Kamnikfolija

I continue just where I left you, at the last door in my last post. These photos cannot wait any longer, it was just so beautiful, and I need an eye rest. Around me everything is yellow.

It reminds me of this puzzle: why do we call Greenland green when it’s icy and Iceland an ice land if it’s green? But it’s how it is: summer scorches all green away, only to return almost precisely on November 1st. When Slovenia is about to get white.

But enough of that, let me take you to Kamniška Bistrica, a splendid breather of a place about 40 km north of Ljubljana which we visited about two weeks ago, on our last day in Slovenia. I have not been there for years, ever since it was the finish of one of the grandest adventures of my short life.

Father, sister and me namely decided, when I was young and foolish, to walk from Maribor, father’s birthplace and Slovenia’s second biggest city, to our home in Ljubljana, the capital. The car needs about 130 km, but we didn’t walk on the roads. We took mountain paths and in part followed the European walking route. (We took the funicular for the first ascent. We are not crazy.)

With the exception of one day that we spent resting in a hotel, watching Brigita Bukovec receiving silver medal for Slovenia in 100 m hurdles at Atlanta Olympic games (now you know the time frame), we needed a week and after that fully exhausted rolled down the mountains that you see in the photos below to land in this heaven of a place. We took the bus home faster than somebody could say “What about the last 40 km?”

Father – nebodigalen (don’t-call-him-lazy) – did the same route in its entirety, just in reverse, about ten years later again, with our first dog. Our bestia seem to grin in the first photo below saying “In your dreams! I’m Italian!” And in the second photo, where father is comforting noise-shattered but festive bestia on New Year’s Eve, look on the wall behind them and you will see father and our wonder dog Žak (here is the story how we got him) in a similar position on the bridge in Maribor at the end of their long walk. From the distance the dogs look alike too.

This time we only strolled around a little, took some photos and admired the scenery. After all, now we are borderline Italian.

A monument to the local legend Valentin Slatnar – Bôs.

Can you see me rolling down this mountain?

Hmmm. I remember how this feels!

Birth of a river.

This looks like a Truman’s World prop.

A Slovenian leads, an Italian is asking silently: “Why there?”

Yep, here was that door.

The expedition returns. Bestia forgot that he was afraid of bridges, and Italian.

My pack.

There she is. Photo: MC

This far is enough, says bestia.

Happy parent #1.

Happy (and stylish) parent #2.

Bestia is happy to go home. So much wilderness today.

And if somebody wonders about the title: Kamnik is the closest town. In the evening of the same day, as if I’d asked for it, I returned there for the concert of possibly my favourite current Slovenian production, and these things Matter.

Photo: a © signature mmm production