Ljubljana (Slovenia)

The man in seat 61 (a most helpful website for all things locomotive) highly recommended doing the journey from Zagreb, Croatia, to Ljubljana, Slovenia, during the day. The 3 hour train ride follows the Sava river as it winds lazily through peaceful farmlands framed by mountains. Neat vegetable gardens abut alpine cottages, and wooden hayracks in the traditional Slovenian style (like very wide ladders with little roofs) stand upright all over the landscape.

Our accommodation in Ljubljana was unusual - a former penitentiary turned hostel and art gallery. Our room was a cell, complete with bunkbeds, bars on the doors, a narrow window set high... and tiny sculptures backlit under the glass floor (the arty part).

Arriving late into the city, our only option for food was, happily enough, a restaurant serving traditional Slovenian cuisine. Gnocchi in a game meat sauce was a good stick-to-your-ribs meal. Rich opted for the country feast: a meat extravaganza featuring roast pork, sausage, ribs, black pudding, and a sort of buckwheat hash with pork crackling. Portions in Slovenia rival American ones so we were stuffed!

Ljubljana has been touted as "the next Prague." Having never been there, we can only assume they are referring to the paved stone streets, cheerily colored Baroque buildings, and tall spires. Strolling along the river front, open market stalls sell vegetables and handicrafts, including the intricately decorated red, heart-shaped cookies to be given for special occasions (but not for eating although technically edible) and wooden boards from bee hives hand-painted with strange rural scenes (for example, medieval peasants being chased by a giant snail). The castle above the city itself is also a slightly odd mixture, with its ancient walls and modern design, where ramparts overlook a trendy cafe. However, there's no arguing that the vantage point does offer the best views of the city!

Zagreb (Croatia)

The former Yugoslavia had been a vibrant holiday destination in southern Europe. Years after the collapse of communism and civil wars, the tourism industry is booming again. The region, as a delightful plan to go leisurely along the Adriatic, had made our short list of where to spend our gloriously long summer vacations in Spain. The American move has dictated a far more truncated version.  

We had intended to get off our flight to Zagreb and head overland straight for Slovenia, but the airport shuttle and train schedules did not agree with that plan. Stowing our packs in the main train station was amusing as a couple of older Indian ladies in socks and sandals and with fanny packs around their waists evidently took us for experts and peppered us with questions about it. Killing time before the next train did allow us to walk around quite a bit of the Lower Town and Upper Town of Croatia's capital. St. Mark's Church gets top marks for fanciest roof with the medieval coats of arms of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, and Zagreb worked in elaborate tiles.

We were particularly curious about the award-winning Museum of Broken Relationships, which started as an exhibit before expanding into full-blown museum. Contributors submit art, mementos, and stories about their broken relationships. It's a theme people the world over can relate to: the ultimate breakup mix tape. Pieces dedicated to ephemeral first crushes, the crash and burn of passionate romances, and the slow crumbling of long-term marriages all feature. The tone ranges from lighthearted humor to disturbing and tragic. There's the "toaster of vindication," a mundane appliance stolen in a final passive aggressive act by a man moving out of their shared apartment: "How're you going to toast anything now?" ... A woman who'd helped her addicted lover stay clean for months shared a home drug testing kit showing a devastating result of positive  ... One stiletto from a dominatrix prostitute reuniting unexpectedly with her first love as a john. Not all of the submissions were romantic or sexual in nature. A whole room was dedicated to broken relationships with parents, from separations both natural (time, distance, absence) and unexpected (divorce, death, even suicide). Reading these stories of heartbreak could have so easily felt voyeuristic, but somehow, the museum strikes the right balance. Visitors are witnesses to the pain and can empathize with them, and contributors get cathartic release, freeing themselves from the hold these love tokens and memories have over them. 

Reykjavík (Iceland)

In Þórsmörk, we came across a curious breed of tourist: the northern lights chaser. He caught the bug with a spectacular display of the aurora borealis in Norway. Since then, the gentleman had travelled again from his home in Thailand to the far reaches of New Zealand to try to see its southern cousin, the aurora australis, already this season. Coming to Iceland, we had lowered our expectations for seeing them since there are so many variables affecting the display (light pollution, cloud cover, etc.). However, with his enthusiasm ringing in our ears, and assurances that the odds for this evening were particularly promising, we booked ourselves on a northern lights tour that departed within half an hour of our arrival into Reykjavík.

