For all those who do now know us yet, we are Julija and Žiga, two Slovene adventurers, currently studying in Austria. As Julija was born in Moscow, back in the beginnings of nineties, and raised in Slovenia, she has “wanderlust” truly embedded in her soul. Žiga on the other hand is Slovene-born and raised in Maribor (Slovenia), but the life of adventures and unknown was always close to his heart. Despite different origins, we go back a long way, as we have been together for more than 8 years now and as our 9th anniversary is approaching, we wanted to celebrate it in a special way, with a trip of our lifetime – to Japan.

 

Japan is a country we have long wanted to visit, with incredible mountain scenery, one of the world’s most chaotic & quirky cities (Tokyo), a long history of culture & tradition, and of course incredible cuisine with authentic sushi on offer everywhere you turn.

 

Every time we go somewhere new, we learn a lot about the culture and history of the place. We love to change our environment from time to time and experience a totally different atmosphere. Traveling makes you more open-minded to others and their cultures as you get to experience a vast cultural diversity and everlasting interplay of the past, present and future of every corner of the world. Our favourite way to really get the most out of every trip is to try out the local cuisine and explore the unknown paths. To this we would like to add, that we are neither the “luxurious-resort-tourists” nor the “edgy-hostel-backpackers” – we almost always choose the middle path in between, traveling with a light luggage and staying in simple hotels.

 

In essence, our travel philosophy is twofold. Firstly, we believe that if you travel far enough you end up meeting yourself, meaning that there is no better way for personal growth and development than traveling and experiencing the vastness of human creativity, be it culture, history, religion or food. And secondly, we do believe that traveling is the best way to embrace the fact that we all share the same planet and this “insight” promotes the idea of global unity and tolerance, which in our opinion is the foundation for the constructive and inclusive future of humankind.

 

Japan is not the cheapest country to visit and it takes a lot of “monetary” commitment; which is always a challenge for students like us. Therefore, in order to embark on this awesome adventure to Japan, we would need a larger budget and that is where you come in (hopefully)! In Slovene language we have a proverb “Zrno na zrno pogača, kamen na kamen palača.” which shares the same meaning as its British-counterpart; "Many a mickle makes a muckle." Both of those lovely proverbs convey the same message; a lot of small amounts, put together, become a large amount, hence, with your micro-commitment you can significantly help us to build a sufficient budget for Japan-trip. We would be really grateful for every donation, no matter how big or small.

In return, we want to offer you a compensation - a personalised wallpaper with an exclusive picture we would take on our trip. Additionally, to all those who share the same “wanderlust” as us, we would write up detailed itinerary of our trip with extra humours commentary about or experiences and impressions during our adventures in Japan on Julija’s blog Dancing with my cat.

Thank you so much for making our dreams possible and feel free to get into contact with us anytime.

All the best, Julija & Žiga

Contact info: julija.zupanc@gmail.com, ziga.luknar@gmail.com