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Day 36 & 37 – Our Last Days in Jezersko
Sunday balm Now that we are real Slovenians also to the eyes of the people of Jezersko -climbing Triglav for them has no value since it’s too easy, we had to climb also Velika Baba Nova Centralna- Matej feels like we are ready to cook the spruce resin magic balm. This is the ritual that is going to make us real Jezerskans. The process is secret and cannot be shared with non-Jezerskans, for this reason we will limit our explanation to the following passages. The spruce resin we collected in the past weeks has to be mixed with oil and boiled. The bee wax has to be added together with…
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Day 35 – Velika Baba – New Central Direction
A detailed and complete description This is the description we made of our climb of the famous multi-pitch Velika Baba New Central Direction (Velika Baba Nova Centralna), Jezersko. After a first bad experience on the route we managed to complete this beautiful climb and wanted to be sure no one will get lost on the way again. Our purpose here is not to describe the climb in a perfect way, meter by meter, but is to describe in particular those passages where we got lost and where people can likely get lost. We recommend you to start early, we started at 6am, but consider starting earlier because the weather in…
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Day 33 & 34 – Our Rural Life in Jezersko
Thursday working On Thursday we are working again in the herbs field. It’s, once again, weeding time. In summer there is always something to do in the fields, because, on the one hand, fruits ripe from one day to the other and weeds grow at a fast pace. Harvest of herbs or fruit are done every day. The morning goes by fast, and the afternoon repeats the morning work. Today it’s hot and it’s harder than usual to bend over the plants and kneel in the rows of mint and Millefeuille. When we go back to the herbs field we pass by Jezersko’s Mineral Water Spring. Matej explains us that…
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Day 31 & 32 – Two Small Excursions Around Jezersko
More berries Today it’s, once again berries time. We pick the last black currants -finally- and start with the early raspberries. The older plants, 4 years old, are producing a lot of berries, they are tasteful and easy to pick because at our height. The younger plants -from 1 to 2 years old- have very few fruits, but they are huge and delicious. Anja grows 8 different varieties of raspberries. This allow her to have different times of ripeness and to distribute the harvest over the whole month, which is perfect for solo-working. At first G was a faster picker, now M is always a bit ahead. Raspberries are definitely…
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Day 29 & 30 – A Meet-Up – Enjoying the mountains
Friends from Asia-Europe Foundation In the past days, G contacted a friend of his who lives in Slovenia. They first met during an international summer school held in Croatia and Slovenia. It so happens that another friend from the same summer school is in Slovenia as well. The result is a nice meet up with Ana -Slovenian- and Pavlîna -Czech- in beautiful Jezersko. And the goal of the day is to enjoy a nice meal in Češka Koča mountain hut. We walk together to Jezersko’s lake to take the path towards the hut. The weather is nice, sunny but not too hot. This is why we are not the only…
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Day 28 – Spruces’ Gold and Painting
Jezersko’s weather Legend has it that Jezersko has a weird micro-climate. We definitely believe the legend. Today it was supposed to be rainy and cold. Apart from the first hours in the morning, it has been sunny and quite hot. We spent the morning painting the famous fence, it’s going to be the most beautiful -and the oldest- of the neighbourhood. G made a risotto for lunch that the kids didn’t seem to enjoy, at least at first. After lunch, since it’s not raining, it’s resin time. Mining Spruces We go back to the same spot as yesterday. Now that we know how resin collecting works we are quicker. We…
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Day 27 – Collecting Spruce Resin for the Magic Balm
It’s not a good morning if you do not pick berries The weather forecast for the next days says “a lot of rain”. For this reason, we spend three hours in the orchard, under the last sun, in order to collect as many black currants as possible. We manage to finish the row before lunch. Collecting resin from wounded Spruces No spruces were harmed during this process… Before it starts to rain we go into the forest in order to collect spruces’ resin. To do this, Matej follows the roads created by woodcutters and, with the permission of the owner of the forest, collects the resin only from those trees…
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Day 24 & 25 – Two Days Working
A 35 years old fence These days we are helping renewing the fence surrounding the garden of the house. It is 35 years old and has been designed by a friend of the family who was architect. We dismount the sections of the fence, bring them to the atelier, remove the paint and sand them, repair the broken parts and paint them back with a dark brown colour. This operation takes a lot of time, but the goal is not to change the fence to save material, and we like that. With this treatment it should last at least 5 years more, which for some wood that is exposed to…
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Day 22 & 23 – Our Adventure in Jezersko – Never Again Like This
New Central Direction in Velika Baba These stories of adventurers and alpinists brought us the idea of climbing Velika Baba’s New Central Direction, an easy -difficulty IV- but long -700 vertical metres- climb. Nothing comparable to our guests adventures, but something challenging for us. After having read on the tourist office booklet that it’s the most popular climb in the valley, that it’s bolted from bottom to top, that the way back is easy and spectacular, we cannot wait to climb it. The approach G’s alarms rings an hour later than planned, what we call a good start. After an abundant but quick breakfast we are ready to start walking…
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Day 21 – Jezersko’s Adventurers
A small village for great adventurers Today, instead of tiring you with our usual routine, we want to talk about Jezerso’s people. Jezersko -which means land of the lake- was originally named after the large lake covering the bottom of the large valley. The lake started disappearing because of a series of earthquake beginning in 1348, although in 1689 a reporter described the village as dominated by a large lake. The two small remaining of the lake are definitely small. Originally part of the Austrian Region of Carinthia, Jezersko now belongs to the Upper Carniola Statistical Region, which is almost entirely alpine in nature and includes mount Triglav itself. With…
