#slovenia

michaelcliffordgallery:

May 7, 2022

Luke, Ash, and Cal from when they were in Slovenia via Ashton’s ig story

Ash has Sierra take the pic so then it’s just the three of them and she only gets a tag. ❤️ love it! Lashton keeps winning.

In planning a trip through German-speaking Europe that I am hoping to take this December/January, I started thinking about other overland trips that I would like to take in future.  I came up with three really exciting ones and thought I would post the theoretical itineraries here!  

I’m not sure when- but I’ll definitely be taking one or more of these trips in the next few years.

I posted about the actual winter Europe trip and the first fantasy trip- in South America, from Buenos Aires to Bogota here:  Overland Trips I Want to Take: Part 1 (South America)

the third trip through West Africa can be found here: Overland Trips I Want To Take: Part 3 (West Africa)

Now onto the second trip

Eastern Europe

This trip would be amazing!  It combines ancient sites, Soviet era architecture, small modern cities, a beautiful coast, low lying mountains and more.  For me it would be unique in that Eastern Europe is really one of the regions that I’m least familiar with- I speak none of the languages, only know the basic outline of political history, and am not aware of much of the culture.  All of this would make it the perfect kind of travel- full of learning and experiencing new things.  

The trip would start in St. Petersburg experiencing the iconic “Mother Russia” before heading west through the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) this fast developing though often forgotten part of Europe interesting combines Eastern and Western Europe with some Northern/Scandinavian flair - or so I gathered from my short weekend in Latvia in 2011.  That brief encounter made me want to see more of the Baltics.

From there the route would go through Belarus and Ukraine. These two large countries were two of the more connected to the core of the USSR and still exist as more reserved (especially Belarus) than other parts of the former Soviet bloc.  These two nations being so large would mean long hours going through country-side, hopefully stopping in small towns, seeing the rural life a bit, making new friends, who knows. 

Next would be moving into the mountains of Moldova and Romania.  Considering I love low lying mountains and hills, I think this would be a highlight! Plus Moldova is probably the most obscure of the countries on the list, so getting to know it a bit would be really exciting.

Once in Bucharest, the plan is to cut directly West through Belgrade and all the way to Zagreb in Croatia and even further to Ljubljana, Slovenia.  These two capital cities are said to be somewhat unknown gems of Europe, with the latter being popular with cyclists and sharing some parts of Italian culture because of its proximity with Northern Italy.

The ride down the Croatian coast of the Adriatic sea will likely be the peak of beautiful landscape on the trip.  At some point though I’d move inland first to visit the campus of the boarding school in Mostar that is part of the United World College movement that I attended.  After crossing through the last bits of coast in Montenegro I’d move inland a second time, through Kosovo to Sophia, Bulgaria.

After Sophia I’ll be deep in old Greek territory, visiting Alexander the Great’s sites in Montenegro and then through another beautiful capital, Tirana, Albania. I will then leave the “Balkans” proper and head down through Greece to all the ancient ruins on the way to Athens!

Wow! I’m both exhausted and exhilarated from even writing about it!  Definitely would be a whirlwind experience. Hope I will do it (or parts of it) soon!

Bonus Trip: South Pacific  While talking with a friend we came up with three other long trips, and though I haven’t put much thought into them, I’m including one in each of the posts as a bonus trip.  This idea is to island hop around the South Pacific- seeing Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Marshall Islands, and many more!  I would be done ideally on a boat, though there are lots of small planes that go between the islands as well!  Who knows!

In 5 days i will be attending my first film festival since the pandemic started - kinda excited about it since it will be also the first event of any kind that i will be attending in more than 18 months, i missed the experience of seeing films on the big screen and this one will have them in an outdoor setting as well as indoors. Hoping this is a slow return to some kind of normal in that sense. It will show 36 feature films, 34 short films and 9 documentaries coming from 30 different countries and i will be getting the ticket with which i can watch anything at the festival. Hopefully i also get to meet people i haven’t seen since the end of 2019. Friends and acquaintances who share your interests and that you can talk to about anything. Haven’t done that in a very long while. It’s really time to break the isolation cycle this year :)

Retirement home, Celje

Celje train station, Slovenia

Italian gains from the Treaty of Rapallo, shown in light green and yellow.  Not shown are some other Dalmatian and Adriatic islands, and the port of Zara [Zadar].  Fiume is shown in yellow, as it was annexed by Italy in 1924; between 1920 and 1924, however, it was a Free State.

November 12 1920, Rapallo–After the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres, the last major formal loose end was the border between Italy and Yugoslavia.  Italy had substantial claims along her eastern frontier and the Dalmatian coast, dating back to the 1915 Treaty of London under which she joined the war, but many of these areas had Slovene or Croat majorities, which under the Wilsonian principle of self-determination should go to Yugoslavia—which was as much an Allied signatory of the post-war treaties as Italy was.  Wilson frustrated Orlando repeatedly at the peace conference, precipitating the latter’s withdrawal andlater ouster as PM, and the negotiations in Paris broke up before resolving the issue.

In early November, however, the Yugoslavs lost their American backers, as Wilson’s Democrats were defeated in a landslide.  Harding had since disavowed the notion that the war was fought to make the world safe for democracy, and could not be counted on to support Slovene and Croat calls for self-determination.  On November 12, Yugoslavia signed the Treaty of Rapallo with Italy, giving Italy control of Gorizia, Trieste, the entire Istrian peninsula, the western quarter of modern-day Slovenia, most of the islands off the Dalmatian coast (with the main exception of Krk), the small Pelagosa [Palagruža] islands, and the port of Zara [Zadar].  Notably not included was the port of Šibenik, which had been offered to the Italians in a final compromise offer before Orlando was ousted.  Fiume [Rijeka] was to become a free city, like Danzig; before that could come to pass, D’Annunzio, who had occupied the city and demanded Italian annexation, would have to be dealt with.

Sources include: Mark Thompson, The White War.

An Austrian propaganda poster, in Slovenian, reading “Mother, do not vote for Yugoslavia, or I will be drafted for King Peter.”

October 10 1920, Völkermarkt–TheTreaty of Saint-Germain called for a series of plebiscites in Carinthia to resolve the disputed Austrian-Yugoslavian border.  The first one, for the immediate border region, was held, after some delay, on October 10.  Although the region was majority-Slovene, Austria won the plebiscite 22,025 - 15,278.  The region had stronger economic ties to the rest of Austrian Carinthia than to Yugoslavia, many saw Austria as more forward-thinking than Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia, and Austria, unlike Yugoslavia, had no conscription (as a result of the Treaty of Saint-Germain).

The result was something of a surprise to both sides.  In protest, Yugoslav forces briefly moved into the plebiscite area the next week, but quickly withdrew; the government in Belgrade was not greatly concerned with Slovenia’s borders.  Plans for a second plebiscite, for the city of Klagenfurt and its surrounding environs, were cancelled as the results of the first hand rendered them moot.

Sources include: Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919.