So I'm just starting out my second year living in Udine. Udine, a city which is very close to the borders with both Austria and Slovenia, neither of which country did I make it to visit last year. All has been rectified in the space of just a few days, with my little excursions to Villach, Austria and the fantastic city of Ljubljana, Slovenia. 
I wrote previously about the frustrations of transport links - the only trains from this part of Italy to go to Ljubljana arrive at 2am. Considering it's only an hour and a half to drive or take the train, that's pretty ridiculous that there isn't another connection (ditto for Zagreb - arrives at 4am). To get to Austria is far easier - there's currently a bus link (as no train) from Udine to Villach and Klagenfurt, and train connections from there to Vienna, Salzburg etc, and as it turns out, most of the rest of Europe. I'd been meaning to hop on that bus for quite a while, but again it's quite frustrating as the earliest to leave Udine is 11.15am, and the latest back is currently 12.56 (though it was 14.56 on my first return trip). That makes it impossible to do a day trip so you have to stay overnight. The hostel in Klagenfurt seems to be permanently booked, so when I saw that there was space in the Villach one I decided just to go there as it looked a nice enough town. When I was researching places to go during the quiet period before work starts I investigated flights (from Venice or Trieste) and trains/buses to various places, but nothing was resulting cheap or convenient enough, and I totally failed to link in my mind the previously acquired knowledge that Villach was a good place to get connections to other places from. So, I just booked the Saturday 11.15am coach with a night in the hostel and a return at 14.56 the following day, giving me a decent amount of time to explore.

Villach

A very small town which serves well as a base for exploring the rest of the region and its nearby lakes and mountains. When I arrived, I had a rough idea of the things there were to do but hadn't really planned anything or done too much investigation. First stop: tourist office. I vaguely remembered having seen something about a castle up in the mountains nearby, with birds of prey and stuff. However, I'd only been able to find details of driving up there and nothing about public transport (as is so often the way). So I asked the guy in the tourist office and he said I could get a bus to the bottom and then walk up to the top. He reckoned it was about 40 minutes uphill. Seemed fine to me... actually it was a long time since I'd done that kind of thing. During my year abroad when I travelled extensively at weekends I used to do quite a few similar things, walking up random hills and stuff to visit castles in the middle of nowhere...it's great fun! So, I decided to revisit those days and do it again. Used some rusty German to speak to the bus driver and ask him to tell me where I should get off, and off we went. (Incidentally, I wish I had retained my basic German better!). 


Landskron Castle

Got off the bus and followed the path all the way up and up and up to the top. The views were of course absolutely stunning and well worth the trek. I missed the birds of prey show, but I was still able to catch glimpses of them gliding above as I was making my way up to the top, and then there were some griffon vultures still flying about once I was up there... 

Then, I discovered that that mountain is also the location of a project called "Monkey Mountain". Some 170 Japanese Macaque monkeys are living there in semi-wild conditions, and you can pay to visit the area in which they are housed. It really is a vast vast mountainous and tree filled area such that you wouldn't really know it was an enclosure. It was an interesting guided tour, absolutely entirely in German such that I understood how my beginner students feel!! But I was able to grasp the main ideas and was interested to watch them demonstrate their intelligence by retrieving fruit from various complicated puzzles.

With all these exciting things, this day certainly turned out to be the highlight of the Villach trip with the following day being a bit of a wash out. I hadn't factored in the usual Sunday closures...nothing I wanted to do was going to be open! So I ended up taking a 2 hour boat trip down the river (not really recommended, although quite relaxing) and just wandered around town a bit until it was time to get the bus back again.  

On the first day after all the adventures I straight went to the hostel (about a 15 minute walk out of town in a not particularly nice suburb). My feet were exhausted by then and I couldn't face walking back into town, so I ate at the only place nearby, a Chinese restaurant. The menu was entirely in German but I was very pleased with myself for managing to order about the only Chinese food that I actually like, and really enjoying the meal! 
Then back to the hostel for a very early night! The hostel itself was perfectly pleasant but almost deserted! My 4 bed dorm was shared with just one other girl, a lovely Japanese traveller who had spent 2 years studying in Edinburgh before undertaking this 2 month European trip before returning to Japan for the first time in over 2 years! Any sense of homesickness on my part (which always hits me very slightly when I first return after a time in the UK/Taizé etc, and definitely did this time after 3 fantastic summer months!) quickly disappeared on hearing that! Anyway, it was through chatting with her that I was reminded of the connections from Austria. She had been in Venice and wanted to travel to Slovenia and Croatia and had found the exact same problem as me (the middle of the night arrival times) and had been advised to go to Villach and then across from there. Doh - if I'd remembered in advance I could have made a really nice combined trip, straight on to Ljubljana from Villach!  

