Serenity in Slovenia before $&*# hits the fan in Vienna

Serenity in Slovenia before $&*# hits the fan in Vienna

Or: Don't go swimming with your iPhone and COVID is still terrible

Dear Friends, Family, and Fellow Travelers,

We are writing from Velenje, Slovenia. We arrived last night from Vienna - by way of Zotter Chocolate - and stayed one night so that we can pick up Jonah from camp nearby and continue on to Italy.

Sara’s Thoughts:

Serenity in Slovenia:

We dropped the boys off at Explorer Camp on Sunday, August 11th. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but quickly realized that they would be staying in cabins on a huge campground on Lake Velenje that included a long-awaited inflatable water park. The boys looked tentatively excited, so we left them with their counselors and the other children. Nobody cried, which seemed like a win, though Calla began to pout and remarked, “but it looks so fun,” when we said we needed to leave. We promised her that the three of us would have lots of fun together.

And… we did! We stayed at Kmetija Urska (Tourist Farm Urska). Months ago, I’d stumbled upon the farm’s website, but I didn’t think I could make the logistics work given the farm’s off the beaten path locale. However, when the summer camp I was also eyeing for the boys announced a location change, I was delighted to learn that the Kmetija Urska was only 40 minutes away from Lake Velenje. It seemed like kismet, so I booked both the camp for the boys as well as the farm for a week-long stay. I cannot emphasize enough how special this farm stay was. The owner, Urska, provided three meals a day, made primarily with local ingredients, many of which are grown on site. Our first morning, Calla was handed a basket and sent to the hen house to collect eggs. I thought she would find just one or two, but she returned to the kitchen with 14 eggs! (There were far more, but we wanted to leave some for the other children to collect.) The property was surrounded by apple trees, as well as raspberry and blackberry bushes, and all the food was both traditional and spectacular – breakfast was homemade sourdough bread, spreads, pates, meats, yogurt, granola, juice (lavender, elderflower), and cottage cheese. For lunch, there was a choice of soup (if you were staying on property) or sandwiches (if you were heading out for the day), and then for dinner, there was more soup, a salad, a main course, and dessert. Urska and her family also make their own organic wines, one red and one white, both of which were delicious, though we were partial to the white. The property has sweeping views of the meadows, which were best viewed from the small swimming pool. We went swimming every day, and Calla is rapidly improving her skills. Hens, pigs, sheep, rabbits roam the property, as well as one dog and some number of cats. During our stay, two baby lambs were born, and we enjoyed visiting them in the barn.

But what truly made Kmetija Urska special was the hospitality and getting to spend time with other families, as well as the opportunity for Calla to foster her independence. Kmetija Urska is a family affair, and Urska is the third generation to run the farm. They were championing the farm to table movement years before it became trendy. During our stay, we met families from Slovenia, Germany, France, and Belgium. Despite the language barrier, Calla spent hours playing with the other children, including sharing a doctor set with Freda (3, Flemish), running around with Anneke (almost 2, German), and swimming with Daphne (9, French). She loved the sandbox, and spent hours and hours there while Justin and I sipped wine and chatted with the other adults after dinner. The European guests were surprised at how relatively simple it was to pull our boys out of school for the year, as well as horrified when I explained the high cost of the health insurance we are still carrying despite the fact that it barely covers us abroad. Having conversations about life and travel with strangers who quickly become friends while sitting outside on a sprawling farm in the middle of a country where you’ve met not a single American – this is the type of experience we dreamed of when we made the decision to take this trip.

As promised, we took Calla on many fun off-site adventures while her brother was gone. We surprised her with a chocolate making workshop at Teta Freda. There, we ground cacao beans with a mortar and pestle, mixed them with coconut oil, brown sugar, and melted chocolate, and poured them into molds. Each of us decorated two bars which we then brought back to the farm to eat later. Calla was delighted.

Another day, we visited the Ptuj (p – too – ey) Castle, a decision we made only in part because I kept wanting to say the word, “Ptuj.” In addition to touring the many rooms, Calla was able to do a hands-on origami project in the style of an artist from a visiting exhibition, as well as practice playing a several instruments. Since Maribor is a large wine region, we decided to visit a few wineries, which quickly turned into visiting just one winery (Horvat) when we learned that unlike in other countries, wine tasting in Slovenia is an all-afternoon affair with many, many wines (11, in this case).

