In the middle of the January, I had a meeting in Vienna for another project. This was a second time I had a meeting in Viena, surprisingly both times it was around Christmas. I was surprised that the city center was still decorated and there was a bit of the Christmas spirit in the air, although the markets were missing and still it was a far cry from the last time, when I went in mid December.
This time I went with my boss. The meeting was about the project, we just started, so not much work, at least for us. I just needed to present our team and then for the rest of the time it was more about getting to know other partners in project.
Me presenting the team.
Don’t know, why I liked this one so much.
As usually of late, I did a few walks around the city, went and saw some of the facades of famous buildings, haha, still haven’t made it inside, although to be fair, in Vienna I’ve also been already several times and in on of those times I did go see some of the palaces and the natural history museum.
As it seems of late, that I always post something about the food, I should not make an exception this time. We had Viena snichel, of course, and strudel and cakes and everything that goes with it. A bit more surprising could be that first night boss and I went to some Hindu restaurant near hotel, I don’t think I ever ate Indian before, it wasn’t bad at all and we also had some gigantic flat bread to go with it.
Gigantic flat bread.
Suprisingly good.
Can’t visit Viean without eating this.
Strudel and ice cream
Strudel and cake for breakfast.
It was a nice trip, but nothing to special, I’m just putting it here, since I want to make a map of countries I’ve visited in the future.
A timetable in front of a bakery that tells you when they bake fresh pasteries.
Sometimes you get Bible or Koran in the hotel room. This was the first time I found book about Buddhism.
Can’t believe, that I’ve visited most of the Europe before being to Hungary once. Finally, the black spot on my atlas was fixed last Christmas and I can finally say I’ve been to all the Slovenian neighbouring countries! So when deciding where to go for Christmas holidays, there wasn’t much deliberation, Budapest it is.
Hungarian parliament.
Budapest is about 450 km away from Ljubljana, so after checking the (bad) options for going with public transport, we decided to just drive. I think this was my longest drive in one go since Finland way, way back in 2013. Not only, was this the first time that I visited Hungary, it was also the first time that instead of going staying in a hotel (through booking.com), we reserved a small apartment near the city center through AirBnB. To be honest, the experience wasn’t much different then the one a year before at Malta. We got the key to the apartment through a “lock box” and again didn’t even saw the owner. The apartment was nice and cozy and not that expensive considering proximity to the center and Christmas time.
They projected a show/architecture to the facade of the church, it looked super awesome.
The whole trip was very nice, we avoided any museums or other landmarks where you have to go inside. I’m not entirely sure why I do this, I think I have a feeling that I’m going to find them super boring, I guess I should try to actually go inside from time to time, maybe I’m in those years that I’ll find it interesting again. But walked around the city and visited all the bridges, castles, statues and the rest, we even went running couple of laps around the island in the middle of Donava.
View from the castle hill toward the city center.
One of the castles on the hill
Heroes Square
Castle hill
This thing looks like it came streight from the Harry Potter books.
Parliament from the other side
The city center was nicely decorated although not as much as Paris.
Bike repair shop
We saw quite a few stone knights around the city. They look really marvolous.
So what else did we do, beside walking, running and sightseeing? Well eating of course! Haha, I haven’t eaten so much food in a long, long time, probably since Pierogis in Warsaw, haha. Anyway, we tried to lean toward traditional Hungarian food. To be honest, I had no idea what it was, before googling, I had a feeling that goulash has to be somewhere, but I kind of get the vibe that goulash is traditional everywhere in Eastern Europe. So yea, each day we tried to find an interesting restaurant and go eat something there, in the evenings (yea right, just evenings haha), we grabbed some delicious chimneys from the stalls and all over the day we tried some small pastries that could be found in metro stations, for some reason.
Haha, points for the name, although I have a feeling it’s not uncommon.
I forgot if this had any alcohol in it or not (I think yes) and the frozen cherries on top.
What could be hiding under the bread?
