24.03.2008: transit therapy

Part 5: going peripheral

I want you to do something for me: go grab a map of the world and find Kazakhstan. It's the big country underneath the central part of Russia, shaped a bit like a fish with its head nuzzling the northern tip of the Himalayas and its tail splashing in the Caspian Sea. Now, trace a few routes away from it to other parts of the world, and tell me what you notice. Yes, exactly: it's right in the frikkin' middle! Starting from inside the fish, you can strike out into China, eastern Asia, Russia, the Indian sub-continent, eastern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, and in each case your path radiates away from a central point.

Being at the centre is interesting; you sense occasional echoes of the times when the Silk Road ran through here, bringing exotic influences from all corners. However, if you've ever been in an earthquake, on a passenger aircraft or in a protracted family dispute, you know that sometimes the centre is exactly where you don't want to be. Sometimes what you really need is to be as close as possible to the Absolute Periphery - out of sight, out of everyone else's way and, if possible, near an exit.

That was the feeling that gripped me five or six weeks ago, when I found myself evacuating Budapest to explore the forests, lakes, caves, alpine villages etc. etc. of Slovenia. However, before going entirely peripheral I wanted to acquaint myself with its modest little capital, the 'Beloved City' of Ljubljana.

1: CAPITAL "L"

At first glance, there isn't an awful lot about Ljubljana that couldn't be found in dozens of other small cities around Europe. Which, to be honest, suits me fine. I love the small Euro-city vibe; you get the cute architecture, the café culture, the cobble stones, relaxed ambience and so forth, but without the "We are the boiler room of civilisation - come to us on your buses, tiny tourists, and witness our inestimable historical importance" attitude that infects the bigger cities on da Continent. Ljubljana doesn't advertise itself too much; it just gets on with its usual low-key thing - attractive, green, studenty and (therefore) quite Bohemian.

The Boho aspect of the city was a real breath of fresh air for me, since I've found very little in Almaty that resembles an 'alternative scene'. You do spot a few piercings and the occasional metalhead, but that's about it. (To be fair, there is one quite impressive kind of Kazakh 'body art' which I'd never seen before I came here - namely, tiny diamonds inserted into women's teeth. One of my students, who bears the rather splendid name of Tsarina, got a tooth-diamond from her mum as an 18th birthday present. It might sound off-putting, but actually it's very stylish.) By contrast, Ljubljana is awash with purple and green hair dye, baggy pirate shirts, Doc Martins, dreadlocks, body art, long-haired men, short-haired women, those funny hats that look like tea cosies, teens in goth/metal make-up and a variety of off-beat fashions. It was so nice to be back among the freaks!

The Boho folk even have their own street: a zig-zagging lane near the Ljubljanitsa River called Trubarjeva Cesta, where you can visit head shops, jazz shops, funky little cafés and even ... wait for it ... a falafel restaurant! I was lucky enough to stumble onto Trubarjeva on my first night in Ljubljana, and believe me, my taste buds have rarely been more grateful. You can't get falafel anywhere in my adopted home town :-(

(Brief aside: a few months ago I was in the food court of Almaty's Mega shopping mall - or 'The Glittering Turd', as I like to call it - and I noticed a shop actually called 'Falafel'. Eyes lighting up, I went up to the counter and ordered their namesake dish, but was met with blank stares all 'round. The staff didn't seem to understand that what I was asking for was in fact a real food that exists on Earth. And yet there they all were, standing directly berneath a gleaming sign that said "Falafel" in cyrillic letters, suitably stylised to look Arabic. Appalling.)

Anyway, I hung out for a couple of days in The Beloved City, doing a little bit of the tourist thing but mostly just absorbing the general vibe. The centre of town, which follows the curve of the river, is virtually deserted at night but comes to life during the day, as outdoor café tables and market stalls sprout everywhere beside the calm green waters of the Ljubjanitsa. It's definitely one of those "Mmmm, Europey ..." type places. And the whole thing takes place under the quiet auspices of the Julian Alps, which sprawl across the far horizon inviting you to join them when you're done exploring the capital.

