Somehow I managed to get vacation time from work for two weeks in February 1998, and decided to use a good part of it to go to Slovenia, a place I’d always wanted to see, but most of my family and friends had never heard of.
I flew to Vienna, the easiest entry point to Slovenia. My uneventful flight got me to the very efficient airport early in the morning. I got on an extremely modern and roomy airport bus, and collected my thoughts.I was back in Europe, but in a new place entirely. The tensions of everyday life in New York and recent disasters in affairs of the heart suddenly seemed distant and less overwhelming. I was on vacation!
I wasn’t staying in Vienna for long, and considering my mood when I arrived, that was for the best. I would discover Vienna was aloof and neurotic soon enough, burdened by its history: glorifying it as well as repressing much of it. Still, as I made my way to the pension I’d booked, I could see it was a beautiful and elegant place. And very quiet.
My hotel was just a simple pension, three floors up in a Jugendstil building that had seen better days. The elevator didn’t work, although it was beautifully designed. The pension landlady wouldn’t let me go to my room until noon. I had arrived early, and “rules are rules”, especially in this part of the world. She told me she would put my bag be in my room for me. I would’ve preferred she put ME in my room with my bag, but I decided it was pleasant out and I could explore the city a bit and come back at noon.
I walked around for several hours, looking all around Vienna’s Altstadt, seeing the immense Stephansdom, and making my way over to Sudbahnhof to get my train ticket for Ljubljana. I had an authentic lunch of wurst, potatoes, and sauerkraut, and then went back to the hotel. I try to book places that have bathtubs, because at home I have only a shower in my apartment. Taking a long hot bubblebath was just the thing to get me in the vacation mood.
In the afternoon I visited the Secession museum, walked up and down the Ringstrasse, and took the U-Bahn to Karl Marx Hof. This was the most famous apartment complex of the “Red Vienna” period in the twenties and thirties. Before the Nazis wrested power from radical Social Democrats in the early thirties, more than 60,000 apartments had been built by the municipal government for workers. These were andsome, well-kept buildings, not like the shabby housing projects in the US. Karl Marx Hof was an imaginatively designed and well landscaped complex, so I wanted to see this social housing landmark.
The trainride there and back was just as interesting as the complex. The U-Bahn system is very efficient, with trains running every three minutes or so in the middle of the day. I could see everyday life for ordinary Viennese on the U-Bahn. Lots of older people, overdressed elderly women who looked worried and preoccupied. Lost empire? Lost wars? Immigrants? More likely, why their pensions were so small, or why their ankles ached.A certain number of the younger crowd had a somewhat menacing appearance. Neo-nazis are not unknown in Austria. I certainly didn’t try to make eye contact with anyone who looked threatening. There wasn’t any unpleasantness, though. I would’ve been very surprised to see something like that in such an orderly place.
After a simple dinner, I went back to the hotel, sat on my bed, and almost instantly fell asleep! When I woke up, it was completely dark. I looked at the clock and saw it was two in the morning! I was hungry, but I had little doubt everything in Vienna was closed at such a late hour. I ate two boxes of peanuts that were in the mini-bar and went back to bed. I had planned to pay before I’d gone to bed since I’d be leaving for Ljubljana so early in the morning.
At a little before seven a.m., I went downstairs to pay my bill and head out. It was dark in the hall, but I could see a light from the other end. This turned out to be the kitchen. I knocked softly on the door, and said I’d be leaving soon, and explained I needed to pay. Well, I TRIED to explain, but a young girl of perhaps twenty or so gave me a murderous look and angrily told me that she couldn’t help me, that she was very busy, and that I should have “made arrangements”. Then she just barked: “I don’t speak English. Just go away.” I was quite shocked at her nastiness, and just replied: “Your English seems pretty good. Can you get the owner for me?” She went through the whole spiel again, saying she was “just the daughter...go away...I can’t help you.” Now I was really annoyed, because she also kept saying she didn’t know English. As she waved her yogurt spoon at me dismissively, I said: “Well, if you won’t wake your mother, I’m leaving, and I’ll just mail the money to her from the next city I visit.” She said she didn’t care and that she didn’t speak English. I could feel my nostrils flaring!
