On the way to Slovenia...

We awoke at five in the morning at Mike's house, after an extremely unrestful and many times interrupted sleep. Thankfully we were being taxied to the airport, so we were able to switch off on the journey.
We were surprised at how busy the airport was so early in the morning. Our flight to Hungary was fully booked. Security took a bit longer, so I had no time to buy the compulsory holiday read or have a final soy hot chocolate. It was a first in first served flight in terms of seats. We boarded last and were sat in the emergency exit seats. Heaps of leg room! Hurrah! Wonder if it will work on the way home...

I really had no expectations for this trip. Martin and Mike were the engineers behind it and I was just along for the ride. After receiving our rental car --a rather unattractive blue, old lady type thing -- we made for Slovenia. We stopped to feed ourselves at the first pull off we found. I was disappointed in myself, as to be honest, all I really felt like was...wait for it...KFC! Blech. What's going on? The Hungarian buffet was very unusual and foreign looking and I wasn't quite ready for that yet. Anyway, we ended up not eating anything except strange tasting chippie type things until dinner in Croatia! Yes, you read correctly. We (Martin and Mike) decided that we were driving so close to the border, we may as well cross over into Croatia and have dinner. Of course I ended up with a pork steak! The menu said 'steak', and apparantly pork is a staple here. I had of course assumed it would be a beef steak. The boys chose pasta dishes, which seemed to consist of a whole packet of spaghetti each and lots of garlic and cream! Far too rich. We hardly made a dent in our meals, but were quickly full.
Unsurprisingly, people still smoke in restaurants, adding to the Eastern European feel I guess. I quickly came to despise eating inside with smokers puffing away next to us. Yuck.

We had a long drive ahead still, as we were not yet halfway. I left the boys to the navigation. Needless to say, we ended up being detoured ridiculously and made several calls ahead to the camp ground. They upgraded us to a private room as we'd now be so late. As it turned out, when we finally found the place after twelve hours in the car and two unscheduled motorway detours, the rest of the camp was up around a bombfire singing and drinking.

On the way to this camp, we had climbed a very windy and hairpinned mountain road up to fifteen hundred metres with light snow fall pattering on the windscreen. We eventually drove down into the valley. The car's brake pads were straining and starting to smell a bit dodgy. We were all feeling the cold and trhe bungalow unfortunately did not relieve us of this. Wishing we'd brought thermals instead of shorts, Martin and I shared a single bed and therefore two duvets and a scratchy blanket for warmth. I had cold ears and a cold nose all night.