Of course, what you often don't get in these smaller cities is anything resembling decent nightlife. Ljubljana definitely has its limitations in this regard, but they're compensated for by a surprisingly healthy 'underground'. On my second night in the capital there was a triple-billed Black Metal gig in town, with international bands. On the same night I was taken by some locals to a newly-opened warehouse club called Planet Rogue (definite goth/industrial hangout) and then on to the Metelkova artists' squat, which is notorious enough that I'd already read about it before coming to Slovenia.

Local authorities have been trying to close down this freaks' haunt for years, but somehow it keeps rolling on. The night (and morning) when I was there was seemingly typical; in the main rooms, DJs played hardcore electronica for a crowd of hippies, goths, ravers and assorted folk, while darkened outer hallways hosted small gatherings of Ljubljana's alternative crowd - talking, canoodling and, I suspect, imbibing things they could be arrested for. Surrounded by a vacant lot where people stepped over trenches and sat on uprooted cement blocks to chat and smoke, the whole place felt a little on the structurally unsound side.

I spent several hours at Metelkova observing the intriguingly diverse crowd. At the bar I was served Red Bull by a Jamaican-looking woman with an enormous profusion of curls, who later came and chatted with the New Romantic girlie standing next to me in a long grey riding coat and white high-collared shirt, looking like she'd fallen out of an Ultravox film clip. Then their friends turned up in tie-dyed smocks and ripped cardies, and they transferred themselves onto the dancefloor. Meanwhile, my new best friend - a guy whose house I'd been taken to earlier to chill out between venues and listen to him talk about the imminent collapse of the entire world's monetary system - bounced up and down while telling me that I really should read The Celestine Prophecy to find out why the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012. To illustrate his sincerity (and because I was the only Australian-born resident of Kazakhstan he'd ever met, and hence a bit of a novelty), he gave me a little keepsake. It was a tiny brass boot of the kind you often see on charm bracelets. He told me I mustn't ever lose it, or the consequences would be dire. So far I haven't.

2: SWEET DREAMS, MR. FOX ...

The first semester of uni began a few weeks back, so among other things I've resumed my German studies. A few days ago I was looking at some German idioms online, and found this one: "Dort, wo sich die Füchse gute Nacht sagen" ("Out there, where the foxes say good night"). In English we'd simply say "in the middle of nowhere", which I think is a pretty cool phrase - but the German one is far more poetic, don't you think?

Anyway, the first time I ventured outside Ljubljana, to say that I went to where the foxes say good night would be a slight exaggeration - but only slight. My first destination was Lake Bled, which is quite famous in its way. Anyone who's familiar with Slovenia knows about Bled, and it's even been called "the most beautiful spot in Europe" by one or two enthusiastic travel writers and bloggers. Still, as I got off the coach and dragged my Big Red Bag up the hill to the hostel, it definitely felt like I'd taken another sizeable step away from the hustle and bustle and towards the Absolute Periphery of things. It helped that the road to the hostel was lined with sleepy-looking cottages, their yards strewn with stuff you could probably use on a farm, each one containing a tied-up watchdog assiduously guarding its owner's chickens. (Live fowl always seem to add that sense of "Ooh, we're really in the sticks now!", don't they?)

It was actually a postcard image of Lake Bled, on the edge of the Julian Alps in far north-western Slovenia, that first piqued my interest in this country. I remember looking at it, thinking "Whoa, where the Hell is that?", reading the caption on the back and immediately deciding that I would, at all costs, go there. Then I researched a bit and realised that Bled was just the tip of the glacier. Before long, my LP guide to Central Europe was dog-eared on almost every page of the Slovenia section. Still, whenever anyone has asked me "Which country would you most like to visit?" and I've said "Slovenia", Lake Bled has been the first image that's popped into my brain. So now that I was finally here, I had to get to the lake as soon as possible (even though it was almost dusk and the temperature was dropping). I checked in to my top-floor room in the Alpine lodge that served as a hostel, spent a couple of minutes admiring the exposed beams and the mountain view from my window, and then set off.

