How Green Is Your Dragon?

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June 2003

The cheap airlines hadn’t quite made it to town at this point, so getting there was a bit more of a challenge on a budget. As a well read guide book sums it up, “Ljubjlana is just a house and Slovenia a village”. It’s not a hard country to negotiate your way around, so how hard could it be to get there from Italy on the train? The answer unless you are the daily express from Venice is more difficult than you would think, as there is a tiresome detour via Trieste.

We spent a hot stopover night in Venice - long enough to see the sights, a few canals, get bitten by the odd mossie and buy a train ticket. Ljubjlana is far from the quagmire of troubles sometimes associated with the former Yugoslavia and it was probably as safe as houses even back in 1992. The first thing that strikes you is a city with a more Mediterranean atmosphere than central European - a place of alfresco dining and promenading. I understand even today accommodation is not in abundance and the choices a few years ago were limited. The Park is now described as basic, but that’s after an extensive makeover. In 2003, it was definitely very basic but aside from the lukewarm coffee at breakfast it provides all the comforts necessary in a central location. The hostel style rooms on the top floor have a fab view over the city.

The temperatures were soaring during our trip and the city was alive with all the generations enjoying the sunshine down by the Ljubjanica River. The river forms a natural divide in the centre, as it meanders along underneath the willow trees. The right side houses the baroque old town underneath the castle - Ljubanski Grad. The Old Town is linked to the commercial centre across the river by a number of bridges - the most famous of which is the Triple Bridge, although the most memorable is undoubtedly Dragon Bridge. The apparent symbol of the city and of it’s former leading football club - the Green Dragons guard the entrance to the bridge.

We took the funicular railway car up to the castle, strolled through Tivoli Park, sat at the pavement cafes on Mestni Trg and Miranda joined in the Slovenian national sport of ice-cream eating. The pizzas were good at Ljubjlanski Dvor and give the wild boar a go at Erics. It was summer and there was no football, but the guy in the office at NK Olimpia still went out of his way to give away a couple of pin badges after we’d taken the trouble to wander out to the Central Stadium. We hope that this was in no way connected to them going bust thereafter.

In order to get back to Venice for the flight, we headed back to Trieste. The inconvenient rail links are a legacy of Trieste’s previous position as a seaport in the Austro-Hungarian empire and it’s place at the crossroads of Italy, central Europe and the Balkans. We spent a night, saw the extremely limited sights and got fleeced on the train after failing to locate one of those infuriating ticket stamp machines at Trieste station.

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Photos

Ljubljana
Dragon Bridge

Ljubjlana
Pivo Lasko - goat juice by another name

Ljubljana
Franciscan Church of the Annunciation

Central Stadium
Home of the Green Dragons - NK Olimpia

Ljubljana
Al fresco breakfast at the Park

Ljubljana
Icecream at The Park