The van started fine, much to my relief, and I set off across the Slovenian border for Bled without any problems. After a very cold night of wild camping in the van in temperatures which dropped to -5 during the night and left a thick layer of frost on the outside, I decided that I should book into the Backpackers Hostel across the road. My time of wild camping without using a heater may be over.
The town is nothing special in itself, just a collection of closed seasonal shops and tourist agencies. The location though, is everything. Bled is a town set up high in snow covered mountians on the edge of a big glacial lake and just walking around the tranquil water on a crisp November day is worth the visit alone.
Right in the centre of the lake and on it's own little island is the picturesque Assumption Church, probably the defining image of Slovenia. There are some great vantage points too from the Straza winter ski run and, in particular, from the Osojnica Peak if you don't mind a bit of a steep hike to get to both places.
Another great building is Bled Castle, set on the edge of a dramatic rocky cliff overhanging the lake. It isn't quite as spectacular up close and most of the buildings have now been turned into the typical museum, ticket office and restaurant. It does have it's own wine cellar though which is run by a monk and his parrot and offers some very generous free samples in the hope you will buy something. The castle also has some great views of the lake and the town below.
On my last day in Bled, I biked up to the Vintgar National Park. There is a great trail here where you can walk on a rather rickety overhanging path of logs which sticks out of the rocky gorge. Right below, the turquiose waters of the Radovna River make foamy rapids and turbulent waterfalls as you cross cross above from side to side.
Bled can now join what is becoming a growing list of touristy places which are absolutely stunning out of season.
I was feeling a little bit ill from the cold and rain of Plitvice Lakes but not nearly as ill as my beloved van was feeling as the battery died in the dark in the middle of Zagreb. A call to the Croatian equivalant of the AA and a quick diagnosis with a multimeter revealed that the alternator was not charging the vehicle battery and it had been drained completely. After a jump start and giving it some juice from the recovery van, I was assured that the battery would be charged enough to park up for the night and get it started in the morning to get to a specialist. After negotiating some steep climbs, long miles and truly horrible road surfaces, the van had let me down for the first time.
Cold and dejected, Vanny and I limped our way to the hostel and I set about meeting up with my friends from Sarajevo in order to forget about a pretty miserable day. After a somewhat blurry but fun-filled night of beer and shots of rakije lined up on (what I vaguely remember as) an oversized cricket bat, I felt even more ill the next day and it didn't help the van to start. I had a plan though, and a quick trip to the buy some jump-leads meant I was able to start the van from the leisure batteries under the passenger seat and get the van to the specialists who set to work on fixing my broken alternator. Two hours and £200 later, the part was disassembled, mended, cleaned, and reassembled. I was back in business and ready to enjoy the city at long last.
Most people seem to wrongly dismiss Zagreb as a travel destination, instead viewing the city as either an airport hub or a stopover on the way to the coast. It is a great city though, where the sparkly blue trams zig-zag between the old mustard coloured buildings. It is truly a place where the old and new meet head on. It didn't take much of a ramble around the city to figure out that the weekend (including St Martin's Day, the excellent patron saint of wine) was the Zagreb Wine Festival and a big marquee was up in the city's central square. While it can be a bit quiet in the afternoon, come the evening and a bit of live music it is a completely different place.
It was here where I bumped into a couple more Zagreb students as well as two local celebrities. TV presenter Barbara "something" is well known in Croatia for her travel show and appears in real life to be about 30% human, 10% collagen, and 60% silicon! Her friend just happened to be the gay former deputy prime minister for the country too.
Zagreb has shown me enough to realise that it is certainly a brilliant destination in it's own right.
I continued further up the wonderful coastline of Croatia to my next stop, Zadar, which feels a lot like a smaller version of Split and Dubrovnik rolled into one - no bad thing at all. The main old town is right on the peninsula where water surrounds the city walls on three sides.
There are great views out of the bay and there are places where the calm sea just stretches forever and in the evening it is a surreal place to be - like the world was flat after all and you are standing right on the edge of it. I can see why Alfred Hitchcock described it as the best place in the world to watch the sun set.
Right on the seafront there are also a couple of strange installations. The first is the one-of-a-kind Sea Organ, a collection of musical pipes set into the steps leading down to the water's edge. They pump out kooky melodies as the sea laps the shore and sounds like a piano being thrown off a cliff when a speedboat roars past too close to the steps.
Right next to the organ is the Sun Salutation (effectively a big circlular disco floor) which collects solar power during the day before providing a multicolour lightshow after dark.
Between the two of them, they make walking around the harbour at night feel like an alien abduction.
