Team Day, Part 1: From the Postojna Caves to the Adriatic Sea

The village church bells have just tolled in the midnight hour, so I really should be sleeping instead of blogging out here on the balcony in the light of a nearly-full moon. But when there’s a random accordion, tuba and trumpet playing an off-key waltz to the somewhat harmonic singing of late night revelers somewhere a few properties away—well, let’s just say circumstances aren’t conducive to sleep just now anyway. So I may as well catch up on writing about our experiences traveling across Slovenia on a team-building excursion to recharge after the previous two weeks of active ministry.

Excitement was running high last Friday, a day which awoke to the sight of we eight Canadians climbing into our beloved “Canadian Mule” cube van and driving off into the horizon.  For two hours the cornfields and country-scape to which we had grown accustomed gave way to beautiful, forested foothills as we cruised down the highway. At last, the Mule pulled into our first destination: the famous Postojna Caves.

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The crowd of us tourists who had gathered at the cave entrance were first sorted by language—we being with the English tour, naturally—and then were seated in a long train for the ride into the caverns. As the train whooshed through a dimly lit tunnel to emerge into the galleries beyond, I suddenly found myself in some fantastic “other world:” a world of height and depth and expanse burgeoning floor-to-ceiling with stalactites, stalagmites and other sculptures of glittering limestone. One cannot help, upon entering such an astonishing world, but recall the Vienna cathedral: the detailed stonework, the ornate pillars and columns, the intricate artistry.

We stepped off the train to journey on foot through this underground cathedral, ascending into galleries filled with towering formations which defy description—an army of elaborate limestone giants rising upwards to meet innumerable spears of shining stone twisting down like chandeliers from an ancient gothic ceiling. Even the walls sparkled. How can I convey what the senses encounter as one walks through such a setting: the smell of cool, still air and damp rock, the echo of the murmuring crowd, the sight of fantastic limestone forms rising and falling like the spires and colonnades of some forgotten castle? All of it leaves the observer unequivocally wonderstruck.

Back in the daylight, we travelled further into the foothills, winding up a series of hairpin curves to reach our hostel set in a narrow-streeted village atop a high ridge. The vista before us, stretching down a deep valley green with orchards of figs and olives, featured an incredible range of foothills, the larger ones being topped with the white steeples and red roofs of distant villages. We didn’t have long to gaze at this scene, however, before driving back down the hairpin road to Piaogn, a town set on a Mediterranean peninsula between Italy on one horizon and Croatia on the other. The colourful, flat-faced buildings and cobblestone streets of the beautiful town, however, were not the first thing to capture my attention. That honour belongs to the sunny water of the Adriatic Sea, clear as a topaz and twice as blue. Already a plan began to percolate in my mind as to how I might encounter that water more vividly.

But first—dinner. Being on a team with a bunch of hungry guys means that things like jumping into the ocean have to come second to matters of survival, like eating. So eat we did, at an apparently fantastic seafood restaurant facing the ocean. I say apparently because I haven’t eaten much seafood before: most of it counted as adventurous eating for me, including the octopus, squid tentacles (actually pretty good) and cuttlefish. Since I was on such a roll, I even swallowed a fish eyeball, just to say “I done it.” 

Afterward, we roamed the ridiculously scenic streets for awhile, journeying from open courtyards surrounded by magnificent buildings and fountains up through narrow, cobblestoned alleys to reach an ancient church at the top of a hill. A climb up the iconic bell tower’s 400-year-old stairs—for the slight fee of one Euro each—landed us in a windy wonder-world overlooking the city’s maze-like network of red roofs, beyond which lay beach, then ocean, and finally the Italian Alps themselves. What an amazing series of moments those were, gazing out from the top of the bell tower. But even more amazing was the final highlight of the day.

You see, back at the restaurant I had snuck away from the table to return in a different set of clothes—ones that could get wet. Now, as our team strolled casually back from our sightseeing, I broke into a jog and wove among the evening’s foot traffic towards the ocean. You can imagine what happened next! Running onto the nearest dock, I tossed my DIY backpack, watch, jacket and shoes into a pile on the concrete and leapt over and into the crystal clear water before giving myself the chance to hesitate. Floating on the warm, sunny, salty Adriatic water, rolling over to watch the fish playing below, I knew I would never, ever regret taking that jump.

HowHH

Thanks for sticking around to listen to this account—I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it. Now that the partiers and their accordion have finally quieted down—time to log off!