I've been back in Warsaw several days now and am only just getting to posting about my fantastic trip to Slovenia.  I posted images on InstaGram regularly, but I took so many pictures with Pasha (my camera, if you didn't already know) that I think I'm going to let my photographs do most of the talking.  The following two posts will be filled to the brim with pictures, but this one will be somewhat limited.  I do feel it necessary, though, to answer the one question I was asked repeatedly while there: how do I like Slovenia?  Frankly, I can't believe it's a real place.  All those travel articles about it being a "hidden gem" and a "European best kept secret" are true.  The entire country felt like an oasis- a place of fiction.  I kept imagining that this was the place to which 19th century writers and dandies, fair ladies and blossoming maidens who needed to recover from an illness ran.  These are mountain scenes that can't be transferred into film, no matter how often I tried to snap it.

Best of all from the trip, really, was seeing Jože again and spending a lot of time with Barbara, both lovely friends from my second summer in Lublin.  Jože's parents were so wonderful, absolutely the most generous and charming duo around.  I was only worried I'd need to be transferred via wheelbarrow from the country after all the food his mother fed me.  She is truly a fantastic cook.  Plus, their garden produced fresh tomatoes the size of my head.  And can I just say- PUMPKIN SEED OIL.  Fantastic.  All of it.  I don't think she'll ever let me help her bake again, though.  My skills are... limited... shall we say.