Day 95

24 July 2013

Surprising Ljubljana

I still remember at age 16 that I was standing at the side of the main road on the outskirts of Ljubljana trying to get a lift to Zagreb and beyond to Istanbul. The year before we had past there twice. We always ended up going through the same streets and stopping at the same bread shop top buy some nice crispy bread rolls.

Today all has changed, the street must still be there but nowhere to be found. I stopped at a little park near the city centre to check the bike over just in case I encountered some issues. Times have changed in Ljubljana; when I first visited it was a stark place; grey and grim and in the grip of Yugoslavia's own style of communism. Now things are different. Commerce is everywhere just like in Western Europe and the people look happy. Slovenia is doing very for itself I can see.

While parking the bike, an organ player pushing his little card with one hand while turning his wheel slowly with the other, entered from the side street. Along the edge of the pavement was another man playing an accordion, no doubt also trying to earn some euro’s from passersby’s.

I walked across the street to a fruits shop who sold plums as big as apples and apples as big as small melons. I bought some nectarines which are in season. The soft ones I don’t touch as they turn to pulp once I put them in my tank bag. A shop on the corner supplied me with a few buns and some slices of cheese, good for a light lunch in a park in Ljubljana with and organ playing on one side and an accordion player on the other side but… instead of trying to outdo each other the accordion player had stopped his own repertoire and now was playing the same tunes as the organ. It sounded like a stereo performance. A nice introduction to what I always believed to be a boring city. By the time I had myself organized to take some pictures the organ player had disappeared into one of the little alleyways facing the park.

After a 15 minutes I left again and headed for the old city centre about 500 meters away and parked at the end of the street where traffic is not allowed to go any further. The city centre is old but far from drab, all the old buildings have been restored to their former glory. The thing what makes a city pretty is it architecture and its layout. In the case of Ljubljana there is a another item what makes this a beautiful place to visit.

Right through the heart of the city flows a narrow slow flowing river (or is it a canal?) which links the two sides by means of marble bridges. There are several small squares with cobblestones pavers,each with its own fountain. People are invited to drink the water as it comes straight from the ground. A sign explained that we pollute the world with the water bottles while here you can drink straight from the fountain.

At one of the fountains I met a fellow long distance traveler who was circumnavigating Europe on his bicycle. The man came from Germany; he had first made his way up north east to St Petersburg in Russia followed by the Baltic states and had reached Slovenia via Austria. It had been "ein hell of ein trip trough Austria" he said. I can believe that, because he had entered Slovenia via the same pass as I had where I needed to shift many times into first gear a due the steep inclination in the hairpins.

We sat down for a while to exchange some of our experiences in the Baltics; he was as impressed with those countries the same as I had been. We both agreed that the world was very different than what is portrayed in the news and that travelling alone has many advantages as you meet many other travelers along the way. We talked for a while, meanwhile listening to a man singing some traditional local songs a few meters away.

Children walked by eating their ice creams, an old man, bent over and leaning heavily on his stick passed us, stopped and looked at the bicycle- I guess he could tell us a story or two; an old lady walked by and tried to interest us in some of her handy craft. It was very warm and we were enjoying our icy cold water from the spring.

Ljubljana… a very different place than I had previously thought.