a.k.a. Holiday 2006
So where to go on vacation this year? I suppose I should properly refer to it as “holiday” since I am now an elitist European (see Fig. 1 for an example). We no longer live in an apartment, rather we have a flat. Chips are now crisps and fries are now chips. We take the lift up to the office instead of the elevator and we enjoy spending time with friends at the weekend instead of on the weekend.
Somewhere East . . .
Anyway, our friend Denise was nice enough to come visit us for her vacation (it’s a vacation since she is still an American) and told us that we should go “somewhere east” so she could see something new. We busted open the Lonely Planet guide and found the Plitvice National Parks in Croatia which we have wanted to see since living in Hungary. We strung together some more stops along the way through Germany, Austria, and Slovenia and came up with a fairly nice itinerary. I just hope that Denise truly enjoyed herself. I know that we did.
We started out the first day driving through Austria towards Slovenia. We stayed the night in southern Austria in the middle of nowhere in a lodge in the Alps. The next day we continued on to Lake Bled in Slovenia where we have been one or two times before and then headed on to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.
The main attraction on our trip, to see the lakes of Plitvice National Park in Croatia. It is almost hard to believe that this place actually exists. It’s almost fairy-tale like. It is five lakes situated in a valley which cascade into one another in hundreds of waterfalls. The natural mineral content of the waters continually build up and create new waterfalls.
Eventually we found our way back to Germany and hit a few of the “must-sees” in the south.
Guess who came with.
Yes, we brought the dog. We were very thankful that Denise didn’t mind. In fact, Heidi grew rather fond of Denise. And as much as she probably doesn’t want to admit it, I think Denise liked Heidi. Of course it wasn’t as simple as just “bringing the dog.” We live in Germany after all. She had to have papers. Not just papers, but a European Union Dog Passport. So we had to get Heidi chipped (again), all of her shots updated, various papers translated and signed by a German vet, all just so the border guards could not look at it and wave us through. Wait, there was one border guard who looked at it. I guess that makes it worth it. At any rate, Heidi now had her passport. No it does not have her picture in it. Although there is a space for one, but it is optional.