On a day it was supposed to rain, we ditched plans for a hike and brought Calla to indoor/outdoor thermal pools. The place looked like something out of The Jetsons, with three large circular hot tubs suspended above the luxurious warm pools. There was a swim-through divider that allowed you to move seamlessly between the indoor and outdoor portions of the pool, as well as several water slides. Calla was hesitant at first, but quickly discovered that water slides are awesome and dragged Justin down at least a half dozen times. Since the hotel also had a spa, I booked pedicures. (Or rather, a pedicure for me and just polish for Calla). It was then I learned that a pedicure in Slovenia is not like a pedicure in the United States, starting with the fact there is no polish. The esthetician looked confused when I asked to pick out a color, while I tried to skillfully navigate respect for nail culture with desire for my toes to match my daughter’s. Fortunately, they were able to make it work, and I also learned that pedicures in Slovenia are much more utilitarian than pedicures in the US in that they are about cleaning feet rather than providing a calf massage. Alas…. At least my toenails are now magenta and sparkly. Calla and I also had 30 minutes massages since the spa offered something called “Children’s Chocolate Massage” and I figured that booking something for Calla would increase the logistical ease of me being able to book something for myself. She and I were set up in a couple’s massage room, and while I definitely didn’t have “couple’s massage with my four-year-old” on my life bingo card, it was a really lovely experience. Calla was radio silent throughout the entire thing, and is now insisting on nightly massages. Whoops. Apple doesn’t fall….

Later that evening, rather than eating on site, all farm guests caravanned to a deer farm approximately 20 minutes away. We ate a tasty dinner of salami, pate, goulash, polenta, and cake, and tried not to think too hard about the surviving deer who roamed the property. The kids were given the opportunity to feed the deer, but Calla seemed horrified by the prospect of deer slobber (same, girl) so just watched.

On our final day as a threesome, we ventured to a town called Rogla where we completed a 6-mile hike to Lake Lovrenska. Calla was insistent that she needed to go in her carrier, and we kept encouraging her to walk, telling her that we could reassess once we were at the top of the trail. Once there, she asked about the carrier again, and we communicated belief in her capability and reminded her that downhill is much easier than uphill. She committed to trying, and as we were walking back down, we marveled at her burst of self-confidence. She was engaging in so much positive self-talk (e.g., “it’s much more funner going down;” “I can do it!”) I tried to explain the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and when we finished the hike, Calla was SO proud of herself for completing it without assistance. We took a quick ride on another summer toboggan, though it wasn’t nearly as fun as the one in Bled, and headed back to the farm for ice cream and pool time.

During quiet evenings on the farm, Justin and I worked on trip planning when we weren’t scouring the Explorer Camp website for new photos of our boys. When we left Washington, we had approximately 2/3’s of our family gap year booked. We’ve found it much harder than anticipated to carve out time to talk through additional trip planning, or plan much of anything other than the week right in front of us, while on the road. Having a week with just Calla was a wonderful reset and afforded us some additional time to think through the final leg of our trip. We are excited to be putting the final pieces in place for our travels through Australia, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru.

After six days of semi-quiet, we picked up Simon (i.e., “the first loudest child) from camp on August 17^th and discovered that Jonah was already on a bus about to depart for Ljubljana. In full on embarrassing mom mode, I raced around the corner and walked on to the bus with a quick “I just want to say hi to my son!” Jonah appeared perplexed, and said, “Simon isn’t here.” Thus, I did the only thing I could think to do to salvage the moment, which was to see if Jonah needed more money. He did not, and he willingly stepped off the bus briefly to give Calla and Justin hugs. He seems to be having a great time and I can’t wait to see him later today.

We were really excited to bring Simon to Kmetija Urska because we knew he’d love all the fruit plants and animals. We spent our final day there swimming and reading, and the kids stayed up late playing with new friends while we polished off a final bottle of homemade wine. It was on this glorious final day that a certain member of the Schmidt clan jumped into the pool and swam around for at least 5 minutes without realizing that their iPhone was in their bathing suit pocket. Chaos and a bowl of dry rice ensued, as did making an appointment at the Apple Store in Vienna.

$&*# hits the fan in Vienna

Down a phone, we took off for Vienna the following morning. En route, Justin was starting to feel sick. We chalked it up to the heat and the long drive, but the next day he woke up and said he barely slept from his crippling headache. He encouraged us to go to the Schoenbrunn Palace without him since we already had tickets and there was no guarantee he’d feel well enough to go later in our trip. We were hesitant to leave him, particularly since he wouldn’t be able to call us, but ultimately decided there was not much we could do back at the hotel for him and he could always have the front desk contact us (Dear reader, turned out to be COVID). Calla, Simon, and I hopped in cab for a whirlwind 8 (!) hours at the palace. We had a ball – first, we took an audio-guided tour of the palace, with its 40 ornate rooms. Then we went to the children’s museum, which was utterly charming. Each room had a different theme focusing on how the imperial children lived their lives, including dining, education, and dress. There were also displays in each room demonstrating the differences in how the wealthy children and the impoverished children spent their days. In the final room of the museum, we were able to dress up in clothing and accessories from the 1700’s.

