Getting there is none of the fun

Modern travel by plane is not easy. You get shoved into a metal tube with far too many other people, and expected to suffer for the 8 hours it takes to fly across the Atlantic ocean. I’m sure glad right now that I didn’t decide to go to New Zealand. Maybe someday when I can afford a First Class seat.

It’s always the same with traveling. First you make all the reservations for the plane and the car, and in my case, for the first hotel. You’re all excited for a couple of weeks, but eventually it starts to feel like your vacation will never arrive. 6 more weeks. Then 5. And those final weeks drag on and on. Then all of a sudden you’re two days out, you’re not sure you’ve done everything you need to do, and panic sets in. The Wife hates travel. She loves vacation, but flying just does her in. If you’re not getting probulated by the Junior G-Man squad, you’re getting stuffed into seats designed for 5’6”, 110 lb high school cheerleaders. Neither The Wife nor I actually fit in those seats.

What’s worse is that The Wife gets terribly motion sick. I might get a little upset if the guy started flying his plane like he was trying out to be the pilot of the Vomit Comet but The Wife can’t even read a book in the car. When we went on our honeymoon in Alaska, we took a “cruise” in Seward. Not one of those horrible giant ships with bad food and worse Germans, (read all three!) but a “Wildlife” cruise. I picked. I was in the Navy. I picked the one that lasted longest and had the best food. It was all day and had all you can eat prime rib and salmon. Hey, if you’re going to drive me around in an Alaskan fjord freezing and getting rained on, I’m going to have a decent lunch. I ate like a pig and enjoyed the hell out of myself. The Wife turned green. I think she tried to eat. Luckily we saw every kind of animal you could name. Puffin, sea otters, killer whales, so many bald eagles that we kind of got bored of them. We even saw a mother and baby humpback whale pair. The Wife will endure a lot to see that kind of wildlife. Dramamine or Bonine, or whatever she took kept her from barfing on the sea otter as we went by, but it didn’t make her feel good about the process. For this trip we used something better. Scopolamine patches. She reports no nausea at all. She ate well the whole flight. If you get seasick, ask your doctor about it.

Speaking of eating well, I think that Lufthansa is trying to do their part to apologize for the unpleasantness towards Jews during WWII. The Wife won’t eat pork. For a person who spent a lot of time working on a high class pork farm and getting paid in pork, it’s an odd food restriction. She’s not allergic, but she took a class on animal parasites when she was in college and hasn’t eating pig products since. The easiest way to get pork free meals on a plane is to request a kosher meal. Lufthansa kosher meals are much better than the run of the mill economy class meals. Like, REALLY a lot better. Just a tip.

In flight I watched probably the most pointless action movie ever, Haywire. Seriously, skip it. How do you take a hot chick, put her in a shoot-em-up, punch-em-out and make such a piece of garbage? Has Steven Soderbergh become too big to edit?

Another strange thing was Munich Airport. You’ve seen the stupid shops that they have in American airports, right? It looks like they tried to graft a couple of stores on to an airport? Not Munich. They have built a full blown American style mall. Since they don’t have cars at this mall, they’ve devoted the parking lot to jets. It feels like you’re hopping a plane between J Crew and Hot Topic.

We endured and eventually emerged triumphant in the long, long flight from Raleigh to Trieste, Italy. They even managed to get our luggage here. We got the car, powered up the pre-programmed GPS and zoomed straight in to our destination. Tomorrow is going to be awesome.

Oh, yeah. In case you didn’t know, horse tastes good. Apparently horse is something that the Slovenes like to eat. I’m guessing that no one really raises horses specifically to eat, so we must have gotten the slow learners from somewhere. I came here to Slovenia 12 years ago when I was in the Navy. When I was here in Lipica last time we went to the local train station in Divača to go back to the capital city. Here’s an old steam train they have parked at the station.

The plate on it says No. 4840, 1928, Wein.

There was a little hole in the wall café across the street from the train station that served the best food. I wanted to go back. I couldn’t find it today so we went back towards Lipica and stopped in a gostilna. They served lots of stuff, including horse. The place is called Gostilna Prunk. The server was awesome. He helped us pronounce everything, and was just happy as could be that we were trying to use Slovene. I had about half a glass of the local wine, and after dinner he gave us a little after dinner drink. I only had a taste, because I am driving. Drunk driving in a foreign country has to be a class A jerk maneuver. This after dinner drink was fantastic. I bought a bottle, but I don’t think it’s going to make it home. “Teranov Liker” it’s called. It’s a sweet berry tasting liqueur. If you get a chance, grab some.

Tomorrow, all day on the Lipica Stud Farm. Including a carriage ride.

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Federal Trade Commission Disclaimer:

These blog entries reflect my personal opinions about the locations The Wife and I visited during our travels. I have not received money, freebies, or any other inducements to provide positive coverage of anyone, anywhere, or anything. In fact, no one on this trip knew or had any reason to know that I am a blogger. I do not work for the Tourist Boards of any country, nor am I employed in the travel industry in any way.