I think I got to Zagreb in the last email. We left there on a cool day at the beginning of September, and as the grey skies threatened rain, I began wondering if travelling in September was such a great idea..it would have been ironic, considering the summer we'd had until then in Britain, if it had continued like that for long. The road out of Zagreb was dull, and continued to be so most of the way to the Slovenian border, although a very pretty town called Samobor releived the boredom somewhat. The cycling continued to be easy once we'd crossed the Slovene border, and we made good progress through some quite impressive couintryside until we reached a smallish town 40 miles west of the border called Nova Mesto, where we decided to stop for the night. Unfortunately, we had little or no information on the place, so this proved more difficult than we thought. After a fruitless search around town for somewhere cheap enough, we came to a studentish pub and thought we'd make a decision what to do over a pint. A late train to Ljubliana, the capital, could have solved the problem, but we wanted to cycle the next day, as the scenery was supposed to be fantastic. Whilst pondering this dilemma, a girl came up to us and started talking, and it turned out the bar was a kind of student cooperative, run by young people for young people. She asked around a few of her friends (Slovenians are all polyglots and speak near-perfect English), if they knew of any places to stay, and someone said we could stay at the bar if nothing else was available.

Content with this, we got stuck into the important business of sampling the local beer (good, cheapish), and watching a film they were screening from DVD called Battle Royale - a Japanese movie which was truly bizzarre and, in most countries, banned. Anyway, at about midnight, having dispatched a couple of emails from the free internet point in there (it was to be the last one I would use for 4 weeks), we were given a new offer of a place to stay, an empty youth hostel up the road. It would be free, the person (who worked there) said, so we said yes. It was cold that night, about 8 degrees, and the hostel had no heating or running water. Still, it was a roof over our heads, and we were grateful.

The next day we were to cycle to Ljubliana. Having filled up on pancakes and pastries with coffee, we set off in the pleasant sunshine. As we headed west down the impressive Sava valley, the scenery became more and more pictoresque, with an ever narrowing gorge shrouded on both sides by thick pines closing in on us. A hefty climb followed, the first of the trip, and we felt to be heading into the hills finally. Slovenia is very Austrian in its appearance, with a very crisp feeling to everything - from the air to the rivers and the roads - it all seemed very clean, tidy, well-ordered, basically very west European in flavour. They are influenced in their cuisine by their neighbours, with plenty of sausages, soups, meat dishes and pastries, and of course that ubiqitous Balkan favourite the burek to keep the hunger brought on by cycling at bay. Also, the choice of ice-cream in Slovenia is impressive and cheap, so I found myself eating lots of huge, delicious cones for about 25p a time. Generally, the prices there are reasonable - significantly less than the Euro zone - but nevertheless, markedly higher than the majority of places I've been in eastern Europe. Basically, Slovenia considers itself western, and wants to align itself as closely as possible to the west, from fashion to food and music - nothing there feels particularly 'Balkan' or Slavic. Clearly, they feel they no longer have anything in common with their ex-Yugoslav countrymen, and want to put as much distance between themselves and the likes of Serbia as possible. They even like to stress their linguistic differences, although they are on the whole cosmetic. Did you know Slovenia was involved in the Balkan conflict ? Thought not. If you blinked, you missed it. They were involved in 1991 for ten days, but because they have no minorities there, Serbia basically let them go without too much fuss. Croatians despise them for this, and clearly feel unhappy they had to suffer so much in comparison.

Ljubliana was a lovely city. Compact, but packed with architectural gems, it had a kind of cosmopolitan air yet at the same time it was relaxed and friendly, unlike most capital cities which was probably due to the fact that it was not a capital city, until 1992 (and in fact Slovenia had never been a country in its own right until then). The city was brilliantly photogenic, and I took nearly a roll of film walking around the place. The buildings have an art-nouveau style, completely unlike anything I've seen, a lot of the city having been built in the first few years of the 20th century. The whole town is shadowed by a large hill with a castle atop it, from where some beautiful views could be seen. I would say it could be the new Prague one day, and the tourists already seem to be warming to it, although it has nowhere near the number of people packing the streets as there, fortunately. There were enough however, for Henry to do his poi at night, and make a fair bit of money doing it. I even considered getting in on the act by doing some juggling (which Henry taught me), but decided against it in the end. We met some other street performers who introduced us to a guy who owned a bar underground next to the river running through the centre of town, and we proceeded to be bought drinks for the rest of the night by the Anglophile barowner! A very nice first couple of days in Slovenia.

Henry got 'food poisoning' the next day, or so he said, and decided to catch the train to Lake Bled, our next port of call. I decided to cycle it, and, studying the map, it seemed to be a bit too direct for a day's cycling, so decided to test the bike's resolve with a detour which included a 500m climb. Foolish as this sounds now, it made sense at the time.