Next, we went to a café for lunch, which really meant “three pieces of cake and some water.” We tried the famous apple strudel and sachertorte, as well as an almond pastry called mandelspitz. I was, again, reminded that I’m not a huge fan of cake, but the strudel was tasty.

After our “lunch,” we ventured over to the giant maze. On the way, we passed by the 32 over life-sized statues of mythological deities and virtues. A quick google search told us that they were created in the late 1700’s, and Simon – Greek mythology expert extraordinaire – named the different gods and goddesses and explained to us how he knew who each one was. The maze was quite the undertaking, and we kept joking we were going to be stuck there until we were in our 80’s. Eventually, we found the platform that gave us a birds’ eye view of the entire maze, and when we came back down the steps my chronic overachiever syndrome kicked in and said, “let’s take the long exit.” We ended up wandering for another 20 mins or so before locating the platform again and Simon and Calla dragged me out the short exit because they are very bright children. Outside the maze was a huge playground with sand digging equipment and a giant bird contraption that I can’t figure out how to explain other than to say Simon greatly enjoyed it.

We visited both the orangery and the privy gardens. The former had trees several hundred years old; we played a game in which we tried to find the oldest apple tree in the garden (1580)! Simon still thinks he ate a 200-year-old apple rather than an apple that grew on a 200-year-old tree and there will be no convincing him otherwise. After another trip to the playground, we finally left around 4pm and navigated the Vienna subway system. I’d promised the kids hot dogs for dinner, so after picking a couple up after disembarking the subway, we headed back to the hotel. We rested for a bit, and then I headed out to meet my colleague, Amy, for dinner. After years of enthusiastic Zoom meetings discussing the micro-nuances of various DBT sessions, it was lovely seeing her in person, and it was my first grown up only dinner in many weeks. She also gave me lots of wonderful suggestions for how to spend our remaining days in Vienna, none of which I was able to take for reasons that are probably already clear.

The next morning, I took Calla and Simon to the House of Music, which was an interesting combination of the history of music in Vienna and the science of sound. The kids got to create their own Viennese waltzes and practice conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. After the museum, Simon wanted to head back to the hotel. Calla and I planned to head back out when suddenly I was hit with overwhelming exhaustion and decided I needed to lie down. (Dear reader, guess who also has COVID?)  

So…. that was more or less a wrap on Vienna for me. My symptoms were fortunately fairly mild as far as COVID goes. I spent a couple of days in bed stuffed up and sleepy, and now I feel better but seem to have limited sense of taste. While our hotel room in Vienna had a particularly comfy bed and pillow situation going on, I’m disappointed to have missed out on seeing so much of this vibrant city. We also had to nix a planned day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia, and I’m particularly sad to have canceled the special dinner reservation I made for Simon and me while his brother was still at camp. He and I were both looking forward to it, and I promised to find somewhere else for us to go in Italy. Intellectually, we know that with a year of travel, many (many) things will go awry, and at the same time, it is still disappointing when we have to have cancel things we were excited to do. Our top priority now is to focus on getting better so that we don’t get Jonah sick and can spend quality time with Justin’s parents in Lake Garda next week.

Meanwhile… Justin still doesn’t have a phone. Despite the healing powers of dried rice, he had to purchase a new one. (We are hoping our travel insurance will help shoulder the cost!) However, this proved to be more challenging than anticipated in Vienna, so his parents are picking up a new phone in NJ and bringing it with them to Italy. I definitely do not want to endure the wrath of sweet young Jonah when he finds out that not only are we on the tail end of COVID, but that his Dad will be getting the much coveted iPhone 15, so I bought him two chocolate bars to assuage the blow. We are looking forward to finally reuniting as a family of five before heading to Italy, which marks our last country here in Europe.

 Sara’s Stats:

Flights: 2

Accommodations: 11

Countries: 4

Books read: 13

Gelatos: [on hold until Italy] 9

Justin’s Soapbox:

Well, to put things in terms that my generation will most clearly understand, this past week was that first time in Oregon Trail when the wagon wheel fell off, you lost half your belongings attempting to ford the river, and Maryanne got dysentery. I’ve been without my phone for the past week and as Sara also described, I led the charge on getting sick and having to essentially quarantine in our Vienna hotel. But it hasn’t all been good news. For one thing, I missed out on getting any ice cream at this stop!