I called her a “stupid bitch”, very sure she understood what THOSE words meant in English, and went back upstairs. Really, I just couldn’t understand why she was so ill-mannered. I called the hotel’s main number from the phone in my room, and after about ten rings, the owner answered. She didn’t seem to be a bit surprised it was me...so I sort of figured she had heard the whole carryings-on from a few minutes earlier. It probably woke her up. Reluctantly, she told me I could pay her downstairs at 7:00 a.m. So I tore downstairs with my bags, to see her sleepily smoking a cigarette at the front desk in her dressing gown. I told her that I would cancel my pre-arranged reservation to come back at the end of the week, because her “daughter” was one of the rudest people I’d come across in Europe and certainly wasn’t good advertising. This didn’t seem to shock the owner at all, since I’m sure it’s all happened before. She was more chagrined that I would miss the “breakfast I prepare for my guests.”
Soon enough I was on the train heading for Ljubljana, glad to leave behind the pension owner and her daughter. The train left right on time, at 7:45 in the morning. I had a comfortable seat near a window and was ready to go. There weren’t too many people traveling this route, which was nice in itself. I looked forward to seeing some of the Alps and at last seeing Slovenia, a place I’d wanted to visit for a long time.
It wasn’t long before we left the heavily built up city and were in the country. We passed through Wiener Neustadt, a not very interesting place from what I could see. My guidebook told me though that the initials A.E.I.O.U. can be seen engraved on buildings all around the city. This stands for the Latin inscription “Austriae est imperare orbi universo”, or “It falls to Austria to rule over the whole globe.” Well that was a laugh!
Somehow we ended up in the Alps when I wasn’t paying attention because we were now bending and curving through narrow valleys, and looking up I could see towering mountains on all sides. This was the warmest February in Austrian recordkeeping history, so there wasn’t any snow anywhere, except on the top of some even higher mountains in the distance.
From the train station, the beauty of Graz was lost on me. Perhaps one day I’ll be back to explore it. Soon enough we crossed over into Slovenia. I could tell because the farmhouses were noticeably shabbier. Everything in Austria has a fresh coat of paint, and some of the houses in the Slovene border areas look like they haven’t had any paint in decades.
I knew Slovenia was the most prosperous part of the former Yugoslavia, but it WAS part of Eastern Europe after all, and Austria was far, far richer than Slovenia.
The immigration and customs officials wore smart suits and were very polite. They disappeared at the first town on the Slovenian side. In a few minutes we were rolling into Maribor. This is Slovenia’s second largest city, a university town, and a busy place from what I could see from the train station. Right next to the station was the Maribor bus station, a huge place designed in a very eye-catching architectural style.
Slovenia is very mountainous, reminiscent of West Virginia back home. Very deep river valleys with very steep mountains, and small villages and towns nestled at the bottoms of these valleys, along this winding railway track. Most of the villages looked unkempt and the towns had rickety old factories, some of them still operational. Near the factories were some of the more forlorn apartment complexes of the communist era that I’ve seen. Obviously, Slovenia had its work cut out for it to join the European Union. Still, it’s been less than ten years since Yugoslavia fell apart. Perhaps the next ten years will help these small communities do well.
I wondered whether Ljubljana would look like these tired old towns.I hoped it wouldn’t. From the many photos I’d seen of the city, it was full of beautiful buildings and seemed lively, so that was encouraging. It was the capital of the country, after all. After two hours of passing through the mountains, we were suddenly back on level ground. We were on the outskirts of Ljubljana, full of modern apartment complexes that were definitely nicer than what was built in the smaller towns, but still seemed to be examples of the failed city planning of so much that is the legacy of the communist era.
Pondering these things, we pulled into the Ljubljana railway station. It’s a small and delightful building, just recently renovated. A taxi was waiting right out front, and a rather goodlooking young driver took my bags. “Where to?” he asked me in English. My first Slovene! I’d never met one before...I realized.
The driver was friendly, obviously well-educated, and obviously quite proud of his city. He pointed out some of the landmarks during the short ride to the hotel, and told me I was lucky to be visiting during the warmest winter in recent memory. It seemed like everyone was out and about on this sunny, warm day. The traffic was quite heavy, and people were filling the sidewalks. It really was lively, and very pleasant. I already knew I was going to enjoy being in Ljubljana.
