Laibach and think of Slovenia

06.11.2019 8 °C

One of the worst things about travelling is the blisters. They are unavoidable; well, at least with my style of travel that includes lots of public transport and walking. I know from experience that the blisters soon become sturdy calluses, but until then, they are excruciatingly uncomfortable.

I was also rather tired from the mammoth five-train extravaganza the day before. So I decided to have a quiet day walking - no, ambling - no no no, dawdling - around the fair city of Ljubljana.

I stepped outside to a cloudy, drizzly day. On my way out I was greeted by Maria, Eva's mother who owns the umbrella repair shop downstairs. She welcomed me to Slovenia, asked if everything was OK, gave me lots of tips of things to do and see, made me feel at home.

It was a cool, gentle European rain that renews the spirit and fills my heart with joy. It wasn't the sticky, clammy rain of Sydney that makes the humidity even worse. I put on my rain jacket and beanie and went for a wander.

There is probably no better city in Europe to do so. Ljubljana is a compact little city where motor traffic is strictly controlled. There is a wide long main street, Slovenske cesta, that is a bus mall which is also pedestrian friendly. The walker bounces from square to cosy square, lane to cobblestone lane, and finds something to catch their eye at every corner.

After a hearty breakfast platter of pršut (like Italian prosciutto ham but even better), olives, pickled tomatoes, cheese and bread, I decided to attend to practical matters first. There was that bottle of Hungarian wine I wanted to send my mother. I entered Ljubljana's general post office, a marvellous little building in the same fin de siècle style you often see in Vienna, with a rounded corner facade and a cute cupola. I went into the post office, all polished marble and brass, and was served by a competent, courteous and efficient employee who provided me with the required box, bubble wrap and postage I required to send a bottle of wine to Australia. See, Magyar Posta, it isn't that hard, you bunch of utter morons!

I walled around Kongresni Trg, the largest square - more like a park, really - in Ljubljana, and then checked out the National Museum of Slovenia nearby. This isn't one of the world's most notable museums. It only occupied one and a half floors of a modest building, and concentrates solely upon the ethnographic history of Slovenia only as late as the Middle Ages - a fairly esoteric niche subject. That being said, it is one of the most fantastic museums I have visited.

Why? Because unlike most museums, the National Museum of Slovenia takes the trouble to explain everything! Every single artifact on display, no matter how small, came with explanatory text in simple layperson's language informing the visitor about the significance of that necklace or this sickle blade. There was also an entire gallery full of Roman monuments - tombstones and public building inscriptions and statue plinths and the like - and every single bit of Latin text was translated into Slovene and English. Would that all museums did this! Being able to see a two thousand year old tombstone from the days when Ljubljana was a Roman provincial capital called Emona and read that the inscription says it was dedicated to a seventeen-year-old girl mourned by her parents - well, I could easily see in my mind's eye those parents in their best togas sobbing, convulsive with grief, and the assembled mourners praying to Roman gods and goddesses for the safety of the girl's soul in the afterlife. Great explanatory text makes all the difference.

There were other interesting items too - a wooden deer trap from the early Middle Ages that still looked like it could snag Bambi, Celtic swords from the pre-Roman times bent in an S shape (a common Celtic habit was to so bend swords and bury them with the dead warrior who owned the sword), a three thousand year old situla, a bucket decorated with friezes depicting the life of a Celtic ruler, and the world's oldest musical instrument (unfortunately only a replica was shown due to renovations): a fifty thousand year old Neanderthal flute. Slovenia also has the world's oldest wheel. It's safe to say that Slovenes are innovative people.

Near the museum was Slovenia's parliament building, a bland grey 1950s office block, but nevertheless it surely wins the prize for gratuitous nudity. The friezes beside and above the front doors were full of naked people, virile men and full-bosomed women, in various poses, and I am at a complete loss to explain how these nude figures are even remotely relevant to the legislative process.

I dawdled across the river to Old Town on the other side. I then took my only rail transport for the day - a funicular railway up to Ljubljana Castle. There has been a castle on this hill overlooking the town and the Ljubljanica River for a thousand years, but after various fires and reconstructions, much of it now dates from the fifteenth century or later.

There are some interesting little museums in the castle, one with a whole bunch of mediaeval armour and weapons, and another excellent little museum about Slovenia's history from the pre-Roman era until the modern post-Yugoslav independence period. There is a watchtower with a very steep and narrow spiral staircase with excellent views over Ljubljana in all directions from the top. There's a small church, St George's Chapel, with beauitful frescoes on the ceiling depicting various coat-of-arms of duchies in this part of the Habsburg empire in the days when this city was known by its German name, Laibach. There are casements and parapets and old prison cells to explore too.

It was early evening when I took the funicular back down the hill to the Old Town. I splashed out on a three-course meal at the excellent Druga Violina restaurant which serves traditional Slovenian fare. I started off with another platter of pršut, olives and dried fruit; had buckwheat and mushroom porridge for the main course (much nicer than it sounds), and finished off with gibanica, Slovenia's most famous dessert - a moist layer cake with ground walnuts and cottage cheese and poppy seeds and raisins. Slovenian cuisine is great and deserves to be better known. It is a perfectly balanced amalgam of German/Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and Balkan/Ottoman traditions as well as Slovenia's own innovations. I should start a Slovenian restaurant in Sydney and make a fortune.

Ljubljana general post office