Stuffed Full in Ptuj, Northeast Slovenia

Zagan the motorhome’s suspension is suffering under the weight of our stomachs. We’re in Ptuj (pronounced per-toy!) in north-east Slovenia, popping in a bit more cheeky free-camping in a newly-renovated car park just outside the town (N46.41649, E15.86679). This will be our fifth freebie night, so we’ve chipped into the local economy with a you-must-be-joking enormous lunch for eight, and now cannot face tea. A comment on park4night.com sternly states overnight parking in Slovenia is illegal, and we’ll be handed a late-night bill for €300 by the local rozzers if caught. Ju’s checked with the tourist info chap, who knew of no such law, and told us his uncle does it all the time and has never had a problem. If it’s good enough for t’locals, it’s good enough for us.

Zagan free camping in Ptuj. Check again tomorrow to see if we got that €300 invoice…

“How’s about this? We head west into the Italian Dolomites, carry on through into the Austrian Alps and over the Grossglockner Pass, north to Munich, then use the autobahns to get to Poland?” “Hmmm, how about we head straight for Denmark and Norway, and do the Baltics on the way south?” “What about a side trip into Kaliningrad?” Such went yesterday’s discussions, as we swept fingers across maps, and pondered our route north. I’ll be honest: the eastern countries in Europe don’t massively excite us, and we’re having to force ourselves to get in there and see them again. There’s also a bit of travel fatigue kicking in: we’ve stayed in 600 places now, and have seen seemingly every kind of church, mosque, castle, cave, sea, river, forest, mountain, river, desert, cemetery and city Europe has to offer. Or have we? I don’t know, I guess despite the fact we’re unemployed nomads, we still get knackered.

Heading north through Slovenia today

Our eventual conclusion was: we’d stick to the original plan, but move faster. The aim is to be in Finland or Sweden for midsummer’s eve, which is a big thing up there. That gives us about six weeks to cross Austria, Slovakia (Ju insists we nip into Czech for some cheap ale), Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. A county a week, better get a move on. And we have, we’ve shoved north today and will exit Slovenia tomorrow. After a few days in Austria, we’ll turn towards the rising sun, and get off across Slovakia.

Handy free Slovenian motorhome service point. Thanks Slovenia!

After a couple of short motorway blats, some B-road elbows-in action and a smattering of A road rolling, we arrived here, having off-loaded our black waste at a free service point en-route. Despite Google Weather man predicting rain, it’s remained relentlessly sunny.

We passed the Laško brewery en-route 

As you can see from the Laško photo above, it all looks a bit Austrian. A few feathers in caps and a bit more leather and the look would be complete. Same goes for Slovenia as a whole, it looks Austrian. Sleek BMWs and Mercedes cruise along smooth, empty motorway. Houses look big enough to house the country’s parliament. The architecture’s not quite Tyrolean, but it’s close enough. So us finding an enormous three course meal for €9.10 a head today came as something of a surprise!

Ptuj old town, Slovenia

Ptuj was on the final edge of the Ottoman empire. This tower was built to fight off the Turks

Ptuj town hall

Door of the Day in Ptuj

Detail from Door of the Day

Ptuj, Slovenia

Right, enough photos of buildings, here are some pictures of food! Neither of us could quite work out what was going on when a huge urn of soup turned up on the table, enough to feed both of us with no other courses. With a beer, a radler (2.5% shandy, weirdly made from Grapefruit juice but nice-tasting) and a tip, we spent €25 and were stupidly full. Some food even went back (mainly the salads).

Slovenian is utterly indecipherable. I tried to pronounce some of it, which had the waitress smiling at my ineptitude

A few more photos from today and that’s me signing off, see you in Austria folks!

Small boy sat in huge plastic ice cream. Ju was jealous

Cheeky sparrows, good for them!

Like Austria, not much graffiti here. I couldn’t work this one out, even with Google Translate

Cheers, Jay