Let’s rewind a minute here, or to be more precise, rewind to around two weeks ago. Those were simpler times then, and we had just reduced our child-related obligations by 2/3’s after dropping Simon and Jonah off at camp. With the boys temporarily in the rearview to enjoy a week at camp full of games, zip-lining, and various other lakeside activities, Sara and I took Calla for a blissful week at the Tourist Farm Urska. It was indeed as excellent and relaxing as Sara described, and I was finally able to find some of that so-called “down time” that we were supposed to be getting somewhere along the way. 

Of all the idyllic perks at the farm the most important by far was that there were other traveling families there with kids, and that the homey hospitality of the grounds created a wonderful social setting for kids to play and parents to chat and get to know one another. It got me thinking back to the “goodbye” party we threw ourselves in Kirkland before we left, during which I also felt like we had temporarily achieved an uneasy alliance of age groups, all successfully engaging with their respective cohorts, and it had felt like a kind of small victory for socializing in an post-COVID era where it seems to be harder to get people to come together and hang out, in general. I’ve often resolved that we should hold more social events, and it's something I plan to continue to try and do once we return. But I also have spent a lot of time in recent years worrying about this on a more societal level and what is, apparently, a continuing trend of people becoming more withdrawn, and communities losing shared "third spaces" where people can gather casually with ease and familiarity. Now I'm not saying I've discovered some revelatory answer to any of this while traveling (yet!) but it is definitely something I've been more observant of out here, and the experience at Urska's farm was very instructive. At minimum, it was yet again proof that if you put the right components in the right space, you can get a great result. 

Another variation of this hit me when we went to the Thermal Pools, a facility that I'd describe as a combination YMCA, miniature water park, and luxury spa. This wasn't completely unique from anything I've seen in the U.S., but the way in which it had something for everyone within a relatively compact space for an aqua facility did seem to make a difference. You could tell it was not about trying to market some kind of big experience to a customer and was more about being a low-key community place where people come for a little fun, a little wellness, a little place to hang out, and maybe come back next weekend. You know, "you can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal, you can do whatever you feel." It would be nice to see more family-friendly places like this in the U.S. that don't have to be exclusively about wild n' crazy watersplosion fun but still have enough going on to be a place that anyone could find something to do on a day off, without costing an arm and a leg.

Back to the gory medical details I'm sure you all are fascinated by, I should also mention that earlier this month I experienced a succession of intense migraine headaches while still in Croatia, which were a bit unnerving for me. I've had migraines occasionally for almost 15 years now and they're a frustration not just because of the headache pain (which is actually pretty mild for me) but because of the visual "aura" I get in conjunction with them. If you've never experienced it, it's like a sliver of your vision suddenly becomes scrambled and sparkly - like if you were to cut a tv screen with a knife and a streak of damaged and randomly flashing pixels replace a central part of the image. It's bizarre and makes it difficult to see for about an hour. I've had this happen numerous times and I even got an MRI for them back in 2015 (results normal). But now that I had them in rapid succession, which was new, I was feeling continually dizzy over the course of several days so I ended up having a second MRI out here in Slovenia just as a precaution (Doctors are still reviewing results but so far nothing seems wrong). 

I'm sharing this to further emphasize the highs and lows I've been going through over the past 2 weeks, because when getting hit with Covid (which kicked off with a headache far worse and longer-lasting than a migraine) it was right after I was finally emerging from a period of medical anxiety, only to have to now deal with something new that was going to affect everyone. So far none of these stories has panned out as anything more than a moderate inconvenience, and I'm lucky for that, but it has reminded me how much the rails of this trip (and life in general) do require us to be fully functioning most of the time to get through it, so hopefully as we put this latest episode behind us we'll all be watching out for each other's health a bit more closely.

As for my phone, well, look. We're all entitled to exactly one "I forgot my phone was in my pocket when I jumped in the pool" oopsie moment in our lifetimes, right? We all get one mulligan on this kind of mistake in this cellphone addicted world we live in, yes? Ok, I've cashed in my chit. 

While I did miss a lot of Vienna while holed up in the hotel room recovering, I did make it out to see a few sites beyond the local Apple Store (where I did become a regular for a time, as hopes faded for me to be able to fix and replace my phone). This is is the first major city we've travelled to on the trip, and it has a lot of the cosmopolitan global-city vibe you'd expect. In fact if you just mentally replace all the sausage stands with American hot dogs, much of the downtown has some familiar NYC energy to it. It was interesting how this felt more "like home" to me in some ways, even if we're only talking about surface-level impressions. 