It was a bit of a scam. The "tour" was really a glorified bus trip to dump hundreds of tourists for a couple of hours in the cold somewhere outside of the city. Again a situation that would have been much improved if we had just rented a car. The glimpses we caught of the aurora were hazes of shifting green colors, so faint that it was hard to tell if you were just imagining them from staring so long into the dark. Amateur photographers with their expensive set ups caught a much more dramatic display in the nonvisible light spectrum. It's a shame the tour rounded us up a short time later since it was clear on our ride back that the show wasn't over yet.  

While we'd used Reykjavík as a base for some of our earlier adventures, we wrapped up our trip there to see a bit more of the capital. The art and music scene is remarkable for a country so small. One book credited Icelanders' open attitude toward failure as the reason so many in the country feel free to make a go in creative pursuits. Galleries and clubs abound, and we fell in love with 12 Tónar. This place carries the torch for old school record shops. The scruffy guy behind the counter gives recommendations and opens up new albums and, even better than that, serves free freshly-brewed espresso while you listen on quality headphones! The shop also owns a record label, where indie bands can get their start ... and really, all artists in Iceland aside from Björk and Sigur Rós, are indie. The music on heavy rotation in our household now is from Ásgeir Trausti, Sin Fang, Mammút, and Samaris.

Our new albums set us back a pretty penny, as does almost any purchase in Iceland. In Reykjavík, we had to get creative to afford some of the country's cuisine. Hot dogs are really popular and cheap. The yummy ones at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, a famous stand that has served Bill Clinton and Anthony Bourdain, are made from lamb and topped with 3 different sauces and 2 kinds of onions. After seeing it on menus across the country, we sought out a café serving traditional Icelandic meat soup... only to find out later that shopkeepers were ladling it out free to hundreds as part of their Annual Meat Soup Day further down the street - D'oh! While the hot dogs and soup were pretty straightforward, other traditional viands were maybe not so familiar. We saw seal, puffin, and whale advertised on tasting menus... though it's debatable how many of these historical seafoods (?) are consumed by the average Icelander versus as a strange food for tourists. The appearance of jellied meat products has always been unsettling for me, but I did finally satisfy my Laura Ingalls Wilder-induced curiosity about headcheese. The Icelandic version is from sheep and, I guess, not sooo bad on thickly buttered flatbread and with mashed turnips to accompany it.

This is not the case with hákarl. This traditional Icelandic protein starts with a carcass of a shark that is then beheaded, buried in sand, left to ferment for months, dug up, and dried out before serving. In short, ancient Icelanders must have been starving to consider this edible. The aforementioned Tony Bourdain called it, "the single worst, most disgusting, and terrible tasting thing;" bizarre food enthusiast Andrew Zimmerman described it as one "of the most horrific things I've ever breathed in my life;" and tough guy chef Gordon Ramsay just spat it out. We both tried a cube at the Kolaportið Market. It was soft and chewy - not surprising since sharks are mostly cartilage - with a strip not unlike sandpaper running through. The taste was actually not so off-putting until one begins to chew. This results in a release of an increasing and overwhelming flavor of... ammonia. We managed to choke it down, but let's face it, the lingering finish of household cleaner is just not something you can get rid of easily. ¡Qué asco! 

Þórsmörk (Iceland)

In a season characteristically marked by constant rains and cold, we'd been graced with unseasonably good weather thus far on our trip. Even our day on the glacier was gloriously sunny. Conditions changed drastically and rapidly on our way to Þórsmörk.

In a country where babies are left unattended in prams outside in the winter because "it's good for them," the strongly-worded recommendation to leave your 4WD rental in Hvolsvöllur and take the bus into Þórsmörk sounded ominous. With good reason. The "bus" is an all-terrain beast with giant wheels, and the track into the region is on the volcanic rocks of a shifting, wide bed of the river Krossá. There are many fast-flowing streams to cross, where it's difficult to see the bottom even in the best conditions. Heavy snow was falling by the time we reached the first ford. As the weather continued to deteriorate, the bus driver had to frequently stop to wipe the windshield. Several times Rich had to get out to help him find the quickly disappearing track, directing him so the bus would avoid what the pre-recorded tour guide cheerfully informed us were "large patches of quicksand" over the speakers. The last river crossing made even the stoic bus driver balk. He called ahead as if to ask, "Are you sure we should be coming out in this weather?" Evidently, he received an affirmative. He waved Rich back in, attached seals to prevent water coming up the exhaust, and slowly drove across the 60 feet of swift, black waters.

