I Still Can't Spell "Ljubljana"

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Geo: 46.3683, 14.1147

On this, our final full day of the tour, we met and made a quick ride up to Bled Castle, which sits on a promontory above the lake. It is a medieval castle which was first recorded in 1011. It has, naturally, been rebuilt and added on to during the centuries, but what stands now is pretty much how it looked in 1700. It was a steep hike up and into the castle, and our tour began with a series of three short films -- one on the geologic history of the region, then the history of the castle and region, and finally on the growth of tourism in Bled since World War II. Following a short walking tour, we were on our own to go through the surprisingly thorough museum, and the obligatory blacksmith shop. At our agreed-upon time, we all reconvened on the bus.

Though we had driven past the Slovene capital of Ljubljana to reach Bled the previous day, this morning we boarded to bus to return there and get a proper tour. Slovenia is by far the smallest (least populated) of the former Yugoslav republics, and with less than 2 million total inhabitants, we were not surprised to find out that Ljubljana only has 275,000 residents. As with Zagreb the day earlier, we drove through the "commie condo" suburbs of the city, albeit on a smaller scale. The sky had been threatening all morning, and a light rain fell as disembarked for our city tour. Our bus dropped us off across from the U.S. Embassy, which is a large house sitting directly next to the Russian embassy. Our guide said this is the only capital city in the world where this is the case, but I can't validate that assertion.

As Rok grew up in Ljubljana, he served as our guide. Much like Zagreb, we started in an apparently empty part of town, but as we got closer to the true downtown area, the people started to emerge. The sun, too, made an appearance and grew in visibility throughout the remainder of the day. The city itself is utterly charming and beautiful. I said it felt like a slightly larger Salzburg, as the city is built along a river with a series of pedestrian bridges, and a walled castle overlooks the city. All three of us loved the place. It also was not damaged in the war, and they have made more progress than Zagreb in cleaning up many of the buildings which fell into disrepair under communism. Also like Zagreb, once we were off on our own to explore, we immediately knew we wanted more time in the city. It really charmed us.

We had lunch in a café Rok had recommended, which was to have the best pastries in the city. We enjoyed our sandwiches and ended with a traditional crème cake. The poppy flavor was too strong for us, but it was good nonetheless. We squeezed in more walking around and shopping, and just barely made it to our appointed meeting place at the anointed time. Most of the discussion on the bus back to Bled was about how we had wished we had more time.

The remainder of the afternoon was ours, and by the time we got back to Bled, the sky was clear, it was warm, and the views were wonderful. People had emerged from the woodwork, and there were considerable numbers of people visiting for the Easter weekend. We all wanted to visit the "infamous" Villa Bled, which had been Tito's private residence in the area while he was alive. The site was a former Hapsburg palace, construction of which had started near the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Once he came to power, Tito took control of the partially completed palace and had his own villa built. It was used as both a residence, as well as a place to bring and impress foreign dignitaries. His private screening room has a huge propaganda mural recounting the "birth" of Yugoslavia. It was spared after his death, when the villa became an upscale hotel. We really wanted to see this, even though it is on the second floor and advertised as only visible to guests of the hotel.

We elected to rent bikes, rather than walk down to the villa, which was on the far side of the lake from our hotel. We not only rented bikes, but we rented electric bikes. This was a new concept to me. I thought it would be moped-like, but instead it was a traditional bicycle with a small electric motor below the seat. As you pedaled, the electric motor would recharge and, in turn, provide you which a motorized push. So you pedaled as usual, but the bike would accelerate very quickly and then continue for a while, even if you did not pedal. It took some getting used to, but we all ended up having a blast.

The hotel was all but empty when we arrived. The only person working the Front Desk was sitting down with a German or Austrian couple planning a wedding reception, and the stairs leading up the mural sported a prominent sign saying that access upstairs was limited to hotel guests. We went into the beautiful bar area, which had been Tito's private sitting area, and ordered coffee. That made us technical patrons of the hotel, so any feelings of guilt we had were assuaged. The Front Desk person broke away from his meeting long enough to provide us with an information sheet, in English, describing the mural. The painting is enormous, spanning two full walls of what had been a concert (and movie-screening) room. It tells the story of Tito's partisan army's defeat of the German army from 1941 to 1945. The story reads from left to right culminating in the "death blow to the invader" and the blossoming of the cherry tree on the right. The artist was named Pengov, who was a pacifist and anti-Bolshevik. He is said to have made this work under duress and hid own commentary within the images. Reportedly certain panels of the mural were covered up during the visits of some foreign dignitaries, as the images were deemed too graphic. Our information sheet had a list of the foreign leaders who had stayed at Villa Bled as a guest of Tito, and it truly ran the gamut from Queen Elizabeth to Kim Il Sung of North Korea. We learned a lot about Tito during the trip, particularly on how he straddled the void between East and West, with the Soviets thinking he was in bed with the West, and the U.S. convinced he was a die-hard communist. It was also interesting to hear that his funeral had more foreign heads of state attend than anyone else in history. The closest second was Nelson Mandela, but the number difference was still high.

After returning the bikes, we did our final souvenir shopping and went to work trying to get our bags ready for the return trip home. Not until we laid all of our purchases out on one bed did we realize how much we'd accumulated. We wanted to be sure things would survive the trip home, so we devoted time to getting everything in the right place. We had our bags set to go with only a few minutes to spare before our farewell dinner, which was held across the street, in a water-front hotel with great views over to the castle. It was a bittersweet meal, as people started to leave and begin their good-byes. There were quite a few people who had early morning flights out of Venice the following day, and their transfers were leaving as early as 12:30am....in only a few hours. These people left first. Ourselves, a mother and grown son, and the family with a teenage son -- with whom we had been sitting -- were in fact that last to leave. After saying goodbye to and thanking Rok and our bus driver for the week, we walked back through the now-very-crisp air to our hotel, quickly turned in for what would seem like a very short night.

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