Ljubljana = Lyubov

Slovenia is the most underrated country in Europe.

Picture this- a country with the Julian Alps, perfect turquoise Alpine lakes with clear water to the bottom, castles perched on jagged cliffs, east-meets-west sort of Austrian, sort of Croatian, sort of Polish/Czech architecture, a language that uses the Latin alphabet but is totally Slavic in roots, and a coffee culture that resembles that of Austria but is as cheap as Ukraina. Slovenia embodies the idea of east-meets-west and it pulls it off so naturally and beautifully. It didn't feel weird or awkward that half of all Slovene words I heard in Ljubljana (which means beloved city, by the way) were exactly the same as their Ukie counterparts but the other half sounded almost Germanic or Italian. People are friendly, but not creepily so like in Italia. The youth is cool, sort of grunge, but there's no graffitti or rowdiness everywhere. It's gorgeous and there is a tourist office and a lot of English-speakers, but there were almost no tourists. It was so COOL. Oh, yea- and cold. We saw ice on the ground, which was a daunting reminder of returning to the Midwest just in time for my favorite season ............ winter. But we're not going to talk about that right now..

Ljubljana. It's in Slovenia. Who goes there? Seriously. Jessie and I booked our train, which leaves and arrives in Slovenia once a day at the most obscure time ever. Per esempio, we departed Roma Termini at 3:00 pm on Thursday and arrived in Venezia (Venice) at 8:30 pm. Well, after an hour layover in Venezia, we caught a train that was Budapest-bound that happened to pass through Ljubljana at...2 am. Ok. So we saw Slovenia for the first time at the most rando time possible. First impressions: wow, this place is quiet. And dead. Even for 2 in the morning. We found our hostel, Hostel Celica- which was voted best hostel in the world 5 years in a row. It's a converted prison.. actually really cool. You have the option to stay in an actual prison cell, with bars on the door and everything!! Haha.. sounds sketch, but we paid less there than we have anywhere else, got a really nice free breakfast, and had comfier beds than here in great old Club Medag.

Friday. Cloudy. We walked around the city, which, by the way, is not very big at all for being a capital city. There's a castle on the side of a mountain (the Julian Alps), several churches, a river, dozens of cafés, a dragon bridge (dragon = the city's symbol, it's everywhere), and plenty of stores. Namely, H&M. Now- some background. Roma lacks H&M. Actually I lied. There is one- however, it is 2 bus rides and a metro stop away from anywhere in the city center. Quindi inaccessible.. so lucky for me, not so lucky for the credit card, there is an H&M right on the main piazza of Ljubljana. We spent a lot of time in there. But don't worry! We did see the city. There's a huge open-air market and a street on which vendors only sell flowers.. there are vendors selling honey, wooden crafty things, and painted plates. I made friends with the honey vendor man, who randomly pulled out a plastic shot glass and poured me some golden liquid- "med"... which was exactly what I thought it was-- honey liquor. POTENT. We sort of communicated using Ukie and Slovenian- most of the words were kind of similar, so we both knew what the other was saying. We ate burek. A lot of burek. It's cheap and a specialty of that corner of the world.. think meat and/or cheese-filled strudel cooked/fried in a ton of butter and grease. Mmmmmmmm. The city is just gorgeous.. look at my pictures to get a slightly better idea, but basically it's pastel-colored, a mix between eastern and western Europe architecturally. We went to a really cute place for dinner (white tablecloths! cheap! yesssss!) and I got a Slovene specialty, think cottage cheese-filled ravioli except chopped in half on the diagonal, all covered in a mushroom cream sauce. AND as a starter I ordered mushroom soup in a BREAD BOWL. That's right. Totally legit traditional Slovene food. A BREAD BOWL. And we got coffee (and sat DOWN for freeeeee) 3 times. Like Viennese café culture mixed with Roman coffee mixed with eastern European cheap.

Saturday. Daytrip to Bled. What's in Bled, you ask? Lake Bled is in Bled. And it's beautiful. I had seen pictures of it, and Let's Go! Europe had a whole page on it, and it's only an hour bus ride from the city, so why not? We took the bus through the most gorgeous mountains EVER, the Julian Alps-- totally snow-covered because of how cold it's been lately-- and pulled into Bled. So... there's a lake. It's really, really BIG, and in the summertime it's apparently a resort town..but in the winter it is a ghost town. Jessie and I walked around the whole lake, which took us a solid 2 hours to do. It wasn't boring, though, because the landscape kept changing. First it starts off as a cute town, then it turns into a slight uphill incline with views of the huge lake and the island with a church on it. You keep walking, and you hit these docks, where there were tons of waterfowl squawking and hanging out.. and you see how huge the lake is. Keep walking, and OH HEY- there are HUGE mountains behind you that you couldn't see for the first half of the walk! Go around the bend, see tons of pine trees climbing up the mountains, and get closer to the island with the church on it. Talk about panoramas. Stunning. Eventually we got hot chocolate at the one lakeside café (we sat inside. it was snowing.) and took in the view. Bused home, ate more burek, sat in a rando basement of a rando building talking because it was SO COLD, and drank coffee at a few more cafés. Excellent conversation.