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Published: August 21st 2008
This will have to be a quick and photoless update, because I've only got 8 minutes left before my time on this computer runs out! (I also can't plug in my camera to add photos.)
So last time I updated I was in Budapest. On the Pest side of the river, to be accurate, and I didn't want to hang around the city too long: there was some huge music festival going on, which means lots of rowdy drunk people at all hours of the day and very poor accomodation options. I ended up in some grungy hostel, which was much like the rest of the city in that it was really dirty. The only decent place that I managed to escape to for a while was the Buda side of the river, and particularly the castle. There was another type of fair going on here, with several hundred booths set up where people dressed up in period costume produced and sold anything you could think of coming from the middle ages. There were blacksmiths, woodworkers, leatherworkers, clothcrafters, cooks, toy makers, and hundreds more. Lots of fun wandering around seeing everything! Many places also let you try your hand at the various jobs - for instance, you could have a go at carving or making your own shoes.
Anyways, I was looking at two options for getting out of the city: either to take a 1:30pm train going south to Belgrade and then from there to Greece, or if I missed that, a 3:10pm train to Vienna. Since I'm not in Greece, I clearly missed the first one! The castle and fair was just too interesting, and I didn't feel like running around much on a hot day. So I ended up on the later train, and I guess I'll have to come back to Europe some other time to visit Greece and southern Italy! The train was packed with party-goers departing the city, and I spent 4 hours to Vienna in a cramped seat in the aisle and in the hot sun.
Memo to self: do visit Budapest again sometime, it's an interesting city. Just don't go mid-August!
The next day in Vienna was much more pleasant. There was no exciting medieval fair to spend time at, and in fact it was a bit of a slow day since for some reason Tuesday is the one day of the week that most Vienna museums are closed. Still, there were some good sights to see: old city streets and buildings and churches, as always, plus a large imperial palace and surrounding parks. It felt good to relax a bit and not be in a rush to see everything!
My plan was to leave Vienna Wednesday morning and take two days to travel to Venice, Italy. The one-day direct train requires a reservation a week in advance, so I decided to break the trip in half by stopping over in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. I may end up spending more time here than I planned!
Ljubljana is a really nice city once you figure out how to pronounce the name. It's small - 250,000 people - which makes it really easy to get around compared to some of the bigger cities. It's also
clean. There are people dressed in white clothes walking around sweeping and picking up garbage! Amazing!
That's not all that makes this a nice place. It's cheaper than, say, Vienna or Budapest (although prices are going up since the Euro was introduced a year ago). It has an interesting castle built on a hill in the middle of the city. The castle is partly modernized, partly reconstructed to look like it did hundreds of years ago, partly in ruins, and partly under construction. The city also has a pretty canal through the old town, some nice architecture, and dragons. On a bridge! A dragon is actually the symbol of the city, and they are everywhere.
For lunch today I tried a 'Burek', which has nothing to do with dragons, but is pretty tasty. It's basically layers of dough stuffed with filling (mine was meat, but cheese and fruits or vegetables are also options) and wrapped in one big layer of dough. It's also about the greasiest thing I've ever consumed. You might be able to live off eating McDonalds for a month, but a month of Burek would sure kill you!
While visiting the information centre here I discovered that Slovenia's one national park, in the northwest of the country where the biggest mountains are, is smack dab on my train route to Venice. It also looks like they have some really nice hiking there! So, I think I might end up stopping there for a few days. Depending on where I end up staying I may not be able to update again until next week, but at least now you know where I am: wandering around the Slovenian mountains!
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Stephanie Claggett
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I am jealous. Jealous, I tell you! I took my first trip out to Europe fairly recently and have been trying to figure out how to get back ever since. Tell me though: have you magically learned how to speak Icelandic and Norwegian and Faroese and German and Hungarian, or did you just hunt down all the English speakers everywhere? Hope the rest of your trip continues wonderfully! :)