Udine
What I actually did, was travel back to Udine on the bus and go home, investigate buses, trains and hostels for Ljubljana, book it all and pack ready to leave again the following day! 
Frustratingly, the last bus back that I had taken that day had from that day on been cancelled, so I had to book on the earlier 12.56 one, and I only found that out when having a lengthy conversation with a lovely Trenitalia man at the ticket desk who was amused at me risking the booking even though I wasn't certain there was an earlier connecting train from Ljubljana. Luckily it all turned out fine and all my worries about the whole thing were unfounded (I couldn't book the Austrian ticket online for some unknown reason so I was just assuming I'd be able to do it turning up on the day). 
Lots of hostels to choose from in Ljubljana but I definitely plumped for the absolute best one location wise - right in the centre! More on that later.


Ljubljana 
So, packed and ready to go, with Ljubljana researched in detail and a tourist pass booked (saving lots of money on all the sights, museums etc) I got on the same bus, less than 24 hours after I'd last been on it, with the same driver, and went back to Villach! We were due in at 12.50pm and I had decided I'd have to wait until 15.09 to get the train as the earlier one was at 12.56pm. When we got there I had to wait quite a while to get my case out of the hold, and then at the ticket desk there was a lady asking lots of complicated questions, but once I had realised that it was 12.55pm and I had a chance of making the train, I literally ran like the wind and jumped on it as the whistle blew!! (suddenly realising I hadn't validated my ticket, but luckily in Austria you don't have to.. nor in Slovenia...only in Italy it seems! (and France, I know). Anyway so that was really lucky because it meant that I arrived much earlier than expected and had a lot of time to do stuff on that afternoon/evening (which made up for having to leave at 9am on the Weds).

After a beautiful train ride through Austria and Slovenia I arrived and was checked in to the hostel by 3pm. It was such a perfect location - 10 minutes walk from the station and literally in the centre, by the river and completely immersed in Ljubljana's fantastic cafe culture. Made for an overall far nicer experience than Villach because everything was on hand and I could stay out as late as I liked and still be only a few paces from "home". 

My tourist pass was for 24 hours and I didn't really want to start it until the following day, but after having wandered around and seen a lot of the city on foot, and having had a lovely spritz in one of the pavement cafes, I decided to start it at 6pm with a boat tour (wasn't put off by the Villach boat tour, obviously, but should have been as to be honest it was equally as boring!). Nice way just to chill out for a bit though, and I was definitely getting my money's worth on the tourist pass. It was €20.70 (with a 10% online discount) and everything was then free - I totalled up the things I'd done at the end and full price it would have been €55.60 (including €8 for the boat tour). 

When I got back I went to a pizzeria for a fantastic pizza and wine (rivalled Italians!) in a place which was absolutely packed with British people (tourists and businessmen alike) - Easyjet must be doing a storming trade on that route! Was lovely just to enjoy being outside in the unprecedented September heat, watching the world go by. From there I headed on to another cafe on the other side of the river which had a live band playing, and there I enjoyed local beer along with the live music until quite late. The atmosphere in the city is just fantastic - the population is about 280,000 (400,000 including the suburbs) with 60,000 of them being students and it's a really young feeling, lively city. 
The hostel was also buzzing when I returned, and with free wifi and free internet on computers in the common room it stayed that way until the early hours of the morning. My 8 bed dorm was full, and was unisex (downside = guys snoring loudly! I don't mean to be sexist as I know girls can snore too, but it didn't happen on the second night when it was only girls in the room!!) and people didn't settle down until about 1am, with people still coming in at 4.30am. This aspect of the holiday really reminded me of my Interrailing trip - actually all of it did, I was really reliving those day! Train rides across Europe and meeting random people in youth hostels... 
I really liked this hostel, even though it was pretty run down actually. Free internet was an absolute blessing for an addict like me (and seemingly all the other guests!), cold showers were not so welcome...
 
On Tuesday I had the whole day to explore, and to get the rest of my money's worth from the tourist pass! Started with a trek across town to the Botanical Garden out in the sticks... far too early in the morning (it was the only thing open before the guided tour at 10am), such that it was still very foggy and not really an ideal place to visit then. Still, it meant I arrived back in town in perfect time to have a small breakfast in a cafe before meeting for the tour. The tour was 2 hours long (worth €10) and was with an excellent guide. There were 7 Americans, 2 Japanese and me. The guide, Martin, spoke fantastic English, as in fact everybody in Ljubljana seems to. Seriously, I was in awe every time I asked if someone spoke English and they replied in perfect, fluent and natural language... quite a contrast from what I'm used to (no comment!). 

