WHY SLOVENIA:
after italy we knew heading into eastern europe [particularly slovenia] made sense for multiple reasons:
- neither of us had been there and a small group of our friends who had, raved about it.
- it's "cheaper" than the more popular western european destinations and crazy close. they share a border with italy and it's only 2-3 hours by train or car from venice.
- it's fairly off the tourist track, which usually translates to less people and more real interactions with locals; what sealed it for us – slovenia is known to be a paradise for lovers of the mountains & the great outdoors.
man, are we glad that we did! the raw natural beauty, the warm, kind-hearted people and diversity we saw in such a small country stole our hearts. over my next couple posts we will go deeper on the regions we spent time in and why you need to get here sooner than later.
WWOOFING:
years before this trip we had heard about WWOOFing, a global community that supports living and learning on organic farms all over the world. this movement connects volunteers with organic farmers to promote cultural and educational experiences. essentially you help the owners with their workload in exchange for a place to sleep and all of your meals. we loved the idea of settling down somewhere for a few weeks, learning new skills and some manual labor actually sounded fun. we signed up, kyle browsed the site for 10 minutes and fortunately stumbled upon klavze 28 in most na soci [more details on the actual b&b in this post]. after scrolling through some of the photos and reading about the unique owners...we were borderline obsessed with getting this "job".
after our time here, we gained a ton of respect for land owners as we got more insight into the dedication and responsibilities involved. our duties included: helping accommodate the final guests [cooking dinner/doing dishes, cleaning the houses], closing up for winter [packing up outdoor tables, chairs, etc], chopping & stacking firewood, doing laundry [all of the guest room's bedding and towels], raking leaves [hello, fall!], cleaning out the gutters, pulling weeds, feeding and caring for the chickens [all 16 of them] and collecting their eggs, which was a fun daily surprise - 15 eggs was our record. we also spent a lot of time getting to know steffan and appreciating the serenity of the mountain farm lifestyle.
^^ the train station that is about a 15 minute walk from klavze. completely abandoned but functional, it immediately feels like you've stepped back in time when your feet hit the ground.