I’d reserved a room at the venerable Hotel Slon, right on the main street of Ljubljana. Slon means Elephant, and for unknown reasons, there has been a hotel with this name in Ljubljana since the late 1700s. It’s been completely remodelled in recent years, and as I could see as I came into the lobby, done in the best taste and with expensive materials. My room was likewise far nicer than what I could afford back in New York. Genuine cherry wood furniture and panelling, and just through the big picture window, a wonderful view of the inner city and the Ljubljana castle.Very, very, nice.
After another bubblebath, I was ready to explore the city. I’d studied the maps carefully, and had thoroughly read through my Ljubljana guidebook, with it’s excellent maps and quaint ungrammatical English. I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the lay of the land, and as I would soon discover, Ljubljana is built on the human scale. Nothing is very far away, and the buildings are not bombastic, even when they are obviously badly designed(as is the case of some true mistakes built in recent decades.) There are plenty of trees, small squares that open up from narrow pedstrian only streets, and no building is higher than 15 stories.
I spent the afternoon exploring the old town below the hill with the castle on top.It hugs the very narrow Ljubljanica with its beautiful bridges designed by Joze Plecnik, one of Slovenia’s favorite sons. Another favorite son, the poet France Preseren, is honored with having the town’s main square named after him. Actually more circular,Presernov Trg/ Preseren Square is wonderful, full of strolling Slovenes and tourists (very, very few Americans I suspect).
I had lunch at the socialist style cafeteria in the basement of the city’s main department store, part of a complex in Republic Square. Functional architecture, but not in the least bit beautiful, the complex has Slovenia’s non-descript parliament building on one side, two ugly office buildings that would be a LOT uglier if they were any taller than 15 floors, and the bunker-like department store. It sounds worse than it is, because there are trees and some older buildings nearby, and the shopping passages are full of people, with even a few terrace cafes.
I went to the cafeteria because I knew it was cheap and I would feel comfortable there eating alone. It was also good food, with representative Slovene sausage and fish dishes, all served with big portions of fried potatoes. I came back everyday I was there for lunch, and was recognized by the non-English speaking ladies at the steamtables as a regular by my second visit.
After a busy afternoon walking around, I bought a pile of maps of Slovene and Balkan towns that I could never locate back home, and browsed the main bookstores on Slovenska Cesta. For supper, I had pasta, and then settled in with the TV in my hotel.
CNN was there of course, as well as the BBC, and all the various RTL channels with non-stop dubbed American “dramas” a la Baywatch. But of great interest to me, were the two channels for Slovenian television, a Croatian channel, the Bosnian tv station, and a Serb channel, which was captivating for its surreal qualities.
I couldn’t understand what was being discussed on these channels, but I could intuit the gist and angle of each of them by just watching. Slovenia’s TV has high quality graphics and colorfully produced programs. Croatian TV reminded me of Soviet style propaganda, with talking heads droning on and extensive coverage of conferences and meetings. Also there were lots of reports from bombed out towns and villages throughout Croatia. Bosnian TV was basically badly dressed men in badly lit rooms having very long discussions. Understandably, Bosnia had lost most of its technical equipment in the war, and people are badly dressed because they are much, much poorer than before the war. In most every scene though, I realized that nearly everyone looked tired, and overwhelmingly withdrawn. I think it’s an advanced state of shell-shock. Nothing is secure in Bosnia at the moment, the horrors of the previous years could return anytime, and the people there show it.
Serbian television just seemed to be a Las Vegas style extravaganza inspired by gangsters. It was glitzy, full of concerts, game shows, and dramatic series based on events in Serbian history. For me, it was also scary. It was soaked in nationalism, with many images of men dressed in military styles that seemed to exude a threatening machismo.One program I’ll never forget was a blonde bombshell warbling in English,”I shot the sheriff, but I did no shoot no deputy.” This was the official government owned channel in Serbia, and it was the station most Serbs watched. As propaganda, it’s effective, with its mix of entertainment and chauvinistic nationalism. I was glad to be watching at a distance, though.
