In Ljublijana I met up with my friend Rich and his Slovenian girlfriend Urska. Rich and I grew up near one another and worked on an anti-human trafficking charity together. We have a habit of meeting up in Europe more than we do back in our homeland.
Urska and her friend Tanya took us to the Lasko beer and flower festival. Lasko is the national beer and is so called because it comes from a town of 3000 people. However, annually they hold this festival and on one weekend, their population increases to 147,000!!! There's all sorts of concerts and gigs on and it's very much a family festival. Worth checking out.
The next day, Urska took us to what was a rather bizarre experience for me - a Sauna. A sauna in Slovenia is not just a hot wooden box, it's hot (and cold) tubs, reflexology baths, saunas, steam rooms etc. So far so good. But, being Eastern Europe where apparently almost everyone is entirely comfortable with nudity, the whole thing is done buck naked. Now I'm by no means a prude, but this was a difficult one to get my northern irish protestant sensibilities around. Rich had been in one of these places 3 or 4 times, so was by now getting used to it, but having your mate there with you and your girl put another spin on it. Suffice it to say, I survived and decided that the experience was not a photo opportunity.
That evening, a crew of us went to the Buena Vista Social Club gig. I love these guys and it was especially good to see them in Ljublijana. I guess the only downside was that we got completely drenched as we waited to get in. When it rains in Slov, it rains! There was nowhere to hide and so effectively we all looked like we had just been submerged underwater.
The following day I booked my bike into BMW Activ Auto Slovenia for it's 6k service. They took me at short notice as I was traveling and provided me with a new 800ST for the day. The service cost me 100 euros and the bike got a much needed scrub down from them in addition to everything else. It's a new state of the art 4-leveled dealership and the guys are most helpful if you want to ride down and get a cheaper service
That evening I went for a run on my own, and on the way back thought I'd fuel up. It was about 8:30 and my bike was showing 5 miles of juice left on the computer. The GPS was suggesting there were a bunch of fuel stations within a couple of miles, so I headed for the nearest. Shut. The second, shut! The bike died on the way to the third. If they're not 24hr, they all shut at 8pm I learned. I started the push home. 2 miles was going to take some time. After about 5 mins a police car pulled up and they asked me if I was ok. I told them the above and they said that if I waited there, they'd go and get me some petrol at the 24h station 10 mins away. I offered them money but they wouldn't take it. 20 mins later they returned with a couple of litres of liquid gold. They asked me where I was from (like it wasn't obvious?) and where I was planning to journey to, told me to enjoy the trip, and keep my money for it! Let it never be said that Slovenia is not an hospitable country. Amazing.
After that, it was off to Croatia. Blasting down through southern Slovenia to Croatia was probably the most fun from a riding point of view, but due to my own carelessness could've been a bit of a diplomatic fiasco. Since I was using Ljublijana as a base for a few days, I left my luggage there and only took the necessaries in tank bag. Unfortunately I took out all my docs including passport. Upon arriving at the Slovenian border, I was understandably asked for a passport or ID card. I gave him my driving license, but he wasn't amused. I explained that I was only going down for 1 night and that he surely wasn't going to make me ride up another 3 hours to pick up my passport? He walked around the bike, told me that his boss was watching, and that I should hand him my license back and he'll pretend he's looking at an ID card and hand it back thus letting me through. The only condition would be that I don't tell them I came through this border on the way back up. I made it out of Europe! Getting back into the same fortress was going to be trickier. But before I needed to worry about that, I had a night in northern Croatia with some good friends.
I headed to Krk, an island now joined by a bridge. Krk, on Krk, is a beautiful little town with a marina and nice beaches. Nearby there's some great little villages and other islands worth exploring. Nearby there is the island Cres (pronounced 'sress'), which is a bit of a paradise island with amazing roads and scenery. There's a mountain range the length of it and right in the middle that has a spinal road that run the whole way, so you've a panoramic view (sorry no photos). If you're in Croatia, you must visit here.
In Vrbnik on Krk
On my return, I thought I'd try and make it up through a different border crossing. I remember riding and talking to myself through my autocom to see which pitch sounded most persuasive for getting me back in. I suspected there was trouble ahead. I got past the Croatian official without too much of an inconvenience, but they were always going to be the softer touch. Moments later, I attempted to charm my way past this Slovenian border control. She didn't take the charm, but eventually I got around her and she waved me though. I couldn't believe it as I was certain I was going to have to get someone to run my passport down.
