Jani Bizjak

Even though I still don’t know exact date of departure, I’ve inevitably reached half of my incredible journey. So far it has been everything and more what I expected from this adventure.

Today I had my last course in this quarter. What does that mean? Well now I have an “examination week”, where we have exams from courses we have taken in previous quarter. Luckily the courses I’ve taken don’t have exams but so called “home exam”. This is supposed to be exam that you solve at home, though it’s more like a project than exam. In one course it’s about 5-6 pages long project where we have to plan something, basically the same as we were doing during classes. We have about 2 weeks to solve this one. At the other course exam will be published on 30th and we will have 5 hours to solve it. This one should be a bit more similar to “normal” exams with theoretical questions.

I’ll post more about this after examination period. In other news: Nothing new in the North. =) Last few days were bit warmer, sadly melting all the snow. The other day I went on a “ski” hill to get a view over sunset. It was around -6 or -8 when I was taking pictures, my hand (without glove for handling camera) almost froze. View was amazing, you can notice how much sun has moved from summer pictures at my arrival.

So yes, we finally have snow here! It’s not much, yet but enough to cover roads. What is interesting is that even though snowflakes were tinny when snowing, they stuck to the ground as glue. Normally in Slovenia, if they are so small, they just melt.



Even though it’s enormously fun driving (bike) on the snow, I fell two times already. Nothing serious more like stepping/sitting off bike, but I was on the grounds after it. Second problem, which is much worst is that while I’m driving, snow gets stuck under my rear mud protector. Because everything is so cold it doesn’t melt, despite constant grinding of the wheel, but gets thicker and thicker. So what’s the problem with that, you may ask? Well it acts like a brake, a really good brake. I had to press pedals really hard to go downhill, while going uphill is impossible. I’m not sure what to do if this continues, probably I’ll rip mud protector off.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I’ve got package with Slovenian ingredients previous week. After receiving hundreds and hundreds (I’m not joking I actually got some :D) of suggestions for Slovenian dishes and based on ingredients from package, I’ve decided to make “Kremšnite” (not sure if word exists in English).

They are surprisingly easy to make, only problem was I didn’t had rolling pin nor did I have mixer. So the hardest part was how to stretch dough. After numerous attempts at improvisation using various alufoil rolls and cups I’ve given up and just stretched it with hands. The second hardest thing was how to wipe cream without mixer. Well 1h later, with no feeling in my hands, I can tell you: it can be done by hand. :P

Anyway making crust out of dough and putting everything together was easy. Esthetical look was nothing near what you get at restaurant at Bled but taste was pretty similar.



I did this on Saturday and server id with some pasta carbonara (I know it’s not Slovenian, but it’s easy to make and only pasta I eat) to some hungry friends. After they ate they all agreed that it was good (but you know how much you can trust this things …. :) ). Luckily nobody died from food poisoning so Kremšnite got a green light for food festival.

On Sunday evening we had food festival. About 50 people made some dishes that they normally eat in their home country. There was one million French deserts, some Japanese fish, Korean sushi, and numerous things I never saw before. Everything looked really good and after tasting almost all the dishes I was so full I didn’t know how I’d get home, probably roll.











Food was surprisingly good, there wasn’t a single dish that I disliked. And no one got food poisoning, so at the end event was successful, only side effect that we all got was gain a lot of wait from all the food we ate. I will defiantly have to try and get some recipes for the dishes I really liked.

We woke up at 4 AM to a cold foggy morning. Despite having second thoughts we grabbed head lights and went on our way. It took us around 30minutes to get to the foot of the hill we were planning to climb. For first half the path was wide and nice enough to be driven on it with car. After about 15 minutes real climbing started, with usual “mountain” trail. It took us additional 45 minutes to get to the top (500m higher).



Fog has lifted and we had great view over the town. Sadly sky was mostly cloudy but at far east it was getting clearer. There we took some pictures and waited for sun to rise. And finally it did, it was spectacular even though just for about 15minutes after that it went behind clouds.





Shortly after we descended and went to our cabin, it was around 9’o clock. It was our last day here, so we had to pack our stuff and clean the cabin. After noon we went sightseeing the city, but sadly it began to rain so there wasn’t much to do. We ended up finding a nice restaurant where we ordered some drinks. Here we again realized how expensive Norway is. Some examples: hot chocolate 5€, (regular) pizza 23€, hamburger 22€, tea 4€… If I’m not mistaken someone felt rich and ordered 0.5l of beer which was about 16€. For comparison in Slovenia I think if it’s 4€ in a really expensive bar.

For the rest of the day we were talking and playing cards. In the evening it was finally (last day was really boring because of rain) time to go home. We boarded the bus and were on our way, we arrived to Lulea at 7 AM next morning.