Hey y’all! After my last post on Monday night, I had just linked up with my pal Jimmy Blackmore in Ljubljana, Slovenia and was getting ready for our gig together on Tuesday.

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On Tuesday, I slept in just a bit and then got up and headed to a restaurant a couple of blocks from my hostel to get some breakfast before heading over to Jimmy’s place to start the day’s festivities. The only remarkable thing about the breakfast was a pack of little birds who were literally trying to eat off of my plate. They had absolutely no fear of getting close to people.

After my late breakfast with the birds, I went back and grabbed my guitar and then made the short walk over to Jimmie’s apartment. We planned to hang out there, drink a few beers, and work on our setlist before having a taxi drop us off at the bar a little closer to show time. Luckily, Jimmy and I play a lot of the same songs, so it wasn’t too difficult for us to find two sets of music that we both knew. I enjoyed seeing Jimmy’s little apartment and getting some good hangs in with him and his girlfriend Adriana and their little dog Lindy.

At about 6pm, we headed into downtown in the taxi at arrived at the Irish bar we’d be playing at, Harat’s, a few minutes later. Unfortunately, the weather was not so great on Tuesday, with a lot of rain in the afternoon and in to the evening. We arrived and took our stuff inside to set up and then just went out and chilled under the umbrellas until a little closer to showtime. The rain finally did begin to break just before we went on at 8 o’clock.

When it was time to kick off, Jimmy wanted me to start things out solo with a half hour of my original music since I was the “star” of the evening according to him. While it is true that they did set this Tuesday show up especially for me (they normally only perform Thursday – Sunday), I was much looking forward to playing with and hearing Jimmy sing. However, I took the opportunity to play some of my songs and got a decent reception from the few folks that had arrived by that point.

After I’d played about 7 songs, we took a short break before the three of us went back up and kicked the night off in earnest. I can’t tell ya how much fun it was playing with those two guys, and with the improvement in the weather and the streets becoming more lively, the place gradually started to fill up as we played. Soon the bar was fairly full and we were getting good audience feedback on most every song. Below you’ll see some pics I received of the three of us rocking out to lots of traditional country tunes!

After the show and the closing of the bar it started raining again. We stood outside under the big umbrella with a couple of Jimmy’s buddies shooting the shit, telling jokes, and drinking on the bottle of Jim Beam I’d brought down from Germany while we waited for a break in the weather to make our move. It didn’t come until about 3am! By that time Jimmy was ready to head home, so we had the taxi drop him off and then take my back to the hostel. I met some people there for one last round and then it was bed time for me as well. A great night was definitely had by all!

Wednesday morning I was in a bit of a vegetative state for the first few hours, just kind of chilling out at my room in the hostel and recuperating from our big night out on the town. We’d set up plans for me to come back over to Jimmy’s late in the evening for a home cooked meal from Adriana of some traditional Slovenian fare. After I got to feeling a little more lively, I still had some time to kill so I decided to take a walk into town to enjoy the sunshine and grab a snack to tide me over until the home cooked dinner. I’m glad I did – I felt good to get some steps in and enjoy the sights of the old town.

After returning to the hostel for a few minutes, it was time to head over to Jimmy’s for dinner. He’d pulled the table out on to the sidewalk so we enjoyed the food in the nice weather.

Both Jimmy and I were feeling a little fatigued after dinner so we called it an early night and I headed back to the hostel to rest up for my checkout in the morning and 3 1/2 hour drive I had in front of me the next day. Jimmy Blackmore is a great guy and a great musician, and a great friend. I’m hoping very much he’ll be able to come over to the USA in the next year or two so that I can get him some gigs in Kentucky and host him and his boys for a bit. Y’all be sure to check out his band “Pointless Rebels” on YouTube and especially see him live if you ever find yourself in Ljubljana!

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On Thursday morning, I woke up and checked out of the hostel at 11am and got on the road to Hungary. It was raining pretty heavily until I got near the Hungarian border, so not a lot of pics from that part of the drive. But other than the rain, it was an easy and peaceful drive with light traffic.

I had chosen the town of Siófok to be my first stop in Hungary as it is the major town on a lake that I have long wanted to check out called Lake Balaton. It has a reputation as being a busy summer tourist town, so I had ambitions of doing my first busking of the trip there. I had an apartment waiting there for me, but as I was to find out from the owner upon arrival, I am too early for the tourists. It won’t pick up here until later in the summer and there’s very few tourists to play for. So busking will just have to wait.

Instead, I went out for a short walk by the lake and checked out their downtown area (she was right, practically nobody out and about) and then just chilled out at the apartment the rest of the night researching a few more days of the trip and booking some accomodations and working on the blog.

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So that’s all the news for today. Tomorrow, I have a 3 hour drive to Hungary’s second-biggest city, Debrecen. I hope to do some busking there. And then I’m headed to a place called Presov, Slovakia on Saturday and then to Rzeszow, Poland on Sunday for either one or two days. After that, yet to be determined. Thanks again you guys for following along. Feel free to leave me a comment and let me know you were here and don’t forget to subscribe for updates.