Ljubljana

We are now in Hungary. This post is about our time in Ljubljana. So that you can appreciate this post as much as possible, you must realize the difficulty I am having preparing it. It took me close to a minute to type that last sentance. I am typing on a European keyboard, so some of the keys are in the wrong place. If zou see some zs in the place of ys, please don't get too upset. Correct punctuation is also hard to achieve.

We arrived at the Llubljana airport Wednesday afternoon. Our bags did not arrive with our flight, which was quite worrisome for Larissa since her checked bag contained all of her warm clothes. She felt foolish wearing a short-sleeved shirt and flip flops when the temperature outside was just above freezing. While we waited for our bags to come (fortunately they came on the next flight, less than one hour later) a helpful girl at the airport tourist information desk helped us get our orientation and game plan for getting to our apartment. It turns out that there are tourist information centers at various places around the city. We have found them to be quite valuable. The airport was quite small, with only one gate.

The bus ride into the city was very scenic. We passed through some quaint little towns surrounded by farmland bordered by mountains of which we could only see the foothills. Larissa was obviously very glad to be in Europe, as she let out a controlled squeal every few minutes. We met an interesting lady on the bus from Romania. She was a chemist for the EPA in Slovenia on business. I was immediately uncomfortable by her presence as she tried to start up a conversation with Larissa about how there were "Nice men here." She assured us that she knew, because she had been looking carefully. She asked us where we had travelled from. Trying to keep things simple, we told her that we had come from the states. "And you come here?" she questioned, "I just hope that you are not on your honeymoon." When we told her that we were indeed on our honeymoon, she told us that we were for sure too young to be married.
Eventually we arrived at the central bus station, from where we managed to find our way to the tour agency through which we had booked our apartment. We were given a quick lift to our new home.

The lady who owns the place, and who lives next door, came and introduced herself and helped us get settled. It was a nice one bedroom bright place with a clean and well equipped kitchen. It also had satellite TV, but most of the channels were pay-per-view, or in the wrong language. We ended up watching a lot of CNN and the Travel Channel, which were our main English options. We were a little disturbed to be reminded that we still haven't shaken the travel bug. There are so many places we still need to go.

The next morning, despite the fact that it was snowing and raining, we were eager to get out and explore the city. We armed ourselves with our non-waterproof rain ponchos and our only sweaters, which seemed way to thin to get us through the hardships to come.

While we froze riding around town, we found the place to be very friendly to bicyclists. There are bike lanes on all the major roads, complete with little bike stop lights. There are also places to lock the bikes up wherever you might need them. Ljubljana is not a very big city. Its population is around 270,000. We found it easy to familiarize ourselves with the place, while seeing some of the major sights. This is the Ljubljanica river, which goes right through town.

One of the first places we stopped was a candy store. Larissa was a bit too tall for there overhead decorations, and managed to break a beautifully decorated egg. We felt obligated to buy some chocolate. We got some chocolate covered apples, peanuts, and some other kind of nuts. We also got what we thought to be chocolate covered strawberries, which turned out to be figs. We parked our bikes at the central market, which had very nice produce, and then enjoyed walking along the riverfront. The rivers around here, and much of central and eastern Europe are quite swelled right now. Fortunately Ljubljana is not having the flooding problems of many of the other cities around. For those of you who might be interested, there is apparently some good trout fishing in Slovenia. The most sought after species is the Soca Trout of the Soca river. Unfortunately a fishing liscense runs around 70 euro per day. I would be feeling really left out if the rivers were in fishable condition. Eventually we stopped in for Pizza at Pizzeria Ljubljanskia, or something like that. By this point in the day we were feeling quite rude for not being able to even get out a greeting in Slovene. We were determined to learn at least a few words while we were waiting for our family sized pizza to come. Larissa proved more resolute in learning the language than me. That is, she demanded that the book be centered in front of her, which happened to put it upside down for me. She would practice a word a few times, and then put the book at an angle so that I could try to learn the word in about a tenth of the time that she had had. Anyway, Larissa developed a useable vocabulary, while I never got past hello. It turned out that knowing how to say hello in Slovene (doberdan) proved not to be very helpful, as people would invariably rattle off some Slovene reply. The family sized pizza turned out to be truly family sized, the largest we have seen yet on our honeymoon.


We were both glad that both our lunch and our breakfast was taken care of. Unfortunately, we are big eaters, and around fifteen minutes later we were to heavy to move. Even after stuffing ourselves, we thought it necessary to stop by the grocery store on the way home for dessert supplies. That night we enjoyed some strawberries (very inexpensive at the Ljubljana central market) dipped in chocolata densa and custard.

We woke up to the sun breaking through the clouds. Our dreams had come true. We got out of the apartment as fast as possible and started our bikeride to the city castle, which stands atop a prominent hill.

We enjoyed climbing the castle tower for some excellent views of the city.

The snowpeaked mountains, unfortunately, were still covered by clouds. It was nice touring around the city in the sunshine.

We were in such good moods when we were heading home that we decided to stop in and grab some desserts. We got some Tiramisu and an apple strudel. So, we rode home contentedly, whith 2kgs of strawberries and a couple of desserts in tote.

The next day we decided to take a bike tour of some of the city's outskirts. There was a brightly colored hilltop church off in the distance that we were particularly interested in going to. Our ride soon tookus by a beautiful mansions that we both wanted a picture of. We noticed an American flag out-front, and then realized that it was the U.S. embassy. Larissa had the camera, so as always I put in my two cents in regard to what the best shooting angle would be. She was nervous though, asking "are you sure we can take pictures here," I laughed and poked fun at her a bit, just before an armed guard came up and politely told us that no pictures would be allowed.

We were able to ride most of the way to the hill-top church in Tivoli park, large well kept forrested area with nice trails.

There were a lot of people out and about, much different from the colder days before. We eventually made it to the church, which was nice, but prettier from afar.

We spent the rest of the day riding around various neighborhoods and enjoying the nice weather.

We had one more morning in Ljubljana before heading off to Hungary. The market was particularly lively. We enjoyed some traditional music and dance. We also bought a lot more fruit and vegetables. Many slovenes can speak German or Italian, so Larissa was having a great time at the market. I soon got frustrated, so I had to send her on purchasing missions for me. Here I am eating some Slovene fast food, a Burek, which is a cheese filled pastry type thing. It was quite hot, which is why my mouth looks deformed. Larissa ordered it in Slovene, which she is sure to remind me of often.

We also got some more fruits and vegetables. Larissa was particularly happy to get some blood oranges. She likes to rip apart the wedges and pretend that they are pieces of flesh. I guess everyone has carnivorous tendancies.

Early that afternoon we boarded an Italian train enroute to Budapest. We couldn't see any indication of class on our tickets, so we made ourselves comfortable in a first class compartment. About two hours later, after the best of the scenery had passed, we were told to move back to second class.