Travel Guide

Travel Guide: Lake Bohinj, Ljubljana, Lake Bled x2

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I had wanted to return to Slovenia since a trip there in the winter several years ago, and this was the perfect opportunity. We spent five nights in the village of Stara Fužina by Lake Bohinj at the foothills of Triglav National Park in the Julian Alps, which gave us ample time for some much-needed relaxation and immediate access to all the nature we had missed while in Venice. The village had two grocery stores, a snack bar, two restaurants, two churches, and a fire station. The primary business seemed to be tourism with a good amount of farming, and it seemed like everyone knew everyone else.

As we would learn, the church bells next door to our accommodation ring promptly at 9pm and 7am – and by ring, I mean clash and clang. Insistently. For several minutes. Our host told us that she likes them; being on holiday, I was rather less fond of the 7am round.

Our time in Slovenia was mostly spent enjoying Triglav National Park. On our first full day, we hiked past the fields at the edge of the village . . .

. . . through Mostnica Gorge with its deep caverns of bitingly cold water that provided relief for our feet . . .

. . . and alongside fields owned and operated by farming families . . .

. . . before arriving at the main attraction, the Mostnica Waterfall.

It was here where we picnicked on the rocks before heading back in the direction of the guesthouse we’d passed on the way. There would be a cold drink there waiting for us.

The next day, we walked in a different direction through the village and past the fields . . .

. . . to reach the path that runs the length of Lake Bohinj. We stopped for ice cream, our usual picnic, and to sit for a while by the water. Despite wearing a bathing suit, I only went in as far as possible without getting wet. I am not fond of hiking in wet clothes and we had a ways to go.

The following day, we visited Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, where I hadn’t been on my first trip. The city felt like many around Germany with narrow side streets, pastel buildings, and open squares. The amount of German being spoken by tourists only augmented the sense of familiarity. The castle on the hill and the city’s dragon symbol added an air of the medieval.

I enjoy any city with a market . . .

. . . or on the water . . .

. . . and Ljubljana’s car-free old town was pleasant to walk through. It is also very small, making it easy to take everything in. I especially appreciated aspects of Ljubljana that hinted at the daily lives of the people who live there.

On the way back, we stopped in Lake Bled. The lake was an almost unreal blue, and we were, as always, enchanted by the mountains in the distance.

We walked up the path to Castle Bled, stopping just before we had to pay admission to look down at the valley through which we had driven on our way there.

We spent our last day in Slovenia having a beach day at Lake Bohinj. We spread our towels on the grass under a tree, bought ice cream bars from a kiosk, went swimming, and paddled our rented boards. It had been very hot the last several days and the water was delicious.

Rejuvenated from the slow pace and having spent nearly a week surrounded by the Julian Alps, we were excited to get back into the mountains for one final adventure: Germany’s Zugspitze.

On My Mind

Guys, I’m back!

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Leute, ich bin wieder da, read my Whatsapp message to a group of climbing friends.

Not too long thereafter, I dusted the chalk from hands sporting four open blisters (rookie mistake: continuing to climb when the baby-soft skin first begins to rub away), went through my stretch routine, and packed up to go home.

I didn’t, but I could have skipped down the street. I could have grinned at every passing individual. My heart felt carefree. My body felt used, tired, worked. I took a deep breath and savoured it.

The last time I was in the climbing hall was on my birthday. I was at the beginning of my eighth month of pregnancy and had spent the previous months waiting for the moment when it would be time to stop. I’d felt a little too much pressure on my lower belly, a little too much tension on stretched muscles that I wasn’t supposed to engage. Objectively, the top rope route had been easy and boulders before it even easier, but I owed it to my baby and to myself to answer honestly when my belayer asked if climbing felt okay. “Actually no,” I replied then. “I think I’m done.”

And now, with my baby six months old, I was ready to come back. In some ways, ripping open my hands in exuberance was a reminder of what it means to return to a sport after so much time away: Go slowly.

While pregnant, my joints softened and pelvic floor stretched; my pretty darn good abs disappeared; my belly stretched out and knitted back together. My hands are no longer calloused. My body is not what it was.

Go slowly.

Early on in my pregnancy, I stopped climbing three days a week. And then I stopped climbing twice a week. I was content when I stopped climbing altogether, and surprised at the fury that took hold when I couldn’t start again once the baby was born. Everything that had been was no longer, and I didn’t recognize myself in the life that had begun. It took time until I stopped looking for who I had been and lamenting what I used to do. And then I found who I had become.

As a new mother, I am living in the very real luxury of a time that will not come again. I am home with my daughter, and this means that I can focus on her without having to worry about balancing work just yet. When I have the time, I can attend to myself.