The lake isn't huge by any means, and I was told that a walking circuit would take about an hour if I didn't stop. But this turned to be an entirely useless piece of information, because when you walk around Lake Bled, you do stop. It's one of those places where you're compelled to find a seat or a grassy spot and take it all in for a bit, then walk some more, sit some more etc. etc. In the centre of the lake is a tiny island with several elegant old church buildings on it, and on one shore a bare cliff-face towers for several hundred metres, topped by a medieval fortress. Behind that ... alps a-plenty. At every point around the lake, these three features change their orientation to one another, and at dusk the whole scene is reflected in what I'm tempted to call the mirror-black waters. It's quite literally breathtaking. (And btw, one of my pet peeves is people who use the word "literally" when what they're describing isn't remotely literal. In other words, I mean it.) I found it necessary to mentally pinch myself a few times as I strolled along muttering "surely not!", a little less than certain that I was actually here after all this time.

The other thing Lake Bled compels you to do is take loads and loads and loads of photos. Because of the way the island, castle and mountains keep re-aligning themselves, you frequently find new perspectives which make you think "Hmm, maybe this is the best angle". So you drag out the camera for the squillionth time and fill up your memory card with multiple shots of the same thing, all the time thinking about photo sets of other people's holidays you've seen in the past ("Here's the main building of the monastery; and here's the main building from further along the road; and here's a slightly better shot of the main building - in this one you can see some grass ...".) But you can't stop, especially as night closes in, the sky begins to bruise (thanks Uncle Monty), the late rays of sunset add a mauve tint to the snow-covered peaks, floodlights bathe the cliff-top castle in an otherworldy green glow, and the street lamps of the town fill the lake with tiny points of light. It's all a bit bloody spectacular.

The only drawback to all of this is that, undeniably, Lake Bled is a place custom-designed for short holidays of the 'romantic getaway' kind. As I ambled around its shorelines (both in the cooling twilight and again the following morning, to see it in the daytime) most of the other humans I came across were hand-fast couples, gazing dreamily at each other &/or the scenery and looking thoroughly invincible in their happiness. And I have to admit that, being the bitter old loner that I am, I did send a few uncharitable thoughts their way.

(Bastards!)

Meanwhile, although the village itself is quite a pretty place, it isn't what you'd call action-packed. So after fulfilling my little 'see the lake that makes other lakes envious' ambition, I headed further into the Alpine hinterland - another step closer to where I might get lucky and hear some of the local vulpine* population exchanging their night-time pleasantries.

Working out how to get onesself around rural Slovenia turned out to be quite a challenge (though nowhere near as problematic as trying to do the same in former Soviet countries), and I ended up spending a good deal less time taking in mountaintop panoramas than I'd hoped for. That was ok, though, because the route from Bled to the Julian peaks took me through some wonderfully wild terrain. Out here in the Slovenian never-never, I knew I was entirely 'lost to the world'. A brief stop in a village called Bohinjska Bela really brought it all home. As I stood there admiring the modest cottages and outhouses, nestled at the bottom of rugged cliffs with Alps towering in the distance, I just knew that I was standing in a spot where no-one I know had ever stood before, and where it would take a mammoth effort to find me if I decided not to be found. This was what I'd fled Almaty for: at last I'd managed to disappear, completely off the the radar and a world away from what I usually (albeit loosely) refer to as "my life".

Koroche: I'd come all this way, and now I was finally experiencing Transit Therapy in pure, undiluted form. About time!

3: ROCK AIN'T DEAD

After the Julian Alps, the next imaginary bullet point on my itinerary was the township of Postojna. Near the town, I'd been told, were two quite unique attractions. The first was a limestone cave you could enter by train (and Slovenia's karst caves - the largest and most lavishly decorated in Europe - were one of the things that had drawn me to this country). The second was Predjamski Grad, a castle built into a sheer cliff-face, and apparently quite a sight to see.

