Sunday, 23rd October 2005,Novo Mesto, Slovenia Set Books Free!
Ages ago I remember hearing about
www.bookcrossing.com. It's a great concept - someone basically came
up with the idea of leaving several thousand books lying around the
world for people to find. The finders read them and when finished leave
them for someone else to find. Here's how the
Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it:
bookcrossing n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up
and read by others, who then do likewise.
Our current
Hospitality Club host caught us browsing his bookshelf and
has given us 2 books to be read and then released into the
wild. Vagabonding by Rolf Potts and Ghost Riders by Richard
Grant. It's great to have something to read in English again!
DAILY RANT
Just found out from (http://roma.freewebpages.org/ici_vatican.htm) that the Italian Prime
Minister Berlusconi wants to
exempt the Vatican from a I.C.I tax (a municipality tax on
buildings that provides 35% of the municipality's income). To do this he needs to change
the law. Is this a last desperate attempt to gain some
votes? Umm - makes one wonder. Apart from the Catholic Church probably
being one of the richest bodies on earth - and the fact that
it already receives 3 billion per annum from the Italian public - isn't this rather unfair on all the other
religious bodies in Italy which won't be included in this tax
exception? According to the LP the country is 84% Roman
Catholic, 6% Jewish, Muslim and Protestant. Isn't there enough
religious discrimination in this world already?
Wednesday, 14th September 2005,Lipsenj, Slovenia VELOMAD
EN FRANÇAISE!
OUI! Richard has started the French part of the website. For the French speakers amongst you you can see it
here.
Tuesday, 13th September 2005,Lipsenj, Slovenia Visit to Škocjanske Caves. OK yesterday was incredible but seriously there is a
reason why the
Škocjanske Caves arean UNESCO world heritage site.
Again they were amazingly kind and gave us the entrance tickets for
free. Do we feel like the luckiest people on the planet at the moment -
yes we certainly do. You'll also see a photo of us on their
website if
you check it - can you imagine how wonderful these people are are - not
only do they generously allow us to visit for free but they thank us for
visiting. Do not miss the opportunity to visit these caves if you are in
Slovenia.
Monday, 12th September 2005,Lipsenj, Slovenia Visit to Postonja Caves.
We had a lot of people telling us to visit the Postonja
Caves in Slovenia, we also had just as many warning us not to go
- it was expensive, it was full of tourists, the train was tacky.
Well we are tourists and we decided to go and find out for ourselves.
It is truly an incredible experience
and despite the fact it is stuffed full of tourists once you
enter you understand why. But we have to say a huge thank you as
we nearly had heart failure when we saw the entrance price - it
would have been almost 3 days our daily allowance. We explained
our predicament to the lovely lady at the cashier desk and she
bowled us over by giving us 2 free entrance tickets. THANK YOU!
Sunday, 11th September 2005,Ljubljana, Slovenia Article published in NeDelo.
We had a great article published today in the NeDelo
newspaper that you can see
here (In
Slovenian of course for all 2 million of you!).
Friday, 9th September 2005,Ljubljana, Slovenia School Presentation.
This morning at the request of the Institut Français,
we did a small presentation at the École Française in Ljubljana. Well we
should say Richard did as it was in French - Stani just occasionally
held up a map or flag! We were expecting only young children of about 5
or 6 years old but we seemed to have a full range of ages. We
certainly seemed to cause a disruption when we arrived with the bikes,
the children without the slightest indication of shyness made a big
circle around us and piled us with questions. In the classroom
Richard
was only a few minutes into his talk when their arms started shooting up
in order to get their questions in. What was interesting was the actual
questions themselves. Apart from the normal questions about our bikes,
flags, how much everything cost etc, several questions such as "Had we
travelled through countries which were at war or in conflict?", "Which
were the most dangerous countries", "What did we do in dangerous
situations?".
Thursday, 8th September 2005,Ljubljana, Slovenia Cycling in paradise.
Slovenia may be one of the most wonderful countries
we've cycled in yet. The countryside is spectacular and almost more
importantly - CLEAN! There's very little litter around and we
even see people in towns putting their cigarette butts in the bin. What
a pleasant change. We highly recommend any cyclists reading this to come
here cycling - you won't be disappointed.
Another positive thing we can say for the country is that the people
are very friendly and hospitable - we've stayed with a few people and
they have all been lovely and really gone out of their way to help us so
thank you to any Slovenian's reading this!
This morning we had an interview with the Delo newspaper - they are
supposed to be publishing the article this Sunday.
Plans for the next few days are to head South to Cerknica to see the
disappearing lake, the Postojna caves, the Škocjanske caves, then into
Croatia. We were going to go down the coast but several cyclists have
now recommended doing the islands rather than the coastal road.
Thursday, 1st September 2005,Škofja Loka, Slovenia Chasing after Panasonic.
We're not sure how much longer we will be able to
maintain this website. Our LCD screen has cracked on our laptop and the
fluid is leaking out - every day it gets a little worse. We are staying
with our new friends Greg and Vili, they have been considerable effort
in telephoning every company they can think of (including Panasonic in
Slovenia) but to no avail. Panasonic in the USA is not responding to any
of our emails - not even the sales department so we don't hold much high
regard for their customer services at the moment. We'll like to mention
that this laptop is one of their ToughBook series - meant to withstand
rain, heat, cold, being dropped etc. We're seriously disappointed.
Anyone who may know someone at Panasonic who might be able to help -
we'd love to hear from you! You can contact us
here.
