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Published: August 5th 2022
We’re up at the crack of dawn for our early morning flight to Trieste. The lady at the check in desk tells us that downtown Trieste is famous for its coffee. This is nice to know, but if we find ourselves in downtown Trieste later in the morning it will only be famous in the Sheehan household as the place we ended up in when we missed the turnoff to Slovenia. We can see Venice out the plane window just before we land, well we think it might be Venice. It’s ridiculously hazy. Our flight took off an hour and a half late because Rome Airport was closed earlier this morning, allegedly due to “fog”. I didn’t know you could get fog when it was nearly forty degrees.
We check over our hire car carefully for any damage. This requires intense concentration. It requires so much concentration that as we drive away we’re flagged down by a car coming the other way; it seems I’ve left the folder with our passports, drivers licences, vaccination certificates, and all our tickets sitting on the roof. That was a close shave with disaster.
If today goes as planned it will be the first time that either of us have driven across an international land border in a vehicle that one of us was driving. We’ve been across in trains and buses before, but this feels very different. I’ve got visions of barbed wire fences and armed border guards, but the reality is a tad less dramatic; we pass a sign saying “Slovenia” without even slowing down; lucky we both weren’t half asleep or we would have missed it. That was a bit disappointing.
One thing we do notice really quickly is that we suddenly don’t understand any of the road signs. This is not good. We consulted the Google machine last night for the Slovenian words for “hello” (zivjo), “thank you” (hvala), “where’s the bathroom” (kje je kopalnica) and “can I have two beers please” (lahko dobim dvi pivi prosim), but didn’t think to look for “give way” or “roadworks ahead” or “stop at the police checkpoint ahead or risk being shot”. I’ve often wondered how people communicate with each other along a border when the two languages on either side don’t bear any resemblance to each other, as certainly seems to be the case here. I hope they communicate.
The road from Trieste to Ljubljana is an excellent four lane tollway. The countryside looks a bit dry and parched. This probably isn’t too surprising given the thermometer in our little hire car has hit forty degrees a few times, and the Google machine warned us that our journey might be affected by a forest fire. The landscape is mostly rolling hills covered with a mixture of pine/deciduous forests and open farmland, plus the odd spectacular steep rocky crag.
We head out along the side of the Ljublajanica River in search of dinner. We don’t have to search too hard. It’s wall to wall restaurants and bars on both sides, most of which are packed to the hilt. I thought this place might be a bit off the beaten track, but I think the track‘s now been well and truly worn down. And it’s not hard to see why. It’s all ridiculously attractive, with traditional architectural styles seemingly having been preserved throughout the old town.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
What?
No pictures? I really enjoyed Ljubljana.