My third day in Slovenia was not a good day. I awoke at about ten to seven, disoriented and with a mouth drier than the Gobi dessert. The plan was to take a bus to go camping at 8am but the previous night I had engaged in some moderate to heavy imbibing of the local beers with a group of continental youngsters. I was feeling slightly disappointed with myself given the planned early night but not regretful.

I met Michael, a Swede and a Dutch couple (who’s names I’ve forgotten) in the dorm and we went for food. We were later joined by Matje, a Bosnian Croat who had grown up in Holland (he’d met the other two earlier in the train). After a saga of finding a restaurant we eventually sat down to eat at about 10 nearly two hours after we set out. We eventually got some traditional Slovenian sausage.

I’m finding travelling that crowd is generally young, usually at least ten years younger than me. Most of this lot were 21 and I was quickly pronounced ‘Father’. To cut a long story short, I should have known better than to get stuck into some drinking games but alas that is where the evening went. We bizarrely ended up in an ‘English’ pub underneath the hostel. If this place were actually in England you would probably expect to be sharing a pint with Tommy Robinson. Thankfully it’s only inhabitants were yet more Dutch.

Alas, I stumbled out of bed, had a token ‘freshen up’ and tried to pack my bag in the pitch black without making too much noise.

The plan had been to go camping at a lake in Bohinj for a couple of days and hopefully do some hiking. With that in mind I’d prepared a separate bag of excess kit to leave at the left luggage place. After staggering to the coach station, the first blow came when the left luggage place was closed for no apparent reason. Despite some fruitless attempts at knocking on the door I just had to board the bus, my sweaty metal prison for the next two hours or so. With my already sizeable rucksack and extra gear stuffed beside me on my seat I drifted in and out of consciousness as the bus wound its way along the roads towards the lake.

I eventually arrived at the lake and campsite only to discover that it was completely full. They helpfully suggested I try again tomorrow morning before 8. I had in fact emailed them previously where they’d furnished me with the information about turning up before 8am but I dismissed this owing to the fact that it would entail taking a 6am bus and thought it ludicrous that a campsite would be full before eight o’clock in the morning. Lesson learned.

I took stock of the situation and my life in general and went to the little cafe for a coffee.

I decided, given my delicate state, it was best to bid a retreat. Another hour and half waiting by the roadside in a forrest and two and half hours on the bus and I was back in Ljubljana where I immediately tucked in to a Slovenian sausage which turned out to be my saviour. As lovely as the lake was, it was incredibly crowded with people and not really the sort of wilderness I was looking for anyhow.

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Later, I needed to wash my clothes so sought out a Laundry place which was a 45 minute walk out of the city. This was to wash three T-shirts and a pair of socks. Upon finding the place I saw the machine below:

I reasonably assumed that this would give me change, probably smaller notes going on the diagram. I eagerly stuffed a €20 note in there. It started clicking away like crazy which was a little annoying as I thought it was giving me €20 in coins but to my horror I quickly saw what was actually happening:

It gave me 20 bloody washing tokens. I needed 4. This was a terribly vexing matter for me at the time. It was a bit like when Jesus turned the water to wine only I turned all my useful money into laundry tokens. Great.

I knocked a door and managed to summon a man who came out and drew my attention to this sign:

Sigh.

I quickly formulated a plan however to recover my loss and started trying to sell my tokens back to the the few locals who came in using some gesturing, clinking sound effects and my handful of tokens. Remarkably I managed to recoup €10 back before I had to give up!

All in a productive days travel. Five hours on a bus, an hour and half sitting on a roadside and a couple of hours washing a few garments and throwing my money away and all with a steaming hangover.