! After about a 4 hr ride, we made it to the little town of bled.. Not even a main train stop, so we had to ask the locals when to get off. There was just enough sunlight out to find our hostel in the day... But waiting over an hour for the bus killed that hoped. I chatted with the info lady at the the train station about places to go in Croatia.. Research still in progress even tho yes we are here now... And she suggested a few islands that didn't make the guide books. She was so happy to help and so expressive about the islands that we decided these were prolly the best to check out. After some chat with some older Aussies at the bus station, we finally caught our 4 min bus up the hill and went to find our hostel. There was no one at the reception, but luckily the guy in the bar next door, who ran the hostel next door, had our key for us.. Guess 7:30 was too late for our hostel man to wait around. We tossed our bags and headed out for some food, finding really only one open establishment, and so this is where we feasted. Unaware of how huge the plates were, we had mounds of food all over the table and a liter of wine.. All for €40 (thanks dad!) so slovenia is much more affordable than western Europe, and much more friendly. We were friends with half the restaurant by the end of the night, albiet most of them were Australian.. Of course! We decided too that canyoning with them was also a grand plan for the next day.. We went to the little pub next door with everyone and made a few more Aussie friends, one was Steve from melbourne, and he decided he wanted to join us on the overnight train to split the next night. Cool.more friends! Ha. So mere and I turned in for the night.
The next morning after meres morning run.. Seeing her go every morning has almost got me up to my 3rd run for 3 months now.. we found the local grocery store and got some breakfast stuff to enjoy on the patio of the bar of our hostel, where he owner was still nowhere to be found. We soaked up the sun, watched the chickens cross the road, and enjoyed the Slovenia morning, deciding canyoning at 2 was still a good idea even though our tain left at 5:49.. There was a back up one at 6:16 if we had to, and apparently canyoning bob had this reputation that couldn't be messed with. He was the man for slovanic canyoning. Over time we gathered Andrew and our Aussie friends and headed over to see canyoning bob.. By the time we got there, there was only 5 spots for 6 people, but Bob was nice and let us all join, although I was ready to take my spot no matter what.. We'd been waitin around all morning, and I wasn't about to let some dude who wasn't even there prevent us all from goin! but it worked out just fine, and we went back to check out with the hostel next to ours and store our bags there since we never ever saw our hostel man For our entire stay... Strange. We headed up the hill to the castle that we couldn't get in.. Maybe if the castle on top of the hill is ever under €7 we will go in. Then we headed down the hill on a nice wooded path to go find some cream cake... Apparently bleds specialty! We found a nice little spot.. The big fat slice of pure cream was def delicious.. And prolly cut a good few days off my life, but I can never pass up an opportunity for sugar! We also snacked on some leftovers from our previos night's feast to fuel up for our adventure with canyoning Bob.
We met up with our Aussie dinner friends and jumped in the van to find Steve, this kid I had talked to in the middle of the road for about an hour the night before. Steve was also hopin to catch the train right after our canyoning adventure too, so we basically had already met most of the canyoning group before hand. We got to the location, suited up in our really cool sleeveless wetsuits, wetsuit socks, and our cheap tennis shoes, and then carried our wetsuit tops, helmets, and harnesses up a not so well traveled path further into the woods. We practiced absailing down a tree, and apparently we were ready to go! Off to the first waterfall! Just a meter or two jump into the little pool of freezing water, everyone cleared the first jump easily, and everyone braved up for the second jump down the waterfall as well, prolly closer to 4 meters.. A guesstimated 15 feet.. No big deal. The third jump we had the option to absail halfway down the cliff and then jump, or to climb up a little rock and jump the full 9 meters.. About half the group climbed up for the jump, of course I was one of them, although a little freaked after jumping wrong off a cliff in tahoe last summer... I figured this was a good way to rebuild my confidence in jumping from tall things :) scary! But successful! Mere cleared just fine as well.. Like a little canonball, and Andrew balled up as well, rotating to break the water with his face. Ouch. Luckily he didn't get black eyes and could handle jumping off the rest of the cliffs. The 2 degree water was a nice icepack as well.. We continued flailing off of cliffs, sideways scaling some to get to the acceptable jumping point... We had a short pit stop when one guys camera slipped out of his hand and bob put on some super goggles and went fishing for it in the depths of the water.. Good thing it was waterproof, and crazy that he pulled it out! Way to go bob! We took our dear old time on the last few, and then floated down the river to get back to the van.. Bob said we would make the second back up train for sure, but he was def wrong.. Our oversized group I'm sure didn't help, so we missed both trains. Great. What's plan c?? Steve said we could catch the bus to ljibijuana, the capital, and from there there should be plenty of trains running to get to Zagreb in time to catch our planned overnight train, so we all hopped on a bus, and of course the train to zagreb wasn't leaving for an hour... We weren't gonna make the overnight train but we decided it would be good to get into Croatia and as close to split as possible that night. We sat down for a little dinner with Steve.. Kind of a strange fellow but very nice.. And he introduced us to the local meat pastry.. Interesting, but my belly wasn't so happy with it later on. We caught our train, and for the first time got our passports stamped on the train into Zagreb. It was now slightly after midnight, and the next train didn't leave til 6 something, so we debated finding a place to stay and sleeping in the station for a few hours. We followed our new tour guide to a hotel down the road.. Way too expensive for 5 hours of sleep, and then the second place we found told us there was an overnight bus that left at 12:30.. K we on it! Steve was above the bus or really tired, or maybe just tired of the crazy Americans, and he stayed in Zagreb as we booked it to the bus station. So I guess it's technically the next day, but our journey continued into the wee hour of 5:30 where we were dumped at the ferry port, right where we wanted to be, just a little bit early.. Team consensus found us on the next departing ferry at 6 am to the island of brac instead of hangin around to 11 for the boat to vis where we really wanted to go, o well.. Guess we will never kno what we missed!! So at least the sun was up when we got to Supetar, the teeny tiny less than happenin port town of brac.. We walked in a few circles hopin for the aparmani ladies to attack us and barter with us for a room, but no such thing happens at 7 am in low season.. The newsstand lady called her friend, Zelda as we called her, we struck an amazing deal of €20 a night for all three of three of us, headed to her place, and crashed.
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