I wouldn’t say the next two days in Ljubljana were exciting.But I wasn’t bored. How could I be bored in Europe, far away from my everyday routine Boredom to me betrays a lack of imagination, and I was guilty of that far more in New York, since I was so used to my everyday life there...I was relaxed in Ljubljana and extremely stimulated. I thoroughly explored the whole city center, browsed in shops and the city’s market, had nice inexpensive lunches around town, and people watched. To me that’s a great way to spend vacation time, and since the weather was so nice, it was easy to be outdoors.
The nice young lady at the tourist office recommended the Architecture Museum, and although it was a little out of the way, I decided to visit it. So on Friday morning, I took bus 20 to the end of the line, to a part of town called Novo Fuzine. This turned out to be an enormous housing complex built in the eighties. It didn’t look very pleasant, but I’ve seen worse apartment complexes back home. I was curious whether they were state owned still, and whether the Slovenian government was building any other complex like this nowadays.
So, when I got to the museum, I asked the lady who sold me the ticket. Of course, she spoke English, as most Slovenes under 35 or so seem to. She replied, “I think you need to speak to an expert.” I thought she was politely telling me to get lost with my crazy questions, but instead, she ushered me into the office of the director of the museum, and left me with him, saying: “Just ask him.”
So, to my great surprise, I was now in this office with the director of the museum. We introduced ourselves, but I only caught his first name, Peter. He welcomed my questions, and for well over an hour, we discussed architecture and city planning in Slovenia, Slovenia’s history, and the general situation in the former Yugoslavia. He was very polite, patient, and engaged in discussing all these thing with me. In the end, he showed me the small library the museum was setting up, and gave me a stack of materials about various exhibits, and about Plecnik, the most famous architect of Slovenia. Then he asked me if I was familiar with his book about Plecnik. I replied that I wasn’t sure, but I have several books about him back home. He showed me a copy of his book about Plecnik , and it turned out that I had just sat with the world expert on Plecnik: Peter Krecic! I had looked for his book for a long time in New York, and I finally found it in a small second hand bookstore a block from my apartment just a week before I left on my trip. I didn’t tell him I found his $65.00 book for $10.00, because I’m sure his royalty share would be very modest. But I was charmed and flattered to have met him, and to learn so much about his city and country in our chat.
That’s what makes for a memorable vacation, indeed!
The rest of my trip was more of the same--same pleasantness. On Saturday I took a train to Velenje. In college, I saw an article in a Yugoslav magazine about this town. It was a premier example of socialist town planning, up in the mountains of Slovenia, in a coal mining region. So I went to see it. It was a good way to see more of the country, and to ride the Slovenian railways. At Celje, I changed trains to a small old-fashioned traincar, more like a bus on rail, and we went VERY slowly through a dozen little hamlets, and at last arrived in Velenje. Everything was closing by the time I got there in early afternoon, and the next train out left in one hour. So for one hour I looked at this unprepossessing hallmark of socialist towns. It DOES have a lovely ancient castle on a hill overlooking the new town, and the new town is in no way unpleasant. It’s just not overly exciting on a Saturday afternoon. Well, I was excited because I now had a map of the place.
Back down the railway track and out of the high mountains, I went back to Celje. I looked around there for a while, and had lunch. It’s an ancient place, with some ancient ruins from Roman times. Real ones! It also has a ruined castle perched on a hill just outside of town that was delightfully moody. Like something out of a black and white Dracula movie, although I think to the people of Celje it has more historical significance rather than Hollywood b-grade movie meanings.
My last night in Ljubljana, after my trek to Velenje, I treated myself to room service from the National Restaurant, serving Slovene dishes, and located in my hotel. The room service waiter was an older man who referred to me throughout as “Misterrr” I ordered a huge meal, and asked for ice to go with my cola. Instead of a cup of ice, I got a huge ice cream sundae with lots of whipped cream. “Ice” to my waiter from the old country, meant ice cream, and he was spoiling the “Misterrr”with a huge dessert!
I left next morning. When I got back to New York, one of my coworkers said she'd told everyone that I'd gone to "Lubyanka", until someone pointed out that that's the old KGB prison in Moscow!!! Ljubljana means "beloved place" in Slovene. That's a wonderful name for a city, I think.