Famous goulahs #1. I think this was with beef and potatoes.
It’s actually not pizza (yea, whatever), but traditional dish called Langos. Its basically deep fried bread with some pizza toppings. We tried different ones, with mushrooms, cheeses and bacon, over the days. Definitely very good.
I don’t think I saw this many macarons in Paris! Despite looking gorgeous, we didn’t try them, pff Hungarian food only!
Making some chimneys.
Chimenys, they had many different “spices” that you could have on top. From chocolate, cinnamon, just sugar, to vanilla, coconut and more exotic ones.
Kurtos Kalacs, or chimneys as I call them. I was surprised to find out that it’s not just something they eat around the Christmas but is around all year long. Although I have no idea, who would want to eat this during hot summer. I don’t think we have anything similar in Slovenia. Its made from some kind of dough (maybe like the dough for donuts) and then sprinkled with differnet kinds of spices / sugars on the outer crust. Very good indeed.
Not sure how to eat this. Ah no, just kidding, by this time, I had ate at least 5 of them already 😀
Goulash in a different restaurant, this time served in a cup made from bread, that you eat together with the soup. I actually had something similar in Slovenia, but it was with a vegetable soup.
Some very nice hot chocolate. It was quite cold during all the walking around the city, sometimes we had to warm up with a nice hot chocolate.
Soup with cheese and something that I forgot. I think I had something similar in St. Petersburg.
I think this was supposed to be some variant of chicken goulash/stew with paprika and something else.
Thę stew with paprika, but this time with beef instead of chicken.
Finally a dessert from all those goulashes. Somlói Galuska, cake sponge with walnut kream, rum and all the good stuff.
So yea, the trip was short, an extended weekend, but very fun, not even sure if there is much more that one can do, if you do not wish to go visit the therms, catacombs or some of the museums. It was a bit chilly, but I think around the Chrismas must be the best time of the year for visit, as there is so much going on all around. The prices are also not that bad, it’s even a bit cheaper than Ljubljana and for some reason wine is very very cheap in the stores. You can find several bottles of (ok) wine for under 3€.
What would I give, if we had such a large ice rink in Ljubljana.
Paris, the city of mimes, croissants and baguettes, I don’t know how my French lessons in high school made me dislike everything French for so long. To my big surprise my short work trip in the beginning of December was amazing.
Eiffel Tower
This was not my first time in Paris, I’ve been here once a long time ago, when we went as a school excursion. Interestingly enough back then I didn’t really appreciate it, or maybe it was conducted in the manner that I didnt. The things I remember from that time were, walking whole days long, Eiffell Tower, eating in some weird French version of McDonalds and getting bored to death in famous Louvre. I never got the feeling, that every person in the movies (even Batman!) thinks of when speaking of Paris, of nice romantic city, of cute cafés on each corner and famous French pastries. To my surprise, soon after arriving I got this exact feeling.
The famous Notre Damme, was located near my hotel. Despite being closed up for tourists, it still attracted many curious looks and photos
My hotel was located near Notre Damme, which burned down earlier that year. I had some work meetings and presentations in the mornings but had time to walk around the city in the evenings. I took full advantage of my good location and walked around to all the must-see vistas in Paris, such as Tour Eiffel, Louvre, Arch de Triumph, Champs-Élysées and many others. Since the city was already decorated for Christmas, I must say I almost enjoyed some random streets full of people, markets and cafés more than the usual “tourist traps”. Since I’ve been in/on most of the attractions in high school, and still had some bad memories about it, the worst for some reason is Louvre, I didn’t pay to go into any attractions, Paris is super expensive after all, but rather spent that money in different pastries hops and similar.
Really interesting statues near the Palace de la Concorde.
Arc de Triomphe
Champs-Elysees
This was interesting. I’m not sure how it works, do people eat while it drives around? How do they keep anything on the plates/tables
The famous pyramid in front of Louvre
Some random decorations behind my hotel
Sunset on Sena
Some random toy stores
This was a big surprise, I didn’t even know he was still working, let alone that he would be features on some Parisian posters.
