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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009
It was with great excitement and deep sadness that I left Ohio in September. There has been so much to do since the death of my father in May and still so much to do to help my mother in her first year of living alone. But I had a return ticket with Bob so I took a much needed vacation in Slovenija for 7 weeks.
Since our time together was short we consciously spent lots of time overflowing our days with new moments of wonder and revisiting places of great delight. It is amazing how quickly we filled the 7 weeks with adventure and were still able to sleep in our own bed.
The highlight of our time together was hiking in the mountains.
Beautiful weather, good friends, wandering the paths, following Roman roads, long distance vistas made every hiking moment another blink in time to be cherished.
There were lots of festivals with local food, music, costumes crowds of people speaking a huge variety of languages and beauty beyond description.
The most fascinating day trip was visiting two Italian villages that had been destroyed during the 1976 earthquake. Both cities nestle at the base of the mountains and were in the center of destruction from the first quake and then the aftershock. The villages have been meticulously restored to the original medieval style using as many original materials as possible, but freschi were lost and some buildings were left in crumbles as a memorial to the disaster that killed many and left everyone homeless and living in tents for years.
Now that I am in Ohio and Bob is in Slovenija the memory that paints the biggest smile is Bob playing Uncle Rich’s accordion while our Slovene friends sing along.
