Zdravo! (that means Hello in Slovenian)

I hope you are all enjoying your summer so far. This will be the first of a few e-mails that I will send while I am away in Europe. I’ve been here for a week now and I’m having a great time! I arrived in Vienna last Monday, and I spent the few days I had there visting some churches, going to museums (including an ancient musical instrument museum that was quite interesting), walking around the city, and touring 2 palaces. The highlights of my time in Vienna were:

1) My visit to Schonbrunn Palace (which was the summer residence of the Hapsburgs - The Austrian Royal family that was in power for many years up until the early 20th century). It was a spectacular palace, I’d say better than Versailles because it was more furnished. The palace also had some nice gardens, a palm house, and a zoo which I went to as well.

2) Seeing the Lipizzaner stalions doing their morning exercises at the Spanish riding school. Although it was boring when they were just trotting around, the jumps they did more than made up for it. No shows were on when I was there, so that was the next best I could do.

3) I went to see an amazing Mozart/Strauss concert in the grand ballroom of Schonbrunn Palace. It made me feel as if I were back in the 17th-18th century! The hall was gorgeous and the musicians were very entertaining. Vienna is an amazing city! I highly recommend going there. I’m hoping I’ll get to see an opera at the Vienna Opera house when I go back before returning to Canada. I found out they sell standing tickets for 2-3 Euros!

After Vienna, I headed off to Celje Slovenija for my first of 2 tournaments. I didn’t get to see much of Celje because I was focusing on my tournament, but I will be back in Slovenija in a couple of weeks, so I’ll get to see the country then. But from what I’ve seen, Slovenija is very pretty.

This was actually one of the more fun international tournaments I’ve been to, although I’ve had better fighting days (and I’ve had worse as well). I had a bye the first round, and then I won my first fight against a Belgian. I lost in the quarter finals to a Slovenian girl (whom I probably could have beaten had I fought a little better). Then I lost my repechage match to a German by yuko. I think I finished 9th, and we were about 20-25 in my category. They decided to have the matches only go 4 minutes instead of 5 for the prelims because there were so many people at the tournament. I had about 2-3 hours break in between each fight, which was not fun because it was like starting the tournament all over again for each fight.

I left this morning for Sarajevo, although I missed one of my train connections and I ended up having to spend the day in Zagreb, Croatia. I think it’s one of my favourite cities so far. All of the museums are closed on Mondays, so I pretty much just walked around, but I had a very nice day. I will be taking the night train to Sarajevo tonight.

After the 2 hours of sleep I got last night (of course we all had to go out after the tournament!), and the little sleep I will get on the train tonight, I anticipate I’ll be exhausted tomorrow! Oh well, I only have a couple of days in Bosnia, so I want to do as much sightseeing as possible. I will have to have my revenge at the tournament as well!

So, that’s it for my trip so far. I’ll send some more updates about every week. And if any of you are so inclined, I would love to hear how you’re making out!

Take care, Jen