Une buggete, s’il vous plait! Despite studiying French for 4 years, I never could understand or even less say anything useful, or that’s what I thought until now. Somehow, I did manage with what I remembered from my studies almost 15 years ago and the few phrases I did look up that I needed. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t write a novel or had a speech in French, but it was enough that I could go into a random store, bought what I wanted, ask for directions and so on. So why did I even need all this? Well I decided that this time I’ll actually try and experience a bit of the “romantic” Parisian culture from the movies. I went and had a croissant in a cafe, each morning I went into a boulangerie (basically a bakery in Paris) to buy the traditional baguette and usually some other delicious pastries and in the evenings I had some snacks from the stalls. One day I even ventured to the one very famous bakery, that specializes in macarons (a friend and I had a bit of a macaron phase during last couple of months, trying to recreate them semi successfully).
Breakfast each morning. I actually booked a hotel without breakfast on purpose, so I could try different bakers each morning. I never new how good the freshly baked baguettes can be, I ate them bare (without anything on them).
So man things to choose from.
Hard to choose.
Famouse foie gras – geese liver.
Some random food from the meetings.
The famous macarons, thats 4.5€ for 1 cookie. :O
They were definitely better than the ones Vito and I made.
All in all the trip was a short but to my surprise much better than I anticipated. The only downside was that the day I was supposed to return home there were some super strikes which closed the city. I had an evening flight, but instead of exploring the city whole day, I had to leave my hotel at 4.30 in the morning, with a cab I had to reserve 2 days before in order to even make it to the airport. Supposedly they closed most of the roads sometime in the morning and no public transport (underground) was working since midnight, so there were expected to be some major congestion problems. Anyway in the end I made it to the airport and spent whole day reading the book there, not that bad I guess.
Finally, started checking off some of the eastern European countries! I didn’t travel much in first half of 2019, so I decided to go to a so-called summer school, which was held in Warsaw, at the end of July.
Welcome to the Place of Culture and Science! This was the last place I expected to find statue of Yoda. Welcome to Poland!
I was happy to find out that there is a direct connection between Ljubljana and Warsaw, so in no time, I was already getting lost in the Poland’s capital. I was surprised by the size of the city, and I must say, was even more impressed with the city itself. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find under the so called eastern block, but I was presently surprised. The city has one of the best public transports I’ve ever seen, I travelled with boat, bus, train, tram and even a scooter (skiro), which became really popular that summer. My hotel, or rather apartment, I just love these, compared to the standard hotels, was in a modern new skyscraper about 20 min walking distance from city center. It didn’t have the best view, but it made it up with a spacious living room and kitchen area, not that I needed to cook anything the time I spent there.
I had a nice park behind my accommodation.
The summer school took place in a big expo center in the outskirts of the city, or if not really outskirts at least 1h from the city center by public transport. Here I got a bit of the eastern side vibe, but it wasn’t that bad. The school took place for most of the day, but I managed to skip a boring lecture from time to time and had an extra 3 days before and after to explore the city a bit more.
You can travel with both these old school trams or a bit more modern ones.
Trams 2.0
As I said before, the public transport is really well-designed, especially if you compare it to the Malta’s. You can also buy a 10-day transport pass, which gives you access to all the transporting options available and is actually not that expensive. Well, not exactly all the transport options, every I went I saw tons of electric scooters lying around. They weren’t that popular in Slovenia yet, so I was surprised by the numbers I saw here. They were everywhere, literary everywhere and everyone was using them. They weren’t exactly cheap, about 1€ per 10 minutes, which in the end costs about the same as using Uber, but it’s much more fun. After a couple of days of watching them I had to try them and as one would expect it was quite fun. The city consists of many cycling roads, so it’s not a problem to drive it, but the best part was driving alongside the river. Later that summer, when I returned to Slovenia, they started popping up all over Ljubljana as well, strangely, this year (2020) I don’t think I saw any of them here in Ljubljana.
