Discovering the new Old Europe (Dental Tourism … again)

I took the whole week of Thanksgiving off ostensibly to travel with Kate to Budapest so she could get a permanent crown. Her appointments were Monday at 11 a.m. and Thursday at 2 p.m. In between those appointments, we rented a car and drove into the Balkans where we explored what I like to call the four “Hotspots of Tomorrow” (said in the booming and hopelessly optimistic voice of a 1950s television announcer). These destinations (two cities, two nature sights) are well known to locals, you see, but unknown to today’s tourists who will soon be looking east to get more bang for their ever weakening buck.

Day 1: From Budapest we drove southwest to the former Yugoslavian country of Slovenia, a peaceful and prosperous country with healthy influences from Austria (Lippanizzer stallions), Italy (pasta), and the Balkans (stallion meat served on pasta).

Actually, cuisine aside, the country really is top notch. They have snowcapped mountains, tons and tons of green space, and probably one of the liveliest and entrepreneurial cities in Europe: Ljubljana.

This city was our first stop and we were excited to see it. Alas, we spent our first night in prison. (In reality, it was a hostel that used to be a prison. And it wasn’t as scary as you’d think. There were no handcuffs or tasers, just bars and me calling Kate my “bitch.”)
But before we went to sleep in the Big House, our warrant officer let us go out for one final stroll (“parole”) around the energetic city. Here we took in the sights, which included a castle on a hill in the center of the city, a “dragon” bridge, and a lovely town square.
We ended up at a restaurant that served, among other things, horse. I’m not sure if it was from a Lippanizzer stallion, but it pranced into my belly very gracefully.
My actual thoughts: It tasted like horses smell (manure-y). It wasn’t as stringy as I heard it would be. I’m certainly never going to say “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” again.

Day 2: This was probably our most interesting day, but it started and ended with a little frustration. After a restful night in jail, we spent several hours visiting the many internet points in the city, as Kate had work to do. Every place we went had a problem (no Windows, no printer, no Java). Finally, someone recommended the city library and Kate rejoiced with success. I rejoiced by taking pictures of Kate.

Around noon we went 25 miles north to Bled, a romantic town with a hearty mix of tourist attractions, including a castle overlooking a crystal clear lake, a small wooded island in the middle of the lake, a cute church on the island, and a location right on the foothills of the snowy Julian Alps. Poyfekt for tourists!
And we, as tourists, loved it – despite the overcast skies and chilly weather. Kate and I climbed up to the castle, went inside a small museum dedicated to Slovenian history, saw some great views of the island church, and played a little Where’s Waldo. (Can you find Waldo?)
Our next stop was the Vintgar Gorge, a clear ravine carved by the runoff from an Ice Age glacier. It had just closed earlier in the month, we found out. Disappointed, Kate had given up and was ready to turn around. I was more rebellious.

Afterward we drove south, got stuck behind slow moving vehicles on small country roads, redubbed the country “SLOW-venia,” drove up snowy mountainsides blanketed in icy mist, redubbed the country “SNOW-venia,” and entered Croatia where the roads were mostly clear but the snow was even higher.

The closer we got to our destination for the night – Plitvička Jezera, a national park with 16 turquoise lakes connected by waterfalls – the snowier and icier the roads got. The one-lane roads near the park were like something out of “the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe,” with evergreen boughs laden with snow that framed the road like a Widow’s Peak of winter. It was dark outside, but I could tell it was absolutely beautiful.

Although we made a couple more wrong turns, we finally found our hotel (House Tina) around 8 p.m., were informed that we were one day early (I was obstinate at first, then embarrassed), but were eventually let in. It was just a typical family home in Croatia, but it looked like cloud nine to us road-weary travelers.

Kate then convinced me to go out to eat, which involved leaving our first choice restaurant because they had no gas for cooking and finding another (and better) restaurant – with gas. I had lasagna. Kate had beans (and made up for the lack of gas in the other restaurant.

Day 3: Waterfalls! About 14 inches of snow had fallen two nights before, which did several things: 1) It made the waterfalls even more beautiful; 2) It made it easy to make snowball “boats” that Kate and I would name and toss into cascading falls and watch them drift underneath our footbridges; 3) It made for cold enough weather that big scary icicles would intermittently come crashing down (see picture below); 4) It made the narrow wooden catwalks that hovered only inches above the blue-green water treacherous (heck, even sure-footed mountain goats would bite their toe nails).

Here, Kate shares her initial "deep" thoughts upon seeing the 78 meter waterfall.

Most treacherous, however, was climbing down the manmade staircases.

We took way too many pictures of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Waaay too many. Here are just a couple. Later that day we drove to Croatia’s capital, Zagreb (pronounced ZAH-greb, not zah-GREB), where we noticed the disproportionality (is that a word?) of this city’s eminence. You see, it’s a small city (800,000) in a small country and it was only important starting in the 1990s, when it became the capital. But it has 30 museums, several theaters, opera houses, and civic centers, and countless other large and ornately decorated cultural, scientific, economic, religious, and governmental buildings. So we did the touristy thing as much as our patience allowed (i.e., walked around with maps and travel guides that talked about all the large buildings, took pictures of the large buildings, got a little bored looking at the large buildings, ate a slice of pizza to go, got lost ambling through the cobbly streets where there were no large buildings, and found a place to sit down for dinner.) Roasted red peppers never tasted so good.

Day 4: Our last stop in this multilingual, multiethnic corner of Europe, was Budapest, where it all began and where Kate finally got her crown (the whole purpose of our visit). It was Thanksgiving day and we were meeting Jay and Linda after the dentist’s for an all-you-can-eat-AND-drink dinner at Trofea Grill, where Kate and I went in June. Again, the place was wonderful. Unlike a kid in a candy store, however, who stands mouth agape marveling at what he should pick first, I didn’t bother to look around. I opened the fist lid I saw and put its contents on my plate. I knew I would eat everything, you see…meats, peppers, soups, salads, desserts, wine, espressos, macchiatos. And I did. That night we slept in a dingy loft without doors in a single guy’s pad. It was on hostelworld.com, but it was definitely just some guy’s dirty apartment. Weird. And since the power went out sometime in the middle of the night, causing us to have no hot water or light at 6:15 a.m. (think peeing in the dark), I would certainly not recommend it.

But there you have it: two bustling cities, two spectacular nature sights, no tourists, and cheap dental work. No more will these places be known for their checkered past. They will be known as the “Hotspots of Tomorrow.”