Anyway, the tour took us all the way round the city with a full history given of all the sights encountered:  

and then we got the funicular up to the castle which overlooks the whole city. Nice views from up there too (although after the Villach castle experience it wasn't really much in comparison!). The tour ended and I explored the castle a bit (there's an exhibition with an extensive history of Slovenia, which was interesting but I found a bit dense on the things to read - it was a series of computer screens giving details of the whole history, a few pages at a time...you basically read a whole book if you read it all! 
From there I descended back to the city on a tourist train (again included in the pass!!). Lunch in a cafe and then set off for my museum tour. I went to the National Gallery, the Modern Art Museum, the National Museum of Slovenia and the Natural History Museum. Also visited the nearby Serbian Orthodox Church (beautiful) and the Tivoli Gardens (an enormous park). On my maps it said to get the bus 14 to the zoo, which was to be my next stop, but I couldn't find out where to get that bus from so I asked in one of the museums if they thought it was walkable. She reckoned about 20 minutes. Fine by me. Set off, and about 40 minutes later I arrived. Now my feet might have been hurting, but I didn't actually walk that slowly, it was just miles! You had to skirt all the way around the Tivoli gardens to get there. No wonder none of the tourist guides mentioned the possibility of walking! I mean, that's not a massively long walk, but it was longer than I was expecting. Anyway, I arrived in good time to get in before my pass expired and with plenty of time to explore before the zoo closed at 7pm. I also checked there was a bus back!!! Yes, at 7.20pm.
Now, the zoo. I'm always torn because I hate zoos in principle, and having seen many of the animals in the wild it's always quite heartbreaking to see them cramped in those conditions, but I like animals and I like seeing and observing animals, so I wanted to go anyway (and it was included in the pass ;)). In fact, this zoo is amazing in some ways and totally rubbish in others. It's set in the most fantastic woodland landscape. When you go in there's a large circuit just on the flat (and all the things like playground, restaurant, shop etc). In this bit you can see a lonely tiger, a lonely depressed elephant, a cramped pair of lions and various other animals in small enclosures which shouldn't be there. Then if you want to follow the full circuit it takes you up a massive hill and round at the top, passing various animals in much larger enclosures (but far more boring animals...). There's so much space it's such a shame they can't use more of it to give the other animals more space too. Anyway, it made for a nice woodland walk and was extremely peaceful as most people don't bother going up that bit - when I got back to the "main" zoo it was absolutely packed with families around the playground area! Anyway, it was about 6.30pm when I finished, so I had to wait a while for the return bus, and of course my pass had expired by then so I didn't have access to free transport anymore... it got dark and I was waiting at the bus stop convinced there wasn't actually going to be a bus, when about 7.25pm it turned up!! The man was the ONLY person I met who didn't speak English, and he was very chatty when I got on (I was the only passenger!!) so I had to apologise and make it clear I hadn't understood a word he had just said! He then asked if I spoke German, and we had a little conversation in poor German! It was good fun. He was very friendly and completely ignored the fact that my pass was rejected when I scanned it. He dropped me off in the centre and was very pleasant indeed as he said goodbye!! It was nice to have a private (and free!) bus ride! I was mainly just SO relieved that the bus turned up as I had started having all sorts of visions of having to hitch hike or hail down a taxi (in the middle of nowhere, in the dark) etc... or walk back on that same route with my feet feeling like they were going to fall off after quite a lot of walking that day! Anyway, it was all fine! 
Back in town I went for my last meal out. So far in Austria and Slovenia I had eaten Chinese and Italian, so I decided to stick to a theme and go for Indian!! I'd clocked a nice looking place when we passed it on the guided tour in the morning, and it was really nice indeed. Sitting outside by the river again, watching the world go by, and eating my standard Indian meal but with it being totally different of course. I was worried it would be like an Italian Indian (which isn't worth bothering with at all if you're used to curry back home!) but although it was nothing like the one I'm used to, it was really good! So I enjoyed that, as curry is something I miss while in Italy!! 
Then back to the hostel for another lively night before leaving early the following morning...