Scooters
were literary everywhere and from different “suppliers”
I tried the green ones – Lime
The system works very simple. You just go to a scooter you find at the first corner, scan its QR code with app and drive with it. After you are done, you just leave it at the side of the road (parked, not just thrown on the grass), take a photo of it and walk away, it’s that simple.
Someone didn’t park it correctly. I think other users can rate how well you parked and I guess you can get punished if you never park it at a bike stop or something like that.,
The city itself is about 70 years old, it got completely destroyed during the WW2, so I don’t think there are many (if any) buildings older than that. But somehow they managed to renovate the city center, to look like it did before. The rest of the city is a mixture of the Soviet architecture and modern skyscrapers, with lots of parks and trees all over the place. It actually doesn’t look that bad place to live in, which is especially surprising if you consider how large it is. The center of city is “decorated” by big ugly skyscraper, I the Poles call it ugly sister. It’s one of the 5 skyscrapers that Stalin had build in various cities of eastern block, to show of how great the soviet architecture is.
The tallest building in Warsaw.
Palace of Culture and Science – aka the ugly sister. The tallest building in Warsaw.
Modern, high skyscrapers in the city center. They are poping up all over the place, everywhere I looked there were construction sites, demolishing old buildings and building new taller ones.
View from Palace of Culture and Science.
It’s really large city, almost as far as the eye can see.
A bit richer quarter, full of houses and trees. It’s still far away to the outskirts.
A bit of soviet architecture.
Center of the old town.
The city’s old town was rebuild after the war, but they kept the style and architecture of the old one.
Hotel in old town.
Another graffiti.
Some interesting graffiti near my place.
Another graffiti near my part of the town.
The city is full of parks, some are really large, took me more than an hour to walk through it.
Another park.
Another statue of a soldier, it may look like Stalin, but it’s not.
Statue of Charles de Gaulle. Interesting choice, I must say.
Marie Curie, I though she was French, but no, she was born in Warsaw.
Another thing I was pleasantly surprised was food. This was a reall surprise, I did not expect such a good food from Poland. I’m not sure if it plays a bit on my Slavic roots, although I thin my food of the childhood was leaning more toward the Italian cuisine. Anyway, I found one of my favourite dishes here, called Pierogi. It’s something like tortellini, filled with many many different fillings. Omg, during my stay I had so many of them, I think toward the end I became like 5% pierogi at one point. They have this traditional Polish food, although I think they only server pierogi, chain restaurant called Zapiecek. The food is surprisingly good, and the serving staff (well more or less girls) wear this traditional (I think), red dresses, its quite fun, definitely recommend. Sadly I didn’t take any picture of them, but yea if you’re in Warsaw it’s a must do. The pierogi come in numerous varieties, from the ones in the soup, to fried / cooked ones to the ones eaten as desert. I think they have more than 90 different kinds in Zapiecek. The first time I went to try them, I ordered like 30 different ones, the girl couldn’t believe I managed to eat them, haha. At the end, she teased me, if I want ice cream with them, I still regret I turned her down. Anyway, besides pierogi as in any large city you can find all different kinds of cuisine, and as always a traditional dish that you’ve eaten in at least 4 other countries as a traditional dish. This time, it was nothing else but Blejska kremšnita.
Beef soup with pierogi.
Another soup with pierogi, forgot what exaclty was inside.
If I remember correctly, the left one was beet soup with pierogi and the right one I don’t remember, I think beets and onions or something- it was cool and refreshing.
Dessert pierogies. Filled with different berries and covered in cream.
Fried pierogi, filled with different kind of meats and vegetables. The sauce on the left I think was melted butter/fat with something inside. Needles to say I came back 2kg heavier.
Raspberry smoothie coupled with a shot of vodka. We are in eastern Europe for god’s sake!
