Ljubjana

Trip Start Apr 20, 2008

Trip End Ongoing

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Where I stayed

Smiley's

(Ljubljana hotels)

Flag of Slovenia Ljubljana, Slovenia
Saturday, September 20, 2008

We arrived on a train in Ljubjana midday, only being a couple of hours away from Zagreb. This city, the capital of Slovenia turned out to be one of the places where we spent the most time but ironically saw the least of the city. The afternoon that we arrived I was feeling a bit worse for wear. We managed to go down to the main square which was full of activity as there is an election coming up in Slovenia. All the political parties had stalls set up and the biggest party was throwing a free party with bands playing. We hung around for a while, had some Slovenian take away and watched some bad Slovenian music. By the evening I was bed ridden. Dave went out as he had seen that the Slovenian philharmonic orchestra was playing, what he had probably seen on the pamphlet (in Slovenian) was 'the Slovenian philharmonic orchestra presents' blah blah blah.. some dude on a cello which was apparently very unimpressive and a big waste of time.

Next day I didn't manage to get out of bed. Dave went out for a couple of hours in the morning before his health also deteriorated. We both just had awful colds, sore throat, cough, the feeling of having cotton wool inside one's head instead of a brain..

Ljubljana

. Luckily we had a nice room and wireless internet so we able to watch some movies online even if it was on a screen about 5cm big. A Serbian man across the hall was concerned for us and tried to give us antibiotics and different sorts of teas, it was very challenging to understand what he was saying as he spoke to us in Italian, assuming (correctly) that we would understand that better than Serbian.. it was very kind of him but I just did not have the energy to try to interpret was he was saying.

Another day we dragged ourselves out of the room for long enough to walk along the river and take the furnicular railway up to the castle on the hill. By the time we were feeling better we thought we had better get a move on or else we wouldn't make it to various places in time for our various planes/trains we have booked. So I sit now on a train to Italy, it shouldn't have been so hard to get into Italy, with Venice only being a 4 hour train ride away.. however the only direct train to Venice leaves at 2am??? Otherwise one must go via Villach in Austria.. excuse me?? Which costs like double as much and takes way longer... We ended up taking a local train to a place called Novo Gorica which is right on the border. As soon as we exited the train station we were in Italy. Then we caught a bus to the Italian train station and boarded a train for Venice... a bit complicated but it's worked out fine.. so far. Stupid European complicated EXPENSIVE train system!! And I must say, Slovenia, some of the rudest and most unhelpful people!!! Only in the bus and train station to be fair, people in town were much nicer but it was very frustrating trying to get information out of them. I see no reason for their extreme surliness BAAH, sometimes I miss Australia, at least we place importance on customer service and treat tourists and other people as people and not some sort of inferior alien beings.