Slovenia-Croatia Day 1: Evil characters from TinTin
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23 May 2019 Ten of us started our Slovenia-Croatia holiday today. Kunal, Kanu, Gaurav,
Anshuman, Ashwani, Sneha, Kabir, Shalini, Mishti and I. Kabir and Shalini had
added themselves much later, and will be staying in a separate hotel and
hiring their own car. Some of us took a cab to Stansted from Credit Suisse at
4 pm and we were on our way. Our Whatsapp group for this trip is called ‘Slovaaania’.
This is because Ashwani was on a date and the girl asked him where he was
going for his next holiday. Confused between Slovakia and Slovenia, he came
up with Slovaaania. Best of both worlds…or not. He hasn’t heard back from her
since. There was some leg-pulling going on on Whatsapp as the
start of the holiday neared.
The itinerary for the trip (courtesy Kunal) is as follows: Tentative plan Day 1 Lake Bled (walks around the lake, tour to island?) Vintgar Gorge (2 hour hike) Radovljica (old town) Day 2 Drive to Kranjska gora and Vrsic pass. 2 hikes: Slemenova spica hike https://www.10adventures.com/hikes/julian-alps/slemenova-spica/ Path of The Pagan Girl hike https://www.10adventures.com/hikes/julian-alps/the-path-of-the-pagan-girl/ Continue drive to Soca valley. Return to Bled via Mojstrana (Pericnik waterfall
https://www.kranjska-gora.si/en/sightseeing/natural-sights/waterfalls/pericnik-waterfall
) & Radovna. Day 3 Bohinj lake: Hike / Vogel cable car / Savica waterfall Drive to Sorica and Skofja Loka. 3 hour drive to Hotel Mirjana & Rastoke, Slunj. Day 4 Plitvice lakes (upper and lower lake) 3 hour drive to Airport.
Mishti and I were having our own joke as she was amused by
my mispronunciations of Ljubljana. I started with laaba-looba-lub and
steadily got closer to Ludhiana. At the airport, after we had boarded the flight, it was
announced that take-off would be delayed by half hour because there is a hole
in the runway. Apparently there was one yesterday also. This seemed as
strange a reason for delaying take-off as my Air India flight some years ago
where they had announced "Take off is delayed because the pilot is stuck
in traffic." The flight was uneventful (which is the way I like it) and
we had loaded ourselves with food from the airport. I was excited about
starting to read a new book - 'Upheaval - How Nations Cope With Crisis and
Change' by Jared Diamond. (I have ordered so many books on Amazon recently
that Mishti has imposed a 1-month ban on me ordering any more books!) The first chapter itself was intriguing where the author
talks about how individuals should deal with personal crises. One of the
elements in his 12-point framework, which I found particularly apt, was
'building a fence.' He states: "Once a person has acknowledged a
crisis, accepted responsibility for doing something to resolve it, and
presented himself at a crisis management center, the first therapy session
can focus on the step of "building a fence," i.e., identifying and
delineating the problem to be solved. If a person in crisis doesn't succeed in
doing that, he sees himself as totally flawed and feels paralyzed. Hence a
key question is: what is there of yourself that is already functioning well,
and that doesn't need changing, and that you could hold on to? What can and
should you discard and replace with new ways? We shall see that the issue of
'selective change' is key also to reappraisals by whole nations in crisis. ... That requires the individuals or nations to find new
solutions compatible with their abilities and with the rest of their being.
At the same time, they have to draw a line and stress the elements so
fundamental to their identities that they refuse to change them. ...Some of those survivors (of the Boston nightclub
'Cocoanut Grove' fire in 1942 which killed 492 people) and relatives remained
traumatized for the rest of their lives. A few committed suicide. But most of
them, after an intensely painful several weeks during which they could not
accept their loss, began a slow process of grieving, reappraising their
values, rebuilding their lives, and discovering that not everything in their
world was ruined. Many who had lost spouses went on to remarry. Even in the
best cases, though, decades later they remained mosaics of their new
identities formed after the Cocoanut Grove fire, and of their old identities
established before the fire. We shall have frequent opportunity throughout
this book to apply that metaphor of "mosaic" to individuals and
nations in whom or in which disparate elements coexist uneasily." Upon reaching Ljubljana airport and picking up our car, I told the others there were already some signs that we were in a poorer country compared to western Europe. - The car rental
took only a 200 euro deposit on credit card. Usually it is well above 500
euros. - The attendant
said "My colleague will show you to the car" - this is quite
uncommon as usually you are required to help yourself to the car. - Our Opel Astra
had done 65k kms, and looked pretty rundown. It is manual and does not have
GPS. - There is no
petrol station near the airport.  Gaurav drove us to the Air BnB apartment. He commented that many of the place names here sound similar to the places of evil characters in TinTin. The drive was efficient and took about half an hour. At
the end there was a narrow road leading to the apartment. It was pitch-dark,
getting close to midnight. We were uncertain whether to take it as ours is a huge
vehicle. We did do so in the end and Ashwani – who avoids clichés like the
plague – commented "dar ke aage jeet hai" (ahead of fear, there is
victory.) Our apartment is excellent. Large and spacious. We ate
cake that Kanu had brought and chatted for a bit. Kanu and Gaurav took the
room at the basement, which was a private room. Mishti and I shared our
room with Sneha. I checked my office emails and there was a funny one. Michael Delaney, my liquidity risk colleague in the US, had sent me a picture of him and me (taken last week when I was in New York) to our global liquidity risk colleagues with the caption "Probably the two most handsome risk managers at Credit Suisse". Mike is a fair bit older than I am and we were both grinning in the picture. His boss Richard Leite had replied "Is that a crack in the camera lens?" which I found hilarious. |
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