How two Slovenians traveled the world
Simona and Jure are a very special couple. In the last weeks they got pretty well known in Slovenia, usually by the nickname "The two, who traveled the world!" or "Those are the ones who are jumping!". Young married couple originally from the Styria region, returned back to Slovenia and immediately got famous in the traveling community. They are now getting invited to many radio and television shows were they talk about their adventures. Even though their schedule is pretty busy and they are preparing for numerous events, the talkative and energetic Simona and Jure took some time off for the evening drinks, where we got lost in the memories of the paths they walked for a year. Enjoy the read!
What was your inspiration for a trip around the world?
Simona: Actually nothing in particular, it was just a simple wish we had, to see the world!
Before you decided to travel around the world for a year, did you have some "training" with traveling?
Simona: Yes we did, before the trip we traveled to many places already. We have been to Greece, Turkey, Tunis and two times to Egypt. Egypt was very special to us, it was the first place where we decided to leave the organized group tours and got lost among the local people, seeing how they live. We went to local bakery and local post office in Aswan, and it was great!
Jure: We also had a chance to travel with the Student club, we organized so called "city trips" but we usually distanced ourselves from the groups and went on our own tour.
Simona: One of my best friends was in an exchange program in USA. I really wanted to go, but Jure didn`t. So I asked another friend and we traveled there for a visit. Then we went backpacking in Thailand and a year later to Cambodia and Vietnam. On my birthday I went to Sweden, first time by myself, and I liked it as well. After that we traveled to Zanzibar, Martinique, Cuba, Sardinia, Sicily, Barcelona and for Jure`s birthday we went to Santorini.
Jure: Last year we went to UAE and Oman. And we traveled a lot in Slovenia and Croatia.
Simona: We enjoyed London a lot as well!
Jure: Yes, and Paris; we also visited majority of European cities already.
When you traveled to Thailand it was a kind of a turning point for you both?
Jure: It was the first time we did backpacking.
Simona: Yes, that was the first time I felt I want to have the experience of backpacking. However, Jure was opposing. And then I said I will go alone! We discussed and fought for two months, and I decided to buy the tickets by myself. At that time Jure had a meeting, and I went there, laid the ticket with his name on the table and he had two choices "either he goes with me, or he stays at home".
We arrived in Bangkok and at that time many people have had bad experiences with the city (at the moment this is my favorite city in the world!). So I organized the trip in a way that we first went to a smaller city - we ended up in Chiang Rai in the northern part of the country. We had a small room in one local motel and Jure was counting down the days when we will go home. After that he started to enjoy the trip so much that he turned from counting down the days to how many days we have left in Thailand.
Why are you jumping?
Simona: Hmm, I think we started that when we went on holidays at the seaside. I think we were in Turkey.
Jure: Yes, it was 2004.
Simona: I was taking photos.
Jure: Our camera was too bad to have us both on the photo.
Simona: That is why one of us had to take photos while the other one was jumping.
Jure: I remember we have one photo from Burma from 2012 where we jumped together. But it is possible we made such photos before as well.
And that jumping became your branding?
Jure: Yes, once we figured it out we liked it a lot.
Did you choose the jumping spots beforehand? Did you also take special care on having the same pose? You do have similar pose on all of your photos! (laughter)
Jure: No, it was mostly very spontaneous.
Simona: Sometimes we did it at the first take, sometimes we had to jump 5-6 times before we liked it, and sometimes it was just not one of those days.
Jure: We didn`t train the pose, I once wanted to do the jump with my mouth closed - it didn`t work!
Simona: I consciously changed the pose on Maldives - so it looked a bit more gracious. (laugh)
How do you see Slovenia after being away for so long?
Jure: Slovenia is a beautiful country and for a tourist is one of the best countries to travel to. It is small, diverse, cheap and simple.
Simona: And we have delicious food!
Jure: But the truth is that no matter where you go and you talk to the Slovenian people, they will always start complaining in approximately 6th minute of the conversation. And they will complain a lot! Always the same sentences, such as "I want to, but I can`t, the government doesn`t support the things we want to do."
Simona: We are so different from the others.
Jure: We talked to Canadians and British, they were so much more entrepreneurial! Simona and I were complaining how there are not many jobs for teachers in Slovenia and they immediately saw this as a business opportunity, and not something that we should complain about.
While you were traveling you also started writing a blog.
Simona: We did, but we are not as active as we want to be. We didn`t have enough time to really dedicate to it.
Jure: We have so much material we still haven`t used.
Simona: I always wanted to write a blog. We did have two blogs before this one, but it was more like a traveling diary. Now mostly I write the blog. It is in English since it didn`t take too much energy and everybody understood it - our friends abroad, co-workers in Austria and Slovenians who speak English anyway. Now we want to post in both languages because we received couple of request to do so.
Did it take a long time to get ready for this kind of adventure?
Jure: We didn`t start soon enough to actually fully prepare. It would be better if we bought GoPro sooner!
Simona: It would be better if we would learn how to work with GoPro sooner, yes. We were losing some time with figuring out how to operate this device.
Jure: And we could already make better videos.
Simona: Mine one year time-off from the kindergarten got confirmed only in July. Jure was luckier, he managed to negotiate to work remotely as an English teacher already sooner. So he was working via Skype. After that we canceled our apartment in Graz and we wanted to sell the car - but we were too late.
I would advice that you take about 3 months to really plan the trip in details. If you are Jure`s cousin you’ll need 6 months (laughter). Oh, I almost forgot, we also bought tickets from USA to Australia sooner, as we wanted to celebrate New Year’s in Sydney. And we did plan South America a bit in advance since it was our first destination.
About Jure and Simona:
Simona from Maribor and Jure from Cerkvenjak live in Graz, Austria. From September 2015 until July 2016 they visited 22 countries and traveled around the world. You can read more about their adventures on their blog
sLOVEnians Travel or visit their
Facebook and
Instagram page where they post photos from their amazing trip.
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