We drove for about 1.5 hours from Ljubljana to the city of Bled, famous for Lake Bled. During the drive, I saw an animal I’ve never seen before, so I asked Kenric to turn around. He pulled over, and I ran over to where the animal was. I ran because it was very cold. The chubby fella greeted me with smiles and oinks. Turns out, it was a pig; a Mangalica pig, according to my friend, Swan.

We visited Bled Castle which had great views especially after it snowed. At the restaurant, we witnessed a very rude tour guide interrupt a waiter who was serving a customer. The tourists in the group were no better. It was really aggravating. Later, we saw a man from the table next to ours (not part of the tour group) praying in the freezing cold, and I thought, “So, Mecca’s that way.” Not far from him, a young couple was making a snowman. It is the cutest snowman I’ve seen. You may agree. You may say it’s a snowwoman.

The coolest thing at the castle was the print shop. The printer, a very personable young man, was really good at explaining the history and the printing process. He said the first printed book in Slovenia was surprisingly, not the Bible. It was a grammar book of the Slovenian language. The author wanted to preserve the language because the Austro-Hungarian empire was trying to unify its subjects through one language, German. The young printer advised us to not visit Melania Trump’s hometown (Sevnica) because there’s really nothing there. He said even though there was effort to make it a tourist destination after the election, nothing really came of it.