Now that she is getting older, now that my body is fitter than it was, I’m back at the climbing hall, this time with a new appreciation for the time spent independently, in physical exertion, and as part of a community that knows a very different version of me. I’m a tiny girl’s mama, and a climber, too.

Parenting

Sleeping Like a Baby

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My friend said to her husband, “The baby is going to wake up soon. I just know it.” And, as if conjured, he did. I was duly impressed.

And then I became a parent and experienced sleep regression (I know, I know, it’s a progression in a shift from baby to adult sleep cycles and should be celebrated rather than dreaded, blah blah) and could set my watch to my baby’s nap times. Thirty minutes. Not one second longer.

My friend wasn’t the wizard parent I had long thought she was. (I mean, she might be, but not in the context of a napping four-month-old.) Out of seemingly nowhere, I found myself in precisely that phase of having an infant. Suddenly, I understood.

Add “sleep regression” to the list of reasons I now cringe upon hearing that someone “slept like a baby.” Unless something has gone very wrong, they have not. In fact, I would not wish sleeping like a baby upon anyone.

First of all, babies are terrible roomates. They are loud, particularly newborns. For such teensy creatures, they emit a whole range of grunts, snorts, and breathing sounds that could keep one awake, assuming one were not a freshly minted parent seeing double from sleep deprivation.

And babies wake up a lot, which seems to be forgotten by anyone who trills brightly that they’ve slept like a baby. The bright trilling indicates that, in fact, they have slept like an adult, which is the polar opposite of sleeping like a baby. Babies wake up because they have not yet developed the circadian rhythms that regulate the sleep-wake cycle, because they’re hungry, because they’re wet, because they have tummy aches, because they’re lonely, and because they’re babies. Part of what makes those first weeks so exhausting is that neither the parents nor the baby know why the baby is awake, and a process of elimination is sometimes needed to finally put everyone back to sleep.

However, babies are also quick learners, which means they develop circadian rhythms at around three months and thus have a “day” and a “night.” The longest sleep stretch happens at night, but baby’s night and mama’s night (I feel you, nursing mothers) sometimes only overlap for a very short time. And “sleeping through the night” for a baby actually means from midnight until five in the morning, which is less than optimal for the adults responsible for baby’s care.

But things get better! And you think you’ve got it! The loud newborn sounds fade (and you miss them), baby has a bedtime routine, bedtime gradually shifts earlier. And then sleep regression happens.

Sleep regression could be thought of positively: Baby is growing out of the 45-minute newborn sleep cycles and into the 90-minute adult sleep cycles. Yay! However, baby wakes after 30 minutes and cannot manage the transition to the next part of the cycle and is therefore awake. And suddenly, baby is awake a lot, meaning that baby also needs to be occupied. Huh.

The funny thing is, and this caught me completely by surprise, sleep regression seems to cause more of an upset during the day than at night. After all, baby has figured out night and day. But daytime naps are suddenly hardly enough time to eat something and take a shower/fold the laundry/clean the bathroom/call a friend/have a nap. Previously, baby slept a lot. Now, mama and papa are spending a lot of time trying to get baby to sleep. The rest of the time is spent trying to figure out what to do with a baby all day.

Like everything, this new rhythm gradually gets easier, too, and the new parents are now aware that regressions, which happen around important periods of development, are temporary and will pass. And babies start to do cute things, like wake up talking to themselves or kicking their feet up into the air or, as is the case with my six-month old this week, experimenting with the sounds they can make while blowing the tongue against the lips. Adorable though this is, I still would not recommend a baby as a roommate. That being said, I also can’t imagine being in a separate room, so I guess we’re stuck.

Point is: No adult is sleeping like a baby.

But being a baby does have advantages when it comes to sleeping, namely that babies can sleep anywhere. (And again, I know this isn’t the case for all babies.) On shoulders, in the car, in the snuggly, in the stroller, on the floor, on the couch, in the bouncer, in bed. When baby is young enough and tired enough, baby will sleep. And no amount of noise seems to disturb them. (I can hear you, parents of older babies and children. There are more fun times around the corner, I know.)

Perhaps this is what “I slept like a baby” refers to. But frankly, you don’t want to sleep like a baby. And new parents of babies are obsessed with getting baby to sleep like an adult. Half a year ago, I couldn’t have imagined how all-consuming this topic would be, and I now bristle at anyone who asks how my baby is sleeping – it’s a sensitive subject!

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that as soon as I think we’ve adjusted to something, baby grows and changes, which is exactly what we want babies to do. My baby is sleeping like a baby, and that’s all there is to say about it.

On loving, learning, and living