For a period of days which rapidly turned into weeks it seemed that events and new experiences flew in and through our lives like crazy new birds! We arrived in Zagreb after a perfectly uneventful flight (except the Dr.Pepper Jayne was saving for one last drink in Europe was confiscated at Frankfort - where we had a second security check). We were met by our mission Presidents, the David and Judith Grants, and the new mission couple whom we had met at the MTC, the Del and Linda Hallings. That friendship has become one of our favorite things in the mission, they are so great. We arrived just in time for a Young Single Adult mission-wide conference at the mission home and it was just delightful to meet so many of our young adults so quickly and all together. We went bowling one afternoon and these three young men on a team were having so much fun. They are from Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia, countries where only a decade ago there were strained relationships at best, war at worst.
The Grants were so welcoming and spent a few days getting us over our jet lag and turning us loose in a car to explore Zagreb a bit (after our driving-in-Europe mini course and receiving a GPS unit to go with our car). We remembered most of the tips - no right turns on red, a circle with a bar in it means no entry, traffic circles are great and scary, right of way is marked with a bold line on the intersections, and watch for pedestrians and bikes all the time because they are everywhere and they live in harmony with cars. Then there are oddities like street names that are hard to see and change randomly, many roads are too narrow for two cars - but they pass anyway, and the traffic lights are:yellow-slow, red-stop, yellow again-go now, green-no really, go! This is our first photo in the Adriatic North Mission, a mausoleum in Zagreb, with one of the many gorgeous magnolia trees in full bloom.
Then it was time to pack our bags again and follow another senior couple who led the way to Kranj,(pronounced Kran with a whisper of a ya at the end) about 15 miles from Ljubljana (pronounced lee-ub-lee-awe-na).The minute we crossed the border into Slovenia we were absolutely enchanted! It was rolling, forested hills with churches everywhere and charming villages and farms built in every lovely valley. As we neared Kranj, we were greeted with a view of the Julian Alps that still never ceases to amaze us. Our apartment is a little IKEA nest, much cuter than we imagined it would be. We sit in the confluence of two rivers, the Sava and the Kokra which merge right at our apartment complex and then flow to the Danube, picking up some smaller rivers on the way. I took this picture of our town from a cliff on the other side of the rivers from us.
We met the two nice elders right away and they informed us that due to the May Day weekend there were no stores open and none would be open for 2 days. No problem - if you had sheets, pillows, food, toilet paper - you get my drift. So for the weekend we slept carefully on a mattress cover and a sheet the elders had and were pretty sure were clean, and managed just fine with some food from the other missionaries which we combined for a Sunday dinner of spaghetti and French toast! The branch was just wonderful to welcome us and we settled in for our first week of being totally clueless about absolutely everything happening around us! But went for a walk up about 80 stairs to Center - the word for the old part of all the towns in the mission- and this made us think that we'd be just fine.
