OK, so who knew there were two 4 o’clocks in the day?! It came as a shock to me I can tell you! But… the reason for the rude awakening kind of makes it OK; we’re off on our travels!

When we arrived at Weeze for our 7am flight to Venice, the place was heaving with people. Ryanair have cleverly scheduled about 10 flights leaving on or around 7am on a Friday morning. This means that the tiny airport groans under the pressure of baggage check in and security for over 1000 people all within the space of half an hour.

Maybe then all the staff just go home, as there were no more flights showing on the board until the evening.

Nige found the whole experience really quite stressful. Particularly as the concept of ‘queuing’ does not really exist on the continent. Ryanair are, at least, quite good at throwing people out of the queue that haven’t paid for the privilege of being there.

Treviso airport (not really Venice at all – do you see what Ryanair did there?!) is really small (compact and bijou?!). One of the benefits of teeny airports is a lovely 100 metre walk from the plane rather than a 4km ride in a mobile oven, and no scrummage for the immigration queue either.

A straightforward process to find a bus to take us to Venice then ensued – this is all seeming a bit too easy, and although I am usually quite a positive person (cup half full and all that), I was dreading something going wrong and Nige being completely turned off by the travelling thing.

Forty five minutes was all it took, making Venice quite an attractive proposition for a brief weekend away, assuming you don’t have other places to go and things to see 🙂

So what does one do with 2 hours to kill in Venice, lugging around 10-15kg backpacks in 38°C heat? Well, one wonders around, finds a cafe, watches the world go by, takes a few snaps, and makes sure they are back at the bus station in time for the bus to Austria – obviously!

Although it was busy, I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of people (I know that sounds like an oxymoron, and no, I haven’t been on the Italian beer). What I mean is that although there were a lot of people about, there weren’t so many that you couldn’t move or see anything.

We headed off in the direction of St Marks square. We didn’t find it (no map – eek!), but we did find some near empty streets that were like a rabbit warren; or more accurately a maze of twists and turns and dead ends akin to a Tomb-raider-esque adventure.

We had a cappuccino and croissant for an exorbitant sum, and watched as some old fellas in the cafe did some kind of deal involving approximately 4000 Euros in cash! Yes! Right there in the street! I consoled myself that we weren’t in the middle of some kind of mafia deal by virtue of the fact it was so not underhand (that and the lack of violin cases, machine guns, dead horse’s heads, and beautiful women).

As time slowly ticked by, I started to panic about being able to find our way back to the bus station, and finding the bus – especially as on our way in there was no indication of anything other than local bus stops.

Retracing our steps through the back streets of Venice was a virtual impossibility so luckily Nigel’s inbuilt SatNav kicked in and we wended our way through the twists and turns of the streets.

We were a little surprised at the general state of decay of most of the buildings (which had clearly once been stunning and were now just shabbily beautiful). You wonder why some of the tourist dollars can’t go towards some general renovation – or maybe they do, but they pick the places carefully (we were after all not in the touristy bits during our 2 Venetian hours).

I asked Nige as we headed back to the bus station if he would like to come back and spend a little longer here. We both decided that the answer to that question was yes – but only if the time and price were right with so many other things to do and places to see fighting for our attention.

We were back at the bus station before we really got a feel for the heart of the place; and to be truthful we really didn’t expect to – we were here through convenience rather than design.

The Piazza le Roma bus station is a chaotic mess of people and buses but no information. The people at the ticket office had not the slightest clue where our bus was leaving from and a walk around the 30 or so bus stops did not identify anything to even give me confidence that our bus actually existed. I have to admit I was getting slightly concerned until a helpful chap told me ‘big red bus come over there’ while gesturing in the general direction of the top left corner of the Piazza.

Sure enough, right on time, the big red ÖBB bus to Villach in Austria appeared around the corner and we loaded the rucksacks.

Nige did ask me at this point how long the journey was, and I think my suitably vague reply was along the lines of ‘oh a couple of hours’. I didn’t tell him it was a 3 hour 40 minute trip – I just suggested he enjoy the air conditioning and try and catch up on some sleep.

On arrival in Villach, we had another 2 hours to kill before the train that would take us into Slovenia and on to Ljubljana.

At first sight, I thought we’d arrived in an unattractive industrial Austrian border town, where Nige was going to start wondering just what kind of exciting ‘Balkans Odyssey’ involved industrial Austria, and that I’d have a rebellion on my hands. However, as we headed away from the railway station into the town in search of food and beer, it gradually got prettier and the dingy cafes and €1 shops gradually made way for street cafes, ice-cream parlours, and an unfeasible number of ‘trachten’ outfitters for those who are in need of a new pair of lederhosen or an edelweiss embroidered dirndl.

Two hours was whiled away quite nicely with beer, followed by ice cream and a gentle stroll around the town.

Time came at last to embark on the final leg of today’s travelling – a 1 and 1/2 hour train ride from Austria to Slovenia.

Our prebooked seats turned out to be in a compartment of a circa 1970’s rolling stock carriage, where the airconditioning didn’t work and the four other seats were taken up by a German family who looked like they were ready to melt and exclaiming ‘mein Gott’ at least once every fifteen minutes as vain attempts at fanning were made with flimsy copies of the timetable.

We both practically ran out of the train on arrival at Ljubljana, gasping in great lungfuls of fresh air having had a 90 minute fully clothed public sauna with the German family.

I had chosen the hostel well – it was only a short(ish) 5 min(ish) walk from the station, and a stones throw (but not actually in) the old town centre.

A quick check-in and shower later, and we were out on the town in Ljubljana – 12 hours and three countries after leaving home.