The older aspects of the city are still very prominent, especially the Baroque imperial palaces that are now all museums. The tall and winding buildings in the old city region look incredibly solidly built, the city blocks go on for hundreds of feet each, and the facades of so many of these hulking stone buildings are covered in ornate design. It does make me wonder if the Austro-Hungarian Empire managed to hit the most imperial and magisterial visual tone of any of the old European Empires. France of course went big in this way but the revolution curtailed a lot of that style before the 1800s. Britain has its landmarks but I'll leave it to you anglophiles to point out if anywhere in the UK was ever as uniformly "imperial looking" as Vienna. Italy may win in terms of grandeur when it comes to religious buildings specifically, but I'm not sure about palaces and council chambers. 

I admit this is a loosely-formed impression at best, but I was indeed impressed by this sense of old-world cohesion sense of history in the buildings in a way that was different from previous cities. Much of it, I think, came from seeing the juxtaposition of the old buildings but now surrounded by modern life. And this is possibly the third time in this entry where you may have started to wonder “does Justin know he’s starting to sound like one of those conservative Twitter accounts with a greek bust as an avatar?” And yes, I know it's a bit gauche to passively muse about the apparent "grandeur" of an earlier era as if that's some kind of endorsement of it. But I do think it's interesting to wonder if the way we build the world around us in both structural and aesthetically oriented ways can be a factor in improving how we live and work together.

I regret I didn't have the opportunity (largely due to health) to talk with any locals. Had the opportunity come up, I'd be curious to hear what they think any of this. Hopefully as my situation clears up I'll be able to get a little more grassroots in the days ahead instead of just pontificating from my lofty quarantine bed. Onward to Italy!

Simon’s Reflection:

I went to a sleepaway camp and it was really fun. I also made some pretty good friends there. Their names were Matthew, Yavo, Daniel, and Goehsa. Goesha and me did this thing what was really fun, it was this Olympics. We did jumping and kicking a ball, and we got silver medal. It was a huge bar of chocolate! I also did this ropes course. It was like climbing on ropes and you could have fallen off and got hurt. It was pretty dangerous because nothing was holding onto you. I almost twisted my leg. Almost. The food was really good, like really, really good. I felt pretty good at sleepaway camp. I hope you like this blog post.

After sleepaway camp, my parents picked me up and we went to this farm hotel. My parents and sister had been there for almost a week, but I only went one day. Later, we went to Vienna. We went to this hotel what was really nice. We went to the House of Music. I learned about Mozart. I learned that his last name was Mozart! I thought it was Mozart Wolfgang. We also went to the Schoenbrunn Palace. We went to a garden in it and I ate a 200 year old apple! Did you know that apple trees can be seven hundred years ago?!

Calla’s Corner:

Mommy: Calla, I want you to tell me all about the really awesome farm we stayed on.

Calla: Ok. I liked the park and everything and it was so fun. And Mommy and me went out on a walk, it was fun. I loved the pool, Urska’s the best. And, I just loved it. It’s the best, just the best, with all the pigs and goats and it’s just so fun.

Mommy: What was your favorite thing to do on the farm?

Calla: The playground and the sand pit.

Mommy: Did you make any new friends?

Calla: Yeah, the little kid, Anneke, and the other little kid and the biggest kid.

Mommy: Were you excited to pick up Simon from camp?
Calla: No.

Mommy: Why not?
Calla: Because I don’t like Simon when he’s bothering me.

Mommy: I see. Did you have fun with Simon in Austria, though?

Calla: Not really.

Mommy: Can you say one nice thing you did with Simon in Austria?

Calla: I liked playing with him and wandering around with him.

Mommy: What did you enjoy about Vienna? We went to the palace, to the museums. Tell me what you liked.

Calla: I liked going to the palace. I had fun with my family. I liked wandering around at our best hotel. I liked the candies, and the dinner, and every broth soup. It was just so much fun.

Mommy: What was the worst part?

Calla: The Simon annoying part.

Mommy: It wasn’t that we all got sick?
Calla: That was the sad part.

Mommy: Are you excited to get Jonah tomorrow?

Calla: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Mommy: And, we still love Simon, right? Even though sometimes brothers are annoying.

Calla: Yes, we do.

No videos this time around with our Chief Videographer being at camp. See you in Italy!

xo,

Sara, Justin, Jonah, Simon, & Calla