Not far on the other side, we were surprised to find the cabins at our destination were warm and pleasantly situated at the foot of the mountains. The Þórsmörk region (literally, "Thor's Woods") is famous in Iceland for its hiking. We still had a couple of hours of daylight left so we bundled up and headed out in search of the short loop to the nearest summit. Mistakenly trusting in the older footprints of an American couple, we went off the trail, discovered our own way up the brushy slope to the top, and turned back round. When we met the friendly honeymooners later, we had to forgive them. Especially when our host at the cabins opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of genuine cava (!) for us all to toast their nuptials.

Despite its remote location, the trek from Laugavegur to Landmannalaugar is one of the most popular in Iceland. We didn't have the 3 or 4 days to do the whole thing, but Þórsmörk is situated along a picturesque portion of it. After a hearty breakfast the next morning, we each put on another 4 or 5 layers and walked out again into the cold. The long loop began meandering through the valley framed by ridges lined with squat, snow-covered trees. The silent, icy landscape made me feel like I was walking into Narnia still in the grip of the White Witch's power. The trail opened out onto the wide river bed where glacier-fed streams made rivulets in the volcanic rock, and we saw our first set of arctic fox tracks. Eventually we found the turn off and started the climb up the mountains.

Sign-posting is notoriously sparse and curiously ambiguous in Iceland. The trail wound its way up very narrow ridges, which were made more treacherous by the thick layer of fresh powder. I really missed the crampons from our glacier hike! By dint of climbing, scrambling, and some honest-to-God hugging of the mountain, we managed to make it to the top. And boy, was the view worth it! Vast snow fields that would make a snowboarder weep opened onto grand vistas of majestic mountaintops, like something out of Lord of the Rings… and we had it all completely to ourselves. Truly, some of the most breath-taking sights we have ever seen.

Coming around the mountains and back down to the valley was no easy feat either. It was one long game of hunt for the trail marker in the deep snow. The traverses were even narrower, all of our concentration fixed on putting one foot in front of the other to feel for the ledge. I never looked behind me, counting on the small sounds Rich was making to assure me he was still back there. If I turned and lost my balance, I could pitch headlong into the steep drop off on our right and land broken on the rocks below. A tourist hiking in the region disappeared the month before and was never found again despite mounting huge search parties. In the isolation, it's easy to imagine how difficult it would be for rescuers to find you before you died of exposure.

We made it through, worn out. Covering about 14 km (~ 8.5 miles) with a rise of 270 m (~ 900 ft) – and the same of a descent – in the deep snow, it was one of the most technical hikes we’ve done. But it was also one of the best! The landscape was stunning, and we would love to go back to do it again… in the summer!  

Skógafoss, Seljalandsfoss, and Hvolsvöllur (Iceland)

The next stops on our parade of Iceland’s ever beautiful waterfalls were Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss, both ~ 60 m high. Skógafoss is a sheer drop off onto a flat volcanic bed framed perfectly in an idealized version of a rainbow. The extra fluffy sheep grazing in the surrounding paddocks didn’t seem to take much notice of it though. Seljalandsfoss cascades over a wide ledge in a curtain you can actually walk behind. When the wind picks up, the resulting spray makes for a pretty chilly shock.

After a long day, we relaxed at a farmstay in the tiny village of Hvolsvöllur. A couple of sheepdogs ran up eagerly to check us out. Shaggy Icelandic horses (a special breed with a couple of gaits different from normal horses) munched contentedly in the pasture. The sheds were covered with turf, and a propeller plane rested in a nearby field. Clouds moving in made our chances of seeing the northern lights unlikely, but the owner was friendly and chatty. He was enthusiastic over the local pizzeria and what must've seemed an exotic delicacy to him - jalapeño poppers! His recommendation was spot on... although Rich had reached his limit for daring for the day and stubbornly opted out of any combination with bananas as a pizza topping.