Walking time 5 hours, hot and humid again, finally over! Even this day, although short the heat was not on our side! There were seven in the group and 5 finished the EPW
Our last day and think of many memories. All but 1 in the group had walked the Camino. At the beginning we were comparing the two walks! After halfway the EPW became its own!! No there are not cafes with coffees in every village, some days there are not any villages to pass by! The EPW took us on a journey through 6 countries, it was challenging in the heat, adventurous and interesting staying and speaking with the locals. On the most part all the accomodation places were very hospitable, although some very tired who have been hosting all the PWs throughout the last 30 days.
Loved the group of people we walked with every day which we have now become close friends!
Anna (spare Frau) from Germany – Shared many a laugh along the track and always good to get lost with. Always taking one for the team! Anna is studying to be a psychologist and I’m sure she struggled to work us Aussies out! Lovely girl and hope her travels will bring her to Australia one day. Her Aussie accent is improving every day and she has picked up some of our sayings like “just going to have a piddle”, “drop your daks”, “bottoms up” and “beautiful” with an Aussie twang!
Matt (Matieus) from Tasmania – what a funny a guy, good for a laugh! The strongest walker of the group, always the first to arrive into town by a couple of hours until the blisters caught up with him, so a forced day rest for him. The last days walking were much slower but he then got to smell the roses and get our company along the way!
Rebecca from no fixed address USA – oldest member of our group at 64. Always trying to put on an Aussie accent! She is an inspiration to live up to, always strong walking but feeling this may be her last walk, finished her walk on Ljubijana!
Nenad (Nano) – the approximate man!!! Learnt to never trust Serbian, at least wth distances! 100m was usually about 500m. Great guy and am sure his English language has grown!
Greg: asked me to remind him not to organise any more long walks (we’ll see)! Sad the he suffered from so many blisters along the way! Always Great to spend the last 24 days with!
Our thoughts on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good: (in no particular order)
Arrow Man (Nano), Slovenia, Ljubijana (City of love), talking with an Austrian/Hungarian (Hans), Koszeg at Cafe Shiraz, early morning starts, nice group, resting, Hungarian Goulash (best at Szentpeterfa), welcoming signs, welcoming hosts, welcoming shots/drinks, beer and wine at end of day, castles and caves, forest trails, hot showers, freedom of the simple life, karaoke afternoons, train trips, suprise short days, fruit, a washing machine, the spare Frau, nice pears and apples that just happened to fall in our hands, getting lost (can be sometimes be bad but mostly good), Hungarian potatos, the lady of the thread, lots of laughter, saxaphone players, finding mushrooms and berries!
The music sang along the way:
Outlander theme song, Can’t always get want you want, I want to hold your pole, Call me Blondie, Windy, I can walk 500 hundred miles, Hills are alive with the sound of music,
Some games played: “Would you rather?”, “Bang, marry, kill?”
Bad: Breaded (crumbed) food, blisters, visits to emergency after hours, fruity loos, snoring, army canvas beds, smelly clothes, electric fences, poison apples, asphalt, missing red arrows, getting lost, bees (stings), slippery rocks, hills or should we call them mountains!
Ugly: Heat in Hungry, Rottweillers, the woman with the pendulous breasts, Erdos, bear mountain .
Our common phrases:
“What could possibly go wrong”, “Let’s go there”, “Are we there yet”, “Nano, how many more km?” Nano replies, “approximately 100m” sure!!, “I will shove that pole ….”, early morning “What’s the time. 5.28am” (shit we get up at 5.30am), Nano “are they hills or mountains”, nano replies “only hills”, sure!!!
