Winter Fairytale – 2

We decided to travel to Bled because the bus ride was inexpensive. It was only later that we read about Lake Bled, and how pristine it promised to look in the middle of the winter. Our journey from Ljubljana to Bled was arrestingly pretty – I remember listening to the Wuthering Heights audiobook and noting how well it matched the scenes outside. It was snowing very gently, the kind of snowfall that doesn’t look threatening (unlike Dutch snow), and we drifted in and out of the pleasant, rhythmic sleep that road trips bring.

We began walking toward our hostel, bags in tow. The snow had just melted, and the sun was beginning to peek out over the pine trees that lined the whole path. The prettiest sight was the tips of snow-clad mountains, which we could see just at the horizon. Compact, picturebook-geometric red and yellow houses peppered both sides of the street.

As we walked, we commented to each other – almost at the same time – how the scene before us was reminiscent of countless Bollywood movies. As if by magic, a field of cows cropped up to our left. They looked at us knowingly, secure in the knowledge that they were likely to have better work-life balance than their Indian counterparts.

Our hostel was an adorable two-storey cottage in the midst of rolling green hills on one side and icy peaks on the other, with only a handful of rooms and the most enthusiastic manager we had ever seen. He insisted on brewing insanely strong coffee for us (we couldn’t sleep till early morning), and opened a gigantic map, pointing out all the different sites we must visit. I’m not the best with directions, so my eyes glazed over soon enough and I sank back into the deliciously luxurious couch, staring at the gorgeous mix of clean blues, whites and greens outside.

We decided to walk the circumference of Lake Bled, which, to our delight, was a frozen sheet of mirror in February. While I can’t tell right and left to save my life, I can spot alcohol retailers from miles away, and we had stocked up on our way. We knocked back some now to insulate ourselves against the cold. Having never pretended to be classy travellers, we carefully poured the remaining wine into a thermos and set off.

The stroll around Lake Bled was beautiful. Given the weather, there weren’t a lot of tourists, but the lake was surrounded by locals walking their dogs, running in special ice-proof shoes, and even – in the case of one adventurous pair – proposing. The lake is huge, and we weren’t in a hurry. By early afternoon, the ice began melting a little, and Bled Castle’s reflection in the still water was clear and magnificent:

Loveliest of all, warm wine spiced with cloves was the drink du jour, and I promptly refilled my cup each time it ran out, although my companion exercised some control and stopped at four.

When we returned to our hostel late at night, after having explored some other suggestions offered by our crazy excitable host and dined at a delightful place where I could take a huge wooden spoon with a cutout heart home with me, we were exhausted – but some wine remained, and so the day had to go on. We took it outside and sat in the grass (which was very, very cold), staring at the sky full of stars… I tried to spot some constellations, got rather good at it, and decided my sense of navigation was much better when there was no gravity to impede it.

Read Part 1 of our fairytale here.