Some really nice cocktails in the bars. The night-life was quite good, with lots of young people on the streets and nice bars. The drinks weren’t that expensive either.
The usual breakfast I had in the “hotel’s loby”.
Traditional Polish dish …. my ass. (This was served at the summer school, I didn’t ate 50 of them :D)
Sure…
Don’t think there is much more to add to this. I was really pleasantly surprised by the city, it’s modern, nice and not that expensive (maybe a little cheaper than Ljubljana, 5%). I had lots of fun visiting it, the night-life is surprisingly good, there were lots of festivals and events going on in the evenings at different parks and in the old town. You can get by with English well enough, although you can see or hear the difference compared to Scandinavia or Central Europe, even with the younger population. But if you know a few Slavic words and can do the Italian hand gesture talk, you get by just fine.
Is it me, or are the dragons becoming more popular than ever?
Sure
Well, not much more to say, expect I definitely recommend a visit.
Year 2018 was full of trips, even so, there weren’t any that could count as “traditional Slovenian” “lets go to the seaside” holidays. Canary islands could have counted under this, but we since it was quite cool back then we only swam once. So by the end of October, Veronika and I started to look for options where could we go, to have a little piece of a summer break in November. We were not disappointed with what we found, Malta, another country to get checked off the list, since it was post tourist season it was very cheap to get the plane ticket and also to rent an apartment there. So no more than a week after the booking, we boarded the plane and were off, to what later turned out to be our last holiday together.
Despite being the first week of November, we were greeted with Christmas tree and all decorations that go with it at the Maltese airport upon arrival. Festival atmosphere soon faded as we tried to find the bus to the small town where our apartment was. Despite being ensured that Malta is so small, its like bigger city, that you can go with public transport everywhere you want on the island, it later turned out to be quite a big cause of pain and distress. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a public transport so poorly operated as here. While the bus network actually covered the whole island, the timetables were more of a suggestion rather than actual timetable. More than once, we waited well over an hour for a bus (line) that took in total 30 minutes. How they managed to do this still confuses me. To top it off, for some reason Google Maps do/did not work on the island. What is weird is that they worked when I checked them from Slovenia, but while being on Malta, they suddenly stopped working. Some weird region locks for reasons beyond me. Anyway, after boarding the wrong bus and getting in the city of Valletta instead the small town nearby the airport and spending 3 hours for a 10km ride (that’s how much it’s from the airport to our apartment), we finally made it to a small town of Il-Brolli.
Our apartment was in the Pretty Bay (bottom right).
As we reached our accommodation the bad mood was soon forgotten. The apartment building was operated privately, as we arrived the key was waiting us in a special locker box with a pin number (similar to bike lock) and when we were done with our holiday we returned the key there, meaning we haven’t even seen the owner. The building was located just at the edge of the beach, with a nice view over the Pretty Bay. We were staying at top floor, and had a small terrace with an amazing view. The place was really amazing and must be quite pricey during the peak tourists season, but as we were there in November, it was almost next to nothing.
Just a small storm 🙂
View from accommodation was perfect, well it would be perfect, if there wasnt a big shipyard just to the left of this photo. xD
Pretty bay
This soon became my favourite part of the apartment.
The next day came a time when we had to test our hypothesis that it’s possible to swim in November at Malta. The weather over the week was pretty good in general. We had quite a few strong Storms, but they came and went very quickly leaving clear skies afterwards. The temperatures during the day were just right, not too hot, just warm enough for shorts and t-shirt, while during the evening / night it cooled enough for a long sleeves. Anyway the weather looked (almost) perfect for a swim, depending on which direction you were looking, so there was no excuse to take the plunge. The water was surprisingly warm for the time of the year, it must have had 20-22C, so enough for swimming.
A perfect day for swimming …
… maybe not.
