Exploring Slovenia: Postojna and Bled

After a week of settling into life in Ljubljana the time came to explore a bit more of Slovenia. My colleague Mircea and I were very kindly taken to Postonja by the Ljubljana site coordinator Leon Kos. Whilst there, I was surprised by how beautiful the Slovenian countryside was and how similar it was to that of my home county, Yorkshire. Below is a comparison.

The image in the upper left is one I took in Postonja, the one on the right is of the North Yorkshire Moors in the UK.

Whilst in this region, we visited some caves, one of which can be seen below

When this was taken it was pitch black and we had to use the camera flash, maybe this explains the misleading look of discontent on my face…

One week after, Mircea and I took the bus to Bled to visit the lake. Whilst there we spent a good proportion of the day swimming in the lake and enjoying the sun. After visiting the lake, we decided to go summer sledging on the Straza ski slope. This was immensely fun, so much so, we went twice. We were taken 130m upwards via cable car and then descended using the toboggan. This provided breathtaking views of Bled as can be seen in the image below.

Below is a video of the descent:

Incredibly fun. We then went to the castle but decided not to enter as we had to leave for the train in 40 minutes and wouldn’t have enough time to see all it has to offer. I did however manage to climb across a barrier near the peak of the castle and gingerly walk along a wall to take this wonderful picture:

Mircea also crossed the barrier to take pictures of his own. It seems we started a trend as many other tourists were climbing over the barrier and carefully walking along the narrow wall so they could see this magnificent view.

Aside from all this fun, work is going well and is fun in itself. I am learning more about HPC and fluid dynamics everyday.