Ljubljana

The train from Hungary to Slovenia was brief, in that it went a few stops outside of Budapest before it dead-ended in some random hamlet. I was told to board a bus. I had no idea whether the rail was under construction, was disabled, had an abandoned couch tossed on it that baffled the railway conductors, no idea. The bus took almost two hours to get to the Slovenian border where passport checks were conducted and I was allowed to board a new train. A couple hours later I arrived in Ljubljana, only four hours behind schedule. Along the way I took a picture of sunflower fields, the only scenery with color worth mentioning.


The fact that I was in Ljubljana in the first place was apart of a deviation in my original travel plans. Throughout the trip through Europe I had been seeking out information regarding Romania and Bulgaria because those were two countries I was to cross in order to get to Istanbul, my jump point to Asia. Unfortunately, none of the information I received about either was particularly positive. Bucharest was apparently infested with packs of wild dogs and hostile locals and Bulgaria was full of uninteresting farmland occupied by bumpkins who used horse-drawn car frames to get around. Essentially, both smacked of underdevelopment and I was not ready to experience poverty of that magnitude quite yet. Besides, I would have run into problems in Bulgaria because my Eurail pass was no good there.

Plan B consisted of backtracking to Venice and taking a ferry from there to Patras, Greece, and then continuing on the rail across Greece to get to Turkey. The ferry was covered in my Eurail pass so it seemed to make sense enough. Also, I was excited to see Greece, cradle of Western civilization.

I arrived in Ljubljana at a little past 8 PM, and made a beeline for my hostel. The receptionist was a funny lady who greeted me in song, and would go back in forth between talking to us and singing to us. We gave her our passports for check-in and she would sing the information aloud while she wrote it down. She got a kick out of singing Mike’s name. She was also a big fan of blueberries, as she was eating a large bowl of them. She offered me one; it tasted bitter; I declined a second offer. I was exhausted from the unusual day of travel, and sleep was priority #1.

The next day I headed to the train station to try and catch the first available train to Venice. Upon arriving, I discovered that the only available one was a night train that left at 8 PM that evening and did not arrive until 4 AM the next day. It annoyed me that there was such a lack of options, and that it took a train eight hours to travel 120 miles. I tried to look on the bright side in that it gave me an entire day to discover Slovenia’s capital. I checked my bags at the train station and set out to get some information. First stop: the public library.

The great thing about Ljubljana is that it is an incredibly small town. On a bicycle one could see the town in it’s entirety in a day. The public library was not more than 150 yards from the train station. It was here that I made inquiries as to where the parliament building was and anything else that would serve to put Ljubljana on the map. The parliament building, as it turned out, was one block down and around the corner, so I decided to check that out first.

Looking at it from the front it certainly did not look like a seat of government, but more like a modern conceptual art museum.


This description was also fitting for the public art displays across the street in the parking lot opposite the building.


The weather was beginning to turn fowl and the gray clouds began to produce rain. As I headed to the main square on the other side of the parliamentary parking lot, I caught a tourist information place out of the corner of my eye. I popped in and with my map and inquired as to where the bars were located. It was 2 PM and I still had time to kill before my train left, and since it was an overnighter I knew that intoxication was the only way to get me through it with as little pain as possible. I was directed towards a few tourist trap bars, because the lady behind the counter did not understand what a blue-collar workers’ bar was. I decided to try a different angle and asked her to show me where an Irish pub was. Irish pubs are always safe bets for appropriately priced beer and a friendly atmosphere, no matter the location.

When I arrived at the pub, I was happy to notice that it shared my name. The first pint of Guinness was sweet nectar to my lips, a perfect frothy foam with a shamrock drawn into it. I downed it fast, and ordered another while making myself comfortable. I made friends with the bartender, who enjoyed the company of a Patrick in his namesake’s pub. We talked for hours about American football and basketball. I spent a good amount of Euros in that pub, but it was well spent. I was warm, dry, buzzed, and the bartender even reminded me of the time so I wouldn’t miss my train. I stoically strolled back to the train station, and got comfortable in my seat. As the train crept out of station, I fell into a dream.