Jack made it all the way down the valley I was just like “oups hopefully he will make it all the way up later as well” :D
Arriving at this awesome place later at the day seeing a red and white construction site tape (not tight any more) laying on the ground made me first suspicious but I just sad, well if it’s not allowed, someone will tell me of, so I drove to a nice spot (I was the only one at this place) first line parking at the river and set up camp. Asking the next person I found if that’s ok… she was “well normally we are not allowed to have people at the moment due to COVID-19 but you can stay for 10€ per night. :) lucky me…
Later on, my workaway place wrote that most of the people will come on Monday so I don’t have to be there till Monday but I can also come and stay at their place on Friday (Saturday was the date everyone was supposed to come) already. But the problem in Slovenia is during this lockdown you are not allowed to travel from one municipal to the other. Bad for me because I have to travel through something like 15-20 (let’s say 17) of them :D. Fortunately it’s not a problem if you have to reach your destination but still it can be very annoying to get stopped by the police 17 times. Luckily I got a piece of paper from my workaway place which says I am working there so that is very helpful! Since I decided to stay 3 nights at that awesome place you can see at the pictures :D, I arrived on Sunday at Park Istra the charity place I am supposed to work on.
I was the first person to arrive and a barking dog (Ron) was greeting me, a running kid (Jan as well :D ) and Janez and Petra (both 38 yo) the parents of the kid and the kind of owner of this place. I got a really welcoming “hello” and a good feeling straight away. Petra showed me around:
The place has one rabbit (had two just one day before :( …) a huge trampoline, a slackline, a volleyball field a basketball field and soccer field in one (paved), very nice view to the next valley... you can even see the see, a hammock, a big common room with piano, guitar, ukulele, kaechon, huge projector wall, table soccer desk, big kitchen an 2*6 beds, 2*4 beds (in another building) and 2*2 beds room and a little room on top of all other rooms :) very cool, it’s like a birds nest with windows in all directions. We even have matrasses there so we can sleep there chill out or do some yoga or mediation.
Here are some pictures my lovely new home for the next 5 weeks:
Main house with entrance from left
fire place :D
nice slakline
vegetable garten behind the house
fitness bars
nice view sitting area
compost and garden place
Staircais
Windows in the sleeping room
corridor 2. level (you can see the stairs going to the very top section)
our lovely kitchen ;)
with Tim, Agnes and Phillip (on the camera)
Fortunately I was not alone for long when I arrived. A British girl named Gemma arrived with a taxi after having a long journey landing in Italy and struggling to cross the border since there is no border crossing from Italy to Slovenia thanks to COVID-19. Somehow she managed though and so we were the first persons to be here, had some nice chat where we discovered that we both are into climbing which turned out later she is much more and much better than I :D. Well Sunday was not much on other than a nice welcome and some chats in the evening that’s when we decided to go climbing on the next day with the little scooter packed on the back of Jack.
… which we did…
It was a really nice climb since it’s in the middle of a nice forest near an old small village and the weather was awesome. After the climb when we just arrived home with the little scooter (I didn’t name it yet) there were some very strange people waiting for us :D (just kidding). And they were all from Sweden. There is a charity project called “European solidarity corps” they send people to all kind of charity projects and that’s the way the 5 persons from Sweden got here. They are called Agnes, Tim Kaspar, Olof and Phillip. They got their flight paid, the food cost paid and even paid some pocket money. It seems to be an interesting project if someone got interested you should have a look!
....It feels hard to write about everything since there is so much on every day this Blog entry took me 4 attempts to finish :D….
So we basically start our day at 7:45 o’clock with breakfast half an hour. Then 15 minutes to get ready for work and at 8.30 o’clock we start working or start driving to the place where we work. There is always one team of 2 people responsible to clean the common rooms and preparing break (tea and coffee maybe some cookies) at 11 o’clock and lunch at 1.30 pm.
Another team prepares breakfast half an hour earlier than everyone gets up. We manage kind of everything our self when it comes to what we need for the kitchen, who takes which shifts and does which work. Janez and Petra tell us what has to be done and Janez always is around working with us. Also there is a really nice funny Slovenian guy his name is Damian who is a well experienced worker who is often working with us :D he really likes folksmusic and so we often listen to Slovenian folksmusic in the radio catching him singing the songs together with the voice coming from the radio. He is such a nice and lovely guy and we are very happy to have him.
Since now we did all kinds of different tasks like smashing a lot of stones to get a smooth surface for a really beautiful looking stone path
Me working with Kasper and the two kids watching
Janez one of the two owners
just finishing of after leveling the sides of the path
Laying some stone tile for a place to have some chairs and tables…also some at the wall
Cutting wood with the chainsaw and stacking the pieces nice and neat
Of course there is always time to pet the animals around the working places
…this time we had to take down an old (asbestos) roof
Here we were cleaning an old overgrown paddock or better to say an old wine yard (it took us 2 days)
after two days that's the rewarding result!
Picking olives ….picking kakis
In the afternoons after cleaning the kitchen we have time outside till approximately 5 o’clock till the sun sets. Also every Sunday and Monday we are off work, so we can enjoy the nature around and sometimes make small trip to cities or beautiful places in nature (remember we are only allowed to travel in our municipal).
We had an awesome trip Piran:
Few little hikes around the house in the afternoon:
Had a nice hike to the next waterfall which is actual behind another municipal even in Italy :D glad we didn’t got checked by the police!!! Sad thing though we run often into old left backpacks, sleeping bags, sheets, towels and all different kind of cloths in this area. Since we are so close to the boarder to Italy there are many refugee tracks where they leave stuff behind so they seem to be people just “on a hike” with not many luggage before they enter the EU (that’s what they probably think). Well Slovenia is part of the EU but the social system in Slovenia is not as good as in other European countries so that’s why Italy, Germany, France, or Switzerland are more likely the countries refugees would travel to. ….but back to the waterfall hike (distant waterfall):
picture against the sun...hahaha can u tell :P
And if this waterfall is just so far in a distance for you guys :), we were doing a river/waterfall hike the other day which was amazing…..
no water at the biginning of the hike...
but soon it became difficult to walk without getting wet shoes :) so better to take them off sometimes...
the leaves made it look even more magical !!!
Difficult part through very nasty spiky bushes...
but the reward to see the next cascade was just always worth it :)
Hahaha and of course even it’s around 7 °C during the day and -1 °C during night, the water was freezing cold we even had ice at some places, we were hiking in kind of winter outfit….
…we had to go for a quick dip :D
