Ljubljana, Slovenia

Although a 7am start the next day meant only 4 hours sleep, that didn't matter, because I was very excited to be heading away for the weekend! As a lot of the American TA's had an event in Vienna this weekend, it was the perfect opportunity for us Brits to go away as well, and so 5 of us made the journey to Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. The journey took about 5 hours and so was a nice opportunity for me to catch up on some sleep. Having not really been to Eastern Europe before, I will admit that I really didn't know what to expect as we crossed the border. In all honesty, I was expecting lots of grey buildings and the city to be quite 'run-down', in keeping with the idea of the 'former Eastern/communist bloc'. I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised to find that the city was really quite beautiful, and didn't look all that different from some of the Western European countries I've visited. There were some parts of the city that looked run-down, but they also had a certain charm to them and so, on the whole, it wasn't at all what I was expecting.

We arrived at lunch-time and went straight to the Tourist Information Office. They gave us a couple of maps of the city and circled the places they recommended that we visit. We then went straight to the hotel, dropped our stuff off, and went out in search of a cafe as we were all pretty hungry by this point. Unfortunately, I don't think that we were in the right part of town for cafes as it was quite hard to find one. By the time we'd found one and sat down, they'd sold out of most of their sandwiches so we basically took whatever was left. Nevertheless, the sandwiches definitely filled a hole and the lunch was very cheap as well, (€3 for a sandwich and drink!) so I'm definitely not complaining.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the city, checking off the circles on our map as we came to them. The city is a nice size and we managed to do just about everything that we'd planned too before it got dark. We saw Ljubljana's famous bridges, some churches, the university, the library, the theatre, the list goes on... The highlight for me was one of the last things we did. We were wandering round Tivoli park, and came across a National Geographic Open-Air Exhibition. The photos were absolutely stunning, and the majority of them had been taken in Slovenia. That evening we had decided to try the local cuisine, and so headed out to a traditional Slovenian restaurant. I went for the 'Country Feast', which was a lot of meat and incredibly filling! Afterwards we headed out to a cocktail bar, called Pr'Skeletal. The bar was down a dark side alley and skeleton themed, so as we entered we passed lots of glass cases with ominous looking skeletons inside. They had an absolutely huge selection of 183 cocktails, and as it was Buy One Get One Free, we managed to try quite a few of these! The bar was quite busy so there was a great atmosphere, and I really enjoyed the evening.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel before heading out to the Flea Markets. These were mainly selling antiques/collectibles so I didn't find much, but it was still interesting to look around. Afterwards we walked up to the Grad (castle), and had a look around there. From the top of the viewing tower we had a great view of the whole city, and could recognise most of the stuff we'd seen the day before. We also watched a 'Virtual Tour' video which explained that Ljubljana's mascot, the dragon, is the same one that St. George supposedly slayed! We had a very nice lunch in the castle grounds, before going back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and then back to the train station.

Our train was delayed by almost an hour, which meant that we missed our connection in Villach. However, all was not lost! We went for a wander around Villach, and much to our delight found that their Christmas lights were on and their Christmas markets in full flow! It looked magical and was the ideal end to the weekend.

Ljubljana is a lovely city. Although it's quite small, it's packed full of charm and is really quite beautiful - especially in Autumn. Something I noticed there was that as a linguist, I felt quite uncomfortable not being able to speak their language at all. It felt quite rude, and so I incredibly grateful that they could all speak some English. I've taken some great memories from the trip, and am looking forward to (hopefully) exploring Europe further in the coming months.