The island is tiny, if you would have a car, everything would be 15min away, as we were stuck with buses, we usually made one trip to the old city – Valletta, which is capital of the island, if I remember correctly. The city or rather conglomerate of cities is rather large, so there was plenty to explore. Despite being out of the main tourist season, the place was still crowded with tourists. We tended to avoid main touristy (paid) attractions and rather explored the city on foot. There are quite a few enormous old buildings and palaces all over the city. I was very impressed with the city walls as well, at some places they must have been more than 10 floors tall. The old city streets were narrow and steep, it must be a nightmare driving a car there, while the shoreline was full of enormous yachts.
They were actually firing something from the canons just a couple of minutes earlier.
It’s actually hard to determine from a distance, which buildings are old and which are new.
Enormous cathedrals rise above the roofs of Valletta.
Rich, enormous yachts are all over the bay.
I guess it’s much better than walking or driving a car through those narrow streets.
I’m not sure, why anyone would want to drive a car through these narrow streets.
The island is actually full of antique ruins, attractions and vistas. However, we didn’t feel like visiting much of them. One of the “problems” of the holidays we took in the last years was that we were always running around, trying to see as much as possible, the result was that we came back home even more tired instead of rested. This holidays our primary goal was to relax and rest, so we spent most of our days reading a book, lying on a beach and taking short walks in through the nearby towns and Valletta. One day we made an exception and went to the neighbouring island Gozo, which is (was) famous for “Azuer window” that collapsed couple of years ago. The island is about 40 km from our location, so needless to say, it took us over 6 hours to get there, no kidding, we actually had to get up early, so we caught the first bus at 7AM, well we arrived at the blue lagune no sooner than 1 PM. Blue Lagoon is located on an even smaller island between the Malta and Goza and is famous, as you can imagine, by its turquoise blue water. We spent a couple of hours there, swimming and drinking some tropical drinks from an actual pineapple. After no more than couple of hours we decided to catch a cab, to actually make it to the window before the dark. We just made it and despite the azure window collapsing a couple of years ago we were still impressed by great vistas, nice sunset and gorgeous cliffs. We took a couple of photos there and then slowly, returned, we arrived sometime between 10 or 11pm. So in total, we spent about 12h travelling and did roughly 120 km. I’m not kidding, I can do 120 km in less than 5h on a bike.
Maggar, entry point of Gozo.
It was surprisingly tasty. The water was also amazing, very shallow and warm.
Pineapple drink – and no, its not pinna collada.
The cliffs. I think the window/bridge that collapsed was at this cliff.
I’m not sure, why in every country I visit they have some pastry, that is supposed to be their traditional thing, yet I’ve eating exactly the same thing in 3 different countries. Anyway the Malta was not different, although we didn’t eat out much, since we had an amazing BBQ at our apartment and made most of our food there. As one would guess, seafood is popular at Malta, and we often went to a local fish market in a nearby town to pick up fresh fish for lunch / dinner that day.
My favourite thing about the apartment.
Fish market in a town nearby.
Some “traditional” pasteries.
What else is there to say about Malta? Well it’s a really nice place to visit, they have a lot of historical sights to visit, if you’re into that, some really nice beaches and tourist attractions. While the public transport is a mess, it is worth noting that they drive on the wrong side of the road, so it might not be the best idea to rent a car either. While visiting the island we had lots of fun exploring the old city of Valletta. For some reason the city was full of funny statues, not sure if it was just a temporary exhibition or something or if it’s always like that and despite being November, you could already see them ramping up for December and Christmas.
Not sure what to think about this.
Dorbell
Don’t feed the pigeons.
Dorbell
Not sure what this is supposed to be
Yea right.
Merry Christmas @ November 10th.
Blue Grotto – A cave underneath the cliffs with really blue water.
All in all we had a great time visiting Malta, from what we experienced I would actually recommend going either in late spring or early autumn in order to catch much lower prices. Most of the activities are still possible even off the main season.
An end of an era, 10 years have gone so fast, yet in the end I wouldn’t change a thing.
°C
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