Here's the thing, though, about the preposition "near": it really isn't the most precise word ever coined. Example: I live "near" a supermarket (meaning that it's five minutes' walk from my house). At the same time, about a week ago I met a guy from Urumqi in far-western China, which (as you'll see if you refer back to your world map) could reasonably be described as being "near" Almaty. But no way would I want to actually walk there! And such was the case in Postojna. The caves were more or less walking distance, but the castle (located just beyond the village of Predjama) definitely wasn't. And the local tourist office's advice? "If you have a few hours you could hike there; otherwise, maybe you can hitch."

"So there's no public transport?"

"No."

At this point I'd like to pause and thank the people of Almaty for helping me lose my ridiculous fear of hitch-hiking, deeply ingrained in my psyche while I was growing up in Paranoid Delusional Land (a.k.a. Australia). Since I took up residence in The Big K, I've travelled in more cars owned by other people than I had during the rest of my life up to that point. And yet, never once has my driver strangled me, tied me inside a garbage bag sealed with packing tape, thrown me into the boot and dumped my body in a National Park. Not even a little bit. I mean, of course you have to be careful and selective, and I am - not to mention ideologically picky. (I never accept a ride from anyone in an SUV; the fuckers aren't getting a single Tenge from me to help run their planet-choking deathtraps!) But if anyone tries to tell you that hitching is unsafe, my advice is to inform them that there are plenty of countries where it's a standard means of transport, and the murder rates in those countries are unaffected by this fact. You could then suggest the following: maybe the problem is that the people in their country are either a bunch of serial-killing psychos, or (far more likely) just socially conditioned to fill their minds with imaginary sources of fear and suspicion.

Or maybe not. Depends how adversarial you're feeling that day :-)

Anyway, I hitched about 3/4 of the way to the castle and walked the rest, which was a fair step through the obscure Slovenian back-blocks. Once again I had that great 'disappearing' feeling, but this time it was accompanied by slight nerves for some reason. I think it was a combination of the unsettled weather, the barking dogs, and the nearby eagles who were screeching "Don't you even think about coming any closer to our nest, Sonny Boy!". Not sure.

Predjama village was set in wild, steeply undulating territory, and so eerily quiet as to seem almost deserted. The vibe faintly resembled ten-year-old news reports about Bosnia or Kosovo, but you could also feel echoes of far longer time-spans. Some of the cottages looked truly ancient. I felt quite privileged to be here, in a way, but at the same time I really wanted to hurry on.

And then, rounding a corner, I got my first glimpse of one of the most striking castles I've ever seen. Cut-and-pasted into a cave mouth half-way up a vertical wall of rock, with an icy natural stream gushing out from directly beneath it, the Predjamski Grad almost looked as though it might have grown from an errant spore. I imagined the tiny seed drifting away from its mother castle, floating blindly towards the cliff, being snagged on the rock face, taking root like an epiphyte* and slowly growing into an adult-sized fortress. It was quite a convincing theory as to how such an impressive structure could've found its way to such an unlikely spot.

Inside the castle, I was asked for some money and handed a little guide booklet, the whole transaction proceeding in a very detached and 'Soviet' manner. At first glance it didn't look like much: a couple of sandstone rooms with workmen milling about, doing restoration work of one sort or another. But as I ventured further into the innards of the building, I was increasingly blown away. The folk who built this place had been remarkably clever: rooms were simple, but ingenious in the way they used existing rock formations as part of their architectural framework. At times you couldn't easily tell where Nature gave way to construction, or even at what point 'inside' became 'outside'. It was one of those places where you walk around feeling a tiny bit awe-struck, and thinking "Why the Hell is this not more famous?"

After marvelling at this for a while and ingesting every word of the information pamphlet, I realised that I'd have to take off soon if I wanted to make it back to the caves in time for the one-and-only afternoon tour. So again, I trekked through Predjama village - this time uphill - hoping to hitch a ride somewhere along the way. Then, without warning ... a bus! Evidently the tourist office actually had no clue at all about the real transport situation, 'cause there it was, undeniably heading back in the direction I wanted to go, and averting my rather urgent need to find a lift on a deserted back-