Blogs from Ljubljana, Upper Carniola, Slovenia, Europe - page 22

Well next it was onto a place where I had no idea how to pronounce the name of the place until I got on the train to go there. It's Ljubljana (Pronounced Joo-bil-lana). Strangely enough I didn't get a whole lot of sleep on the night train and pulled in there fairly dazed, but found my hostel really quickly, dumped my backpack and went out exploring. I had left the Swiss Weather Curse behind and it was perfectly blue skies so I wandered around a couple of parks and made my way to Ljubljana Castle, which although it doesn't have the history of the Western European or Middle Eastern castles, it was still pretty cool. For the rest of the afternoon, I checked out a couple of slightly touristy things, then headed for the backstreets ... read more

I have been listening, for nearly the last three hours, to Bob Dylan. It is because the free internet at my hostel is right next to the bar, and alternative scene in Ljubjlana means, aparently, Bob Dylan. Or the Barman's a nut. One or the other. But I have been uploading pictures. Some of Rome, and some of Slovenia to Flickr. Sadly, I ran out of upload bandwidth. Grrr... I should be more selective, I suppose. And I've edited previous entries, to include more photos. I will do this continually, as my patience increases. Slovenia is a lovely, amazing country. Full of surprises. For instance, it is no cheaper than Italy. I am saving money only because I am not entering museums, I am only walking and wandering. The Old City, centred around Ljubljana Grad ... read more

An interesting day of train travel with bikes. The trains are very bike friendly. Specially marked coaches have a compartment with 'meat hooks' on the ceiling from which you hang the front wheel of the bike. We were able to keep an eye on them through the glass doors. The trains were nearly empty but stops at many small towns to let small number of people on and off. The trains double as school busses for highschool kids - probably attending regionalized schools of various types. We had one 2 hour layover in San Candido which was very good because we had whizzed through it on the way to Italy the first time on the bike path. Turned out to be a charming town and we enjoyed a great cappucino and strudel in the sunshine in ... read more

Slovenia After a good set of wrong roads and closed motorways we were on our way. We ended up taking a more “scenic” route but was very nice and got so see some really nice valleys and gorges. After a good drive we arrived in Slovenia and neither nick or I got a stamp in our passports what a rip!! But getting over that we arrived in Ljublijan an we txt Matejka the CouchSurfer we were going to be staying with. After receiving some rather incomprehensible directions we headed to the main train station to see if we could book a train for Mirja to get home the next day=( After a bit of a search of the Maptop we found the street and we were off, after about 1 min of driving we were ... read more

So from Salzburg we quickly made our way down to beautiful Slovenia, just unfortunate we only have to pass through it quickly, we had a nice lunch at a service stop, most of us had goulash and it was terrific. The scenery is of snow covered mountains , farmlands.. after lunch off we go again to our next border stop...... read more