"What language do they even speak here?!" A tale from Ljubljana, Slovenia.

WARNING: another long post coming at you... I think this is just going to be a general trend for my weekend trips. Sorry.

Sunday, September 28, 2008.

So at 9:27 pm Kayla, Jenny, and I boarded our train to Ljubljana, Slovenia. At the time, we were not sure how to pronounce that, but I am almost certain now that it is pronounced "Lub-lana," as in silent j's. Who knew j's could be silent? Kayla and I downloaded Law and Order:SVU episodes for our iPods and switched, so our train flew by! We were on the front part of an overnight train to Budapest, so we got off wayyyy before the train terminated. Even so, it was about 2:00 am when we got off and we tried to navigate to our hostel. Luckily we were only about a 2 minute walk from the train station (the man at the train station gave us directions in meters... I cant even do directions in feet/miles, I dont know what he was thinking). It was also about the time that we got off the train that we realized that we had NO idea what language was spoken in Slovenia. Oh goodie. It sounded Russian-esque, but it certainly wasnt anything that I could understand.

We found our hostel to find 9 other people SNORING and dead asleep. So we had to make our beds and get ready for bed in the pitch black dark and be super quiet. Did I mention that our hostel used to be a jail? Well it did. We opted for a NON CELL room, but even then, it was literally box springs on the floor of this attic. Special. I had a delightful nights sleep and woke up ready for our day of exploration. We had breakfast at the hostel and left to walk around. Directly outside our hostel is what we will call the "alternative lifestyle neighborhood." Please see pictures of the graffiti covered walls. All the colors, though, were actually pretty! We used our map to find ourselves some castles and such. One of the castles had a tower we could climb up, which was AMAZING, because the view from up there was UNBELIEVABLE. We came down and found a SLOVENIAN MARKET!!!. It was at this point that I realized I LOVE THIS PLACE! There were little clothes booths, and a TON of fruit and vegetables. I got some peaches which I promptly ate--they did NOT disappoint. We wandered around a little and found a restaurant that looked good (they had no cover charge and free water! Take that, Italy!) My sandwich had practically an entire chicken on it, it was so big, but DELICIOUS.

We continued to walk around and found a tennis complex where we sat for a while watching people play. It was so nice and lovely! We read that there was an opera and a ballet in Ljubljana so we were going to try to find it, but we could not for the LIFE of us find the building, so we decided a big fat NO on that one. Then, guess what, we were hungry again, so we ate dinner! We went to a Slovenian restaurant which probably wouldn't be that memorable were it not for 2 key things. 1- our waiter lit some candles for us on our table and left one on the sideboard-like piece of furniture next to us. About 3 minutes later, the sideboard is on FIRE because he left it under one of the shelves. I moved it just in time, but another waiter walked by thinking that it was ME who lit the fire... 2- we had some DELICIOUS apple pie for dessert!! :) Our waiter also always replied to our "thank you's" with "thank you for you." We thought that was funny!

We went back to our hostel after that--we were BEYOND pooped!!! We were the first ones in bed (ironically after being the LAST ones the night before...). We were sitting around chatting when one of the other guests came in and changed clothes, etc. He threw his towel over one of the beams and cleaned up his stuff etc... We got in bed, and one of my bed neighbors (Kayla and Jenny were together in a corner and I was next to a couple and some rando guy...) asked me if I smelled anything. I told her it smelled like a campfire, but we just assumed it was the party that was going on outside our hotel (we never did figure out what they were celebrating). Anyway, about 10 minutes later, people are screaming FIRE because the towel was draped across a LIGHT BULB and caught on fire. Genius. Apparently we were not having good luck with fires that night...

The rest of the night was uneventful, but we got up early the next morning and took the bus to Lake Bled in Bled, Slovenia. It was really beautiful! When we got there we grabbed some lunch at a pizzeria and I made friends with our waiter. Apparently, the pizza I ordered was called "fat girl" (in my defense, it was mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil...I mean, really?!) He was quick to tell me that, but reassure me that I was NOT fat... thank you, Borris (that is what we named him). When I got up to pay, he told me that I was tall, which I already knew... OHHH BORRIS...

We walked around the lake which was such a nice stroll and BEAUTIFUL views! On the way back we saw a rowing regatta--COOL!! We took the bus ride home, then played cards/read in our hostel until our train back to Venice at 2:22 am. That means we arrived in Venice at 7:30 am--about 2 hours ago, so I am prettttty tired! But, I LOVED Slovenia!!!

Midterms are next week--BOO, so that means studying this week. Or at least PRETENDING to study...
MISS YALL!
xoxo
mckin

PS They speak Slovene! :)