I got back to Slovenia and was about to pull into Urskas when two topless 'louts' started chasing me and shouting at me. I recognised one of them as I'd met him randomly outside Hein Gericke in Belfast a couple of weeks previously as he stood looking at my bike. The other guy I had met a few months prior to that, and at that point I realised they were Rich's friends who had just ridden down. Matt has a 1200GS and Mike was on a suicide run on his 1992 CBR 600. Both their bikes looked like mobile shanty towns owing to the amount of gear they had, and Mike had pretty much lost the ability to grip anything owing to riding this old antique down. We all stood outside chatting and decided that we'd ride up to Lake Bled in the north.
Lake Bled is a beautiful lake up in the mountains which used to be the favourite holiday destination of General Tito. It's got a lovely old church on an island in the middle of the lake, and is utterly picturesque with what I believe was Tito's palace looking down over the lake.
Having ridden up in the heat, we were eager to get in for a swim. A lack of swimming shorts didn't deter, as we endured the woop woops of some local lassies.
After Bled, it was down to Izola on the coast. Urska's mum lives here and was good enough to host us for a night.
The next morning, we set off on what would be the return journey.
Our first port of call would be a reggae festival called 'The Riversplash Festival' in Tolmin in the northern mountains of Slovenia. I became a big fan of reggae having lived in Peckham and buying the odd CD of the hawkers at East Street Market. So, this was looked forward to. We rode in to the canvas village and came across a couple of GS's parked. We were warmly greeted with a Slovenian honey whiskey and then decided to blag our way in. After paying 20-something euros each to get into the main stage, the Slovenian rain was unleashed again. I could see the relevance of the name 'riversplash' as the entire thing was almost washed straight into the river.
I slept out in it to the amusement of Matt and Mike because I claimed that my gore-tex bivvy bag was so good they could push me into the river and I'd float downstream and waken up bone dry. I ate my words. The following morning my thermarest was afloat inside the bag and my iphone was submerged. I wasn't happy.
Time to hit the road in soaking wet kit and a night of no sleep.
Except that hitting the road was not that easy. Mike's bike had completely crapped out. Aside from the huge hole that had developed in the downpipes which alerted anyone within a 10 mile range that we were arriving, it just wouldn't start now. Matt and I attempted to plot our route to Karlsruhe in Germany (which was going to be easy enough as Mike couldn't ride country roads because of his wrists) while Mike tried to give CPR to his bike.
He contemplated scratching off the vin plate and dumping it in the river with the festival. Mike WILL NOT ride pillion we learned and so he was trying to sort out a flight home. After 30 mins, his bike cranked into life again...and we were off.
Along the way, I had some run-ins with the local insect population. This bee clearly thought my bike was a female and spent some time exploring the black and yellow paintwork.
A short time later on the motorway, a wasp flew up inside of my helmet whilst I was doing about 80. I opened and closed the visor but it was intent in staying and so slammed to a halt as best I could on the hard shoulder, and quickly took off the helmet. It was a very close call! I checked my boots for scorpions just in case, but all was clear
That night we got to Karlsruhe after driving through too much rain. We decided to book into the hotel I stayed in on the way down. Upon arriving, we discovered they were booked out, so we tried a few more...same story. It became apparent that owing to the Hochenheim F1 being on nearby, we wouldn't get a hotel for love nor money (not even Matt's love!). Rather than finding a campsite outside the city and trying to pitch in the rain, we said goodbye to our dignity, and squatted in an underground car park belonging to the apartments above them! As stealthily as possible, we parked up the bikes, went for some food, came back, threw down the roll mats...and tried to grab some sleep. I was half expecting to have a German police torch in my eyes half way through the night, but it wasn't to be.
In the morning we got up and left before anyone came to pick up their car and who inadvertently might step on this trio of motorized vagrants!
Hope you're all well mate. Good memories.
What had happened to it that it would betray my trust so much now? Can it be reset?? In any event, I was sitting on this narrow hard shoulder and was very much wanting to be elsewhere. The guys had pulled in about 0.5 mile up the road and suspected that it was the fuel thing again. Matt rode down the hard shoulder and we wondered about improvising. We tried to rig up some way of towing me out of there. In the absence of anything else, we used clothes tied around his his 1200 with me reaching over and trying to hold on so that I could get some momentum up. Useless. After 20 mins of clowning around in what was too dangerous a place to be doing this, Mike rode down. We took off his rack ties, joined them together, and attached to the back of Matt's bike. I leaned over and the big tow began. To say that it cut off the circulation to my fingers giving me gangrene which resulted in loosing most of my hand would be an exaggeration, but not much! 
here's the link: 