Getting the train was amusing. It was a EC (Eurocity) train to Frankfurt. On the board it said Platform 3a. I went to Platform 3a and there were just a few people there, including an Australian (?) couple. Heard an announcement in Slovenian which mentioned Frankfurt and bus for sure. Didn't catch on that they were saying the same thing in English until I'd missed most of it. Checked the board again and it still said platform 3a, but having got chatting to the Australian couple we all decided it WAS saying it was a bus from Ljubljana to somewhere further along the line. So we made our way to where the buses were parked and yes, we had to get a bus to Kranj. Really odd that they didn't write that on the board! Eventually everyone cottoned on and 3 buses were filled with passengers and driven to Kranj where our EC train was waiting. LOTS of foreign travellers going to all sorts of destinations in Austria and Germany. Again, reminded me of interrailing and the time when going by train from Copenhagen to Hamburg they ended up taking us off the train and putting us on a replacement bus service on which we had to get off and onto a ferry half way... all good fun! Anyway, I made it to Villach in one piece, and in actual fact the 10.56am bus to Udine was still waiting there (it was about 11.05am and I therefore had a reservation on the 12.56 bus). I could have probably jumped on that one anyway, but I didn't because I wanted to do one thing in Villach that I hadn't been able to on Sunday because it was closed - climb the tower! So I walked back to the church and managed to leave my mini suitcase at the bottom of the stairs in order to climb the 249 steps. It was a fairly pointless venture really, only amounting to good exercise as the view over Villach wasn't that stunning to be honest (having seen Ljubljana from above, and the Ossiacher See etc from the castle). Still, I felt it completed my tour of Villach, and from then I was satisfied I could go back to Udine having done everything properly!

All in all, a wonderful little mini-break before starting back at school. I'm so glad I got away somewhere, and now I know about the better connections from Villach I may well make it somewhere else soon! The train I was on actually goes to Belgrade, and although I don't want to risk night trains (so many horror stories!) I would happily travel across Europe in the daytime. It's not that far and when I have a few days holiday in succession (which never happens, but this year we have a "ponte" bank holiday so I may have 4 days off, depending whether I have Saturday lessons in that period) I might make it to Zagreb or Belgrade... probably Zagreb first as it's nearer and is a place I've been wanting to go for ages. Exciting stuff!! 
 

I have neglected to return to this blog to say that summer school number one was really good fun! Sleep wasn't a problem after the first couple of days, and everything else went well. The kids were a great group and we did some fun stuff. Honestly loved it!

Not so convinced I'm going to *love* the next one after getting the 100 page handbook to read. I mean, I knew when I applied to do residential summer schools that it was going to be tough, but I think I had conveniently forgotten quite how bad it could be... it's going to be pretty intensive.  There's a prescribed routine which I guess will help us all get settled into the experience, but it means there's very little time to do other things or even to plan... we have to teach 4 x 1.5 hour English sessions a day and then do all the other required duties (wake up at 7am, mealtimes, evening stuff and put to bed)... I'm really not sure when "planning" happens yet! Which would be okay except for the fact that we have 3 observations (one in the first week, one a bit later and one is a British Council inspection), so lessons really do need to be properly planned with a plan that's presentable to the observer (or inspector at any time). Yeah. 
Then at the weekend we go on trips (they go to London one day and around the country on the other - we get one day off so just do one each week). I'm quite looking forward to that part. It'll be nice to see some different places, even if there is the slight hitch of having potentially 100 kids to monitor! (They expect 180 students per week for the first four and a few fewer the last 2 weeks). 
Anyway, here's hoping that I do survive, and not only survive but actually enjoy it. It's going to be an experience whatever happens!

Everything else here has finished. Can't believe it! I'm all packed and ready to come home (leaving on Monday). 
I have to say, it's the NICEST feeling to know I'm coming back here next year! It's the first time in so many years that I'm staying in the same place 2 years running, and that's amazing. Being able to leave most of my stuff in my room here and really feel like this is "home", my second base. I'm looking forward to going home home to see all my books and other long lost possessions too though! But just so glad to be coming back here to a place where I feel really settled. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I work for a brilliant school where I've got fantastic colleagues, great students and I live in a beautiful town where I've got some wonderful friends. It couldn't be better!

I was reminiscing today about the day I actually applied for this job. I read the advert while staying with host family number 1 in Cognola, Trento - sitting on the camp bed with my laptop under the skylight window (which I accidentally left open one day when there was a torrential downpour - oops!). I saw the advert and wasn't sure whether to apply as I had already got 2 interviews fixed up for the week summer school finished, and I wasn't convinced I was keen on applying for another one. Then I did, and heard back quickly and decided to go for the interview, which happened to be before the others I'd arranged. Went and wasn't sure they'd even offer it to me after the test I produced, but they did, and I'm SO GLAD!!! 

Next movements:
Monday 4th July - Saturday 9th July: Taunton
Saturday 9th July - meet my baby nephew for the first time
Sunday 10th July - Induction at summer school
Monday 11th July - Monday 22nd August - Summer School (a.k.a. don't expect to hear from me at all!)
Tuesday 23rd August - Saturday 27th August - Taunton
Saturday 27th August - Monday 12th September - Taize trip (coach to Paris, train to Taize, 2 week stay there)
Monday 12th September - Monday 19th September - Taunton
Tuesday 20th September - Back to Udine