Directions: So leave Jana’s hostel and walk uphill towards Beka village. Beka village is 3 beautiful Kms away, through woods and vineyards. In Beka turn right-right and you will see a pink house having construction work done to it. Keep going and you arrive at an old army base. Next stop, Italy! You walk down a country lane, and into some woods, then across fields, keeping an eye out for a right into woods. Follow path straight and it then curves right downhill. You start to hear a river on your right side. Follow the river around and badda-bing badda-boo you are at a little bridge and across it is…..Italy! Go into Italy and veer left immediately going 1kms slowly uphill on a concrete road. You arrive at the Ciclopedonale Giordano Cottur (aka the Bike Path all the way into Trieste City). Turn left to Trieste on this magnificent old railway line and it will take you all the way to Trieste city for 9kms. At the end of the bike path, you have only 2kms to the sea. When you see cars, go uphill a bit and take a left on Via Antonio Gramsci. 400ms later you arrive on Via San Giacomo in Monte where you go left. 300ms later you arrive at T, go left and then go right. This is the Via San Michele and leads directly down to the sea. You will see a right, Via Armando Diaz, that leads you to the beautiful Piazza dell’ Unità d’Italia. Trieste Tourism office is based here and will direct you to Opera Figli del Popolo. Run to the sea and dip your sore feet into the cool Adriatic. Bravo!
PW Party time is at “il Pinguino ‘ – Gelatario/Café Bar @ 8:30pm . The Penguin bar is only 400ms from OFPTS and beside the Aquarium (you will see a mini-Big-Ben) on the waterfront at Riva Nazario Sauro. This place is comfy, good fun and laid back (with dancing), so head there in the evening after your evening meal somewhere. There are just hundreds of super restaurants in Trieste to choose from.
That’s all folks…….. you have completed the EPW !
Accommodation:
Opera Figli del Popolo
Via dell’ Università,
Trieste
Over and out for this walk 2015!
What do you think we did!! Of course the bus, no questions asked!! Great day in Postonja went to the caves where we were 1km in and 1km down discovered in 1818.! Unbelievable place if you ever get a chance to visit! We will be back walking tomorrow, only 3 days of walking left and 2 days left in beautiful Slovenia!
When you arrive in Postojna (B-R-S-P) main square you will see a massive Hotel Kras, you aim for 1 o’clock and street is called Tržaška cesta and your very cool hostel, Hostel Proteus is 300ms down this road, on the right side, with an excellent coffee house across the street.
Gayle: I don’t think it pays to have a break! Really didn’t want to get going today. Managed to get most of the kms done by 12 noon, but finished the last 7 – 10 by about 1.30pm. Only got zapped a couple of times from the electric fences around the paddocks!! The road seemed to go to nowhere, felt like we were going round in circles, but eventually arrive at an oasis in the middle of nowhere. 
You walk 2.3kms along the asphalt road, passing a bar then a bridge then a restaurant. As soon as you pass under the railway, the asphalt goes left but you go straight ahead off road. Walk 1km around the back of a little hill, passing farm houses. You come to end of houses and road veers left, you go straight ahead into countryside over a little bridge. 1.2kms later, with the Ljubljanica river on your right, you arrive at T, turn left. 500ms later you arrive at an Xroads. The road straight ahead is field-road. The road you are on turns left BUT you go right! You will see many canceled arrows here as we got lost. Make sure you go right towards woods, after 100ms you will pass a little bridge/stream. Then you are in the woods. 320ms into the woods you arrive at T, turn right out of the woods and 120ms later you turn left. The wood-line is always on your left side. 250ms the wood-line ends and you continue for another 1.2kms and you will see a small house on stilts (BTW: you are walking in a flood-plain). This is where you turn right to the Magic Bridge! You will recognize the turn, as there is a group of trees, out of the blue here. So into the fields you go. 250ms later the tractor path ends. And if you look to 11 o’clock you can see red painted on the trees, 50ms away across the field. Here be the Magic bridge. Cross it and walk 30ms ahead and you will see a sign to the right pointing to the “Far from magic bridge”. 
This is a tiny muddy stream, (you can jump it but there are bushes over ahead so we have put branches down), cross it carefully and go under the electric fence (Don’t worry, it’s for cows not people). Look left and see arrows leading to tractor path. On dust road T junction, take a left for 200ms and then a right. After 600ms the road starts to curve leftwards and then another corner rightwards. You arrive at a fork ( left is to village Dol) but you go right for 800ms ( you will pass a Blue Gas pipe bridge and arrive at the most beautiful azure blue water rapids. Here is where you turn left over the bridge and Bistra is 800ms straight ahead! Done.
Our Peace Walk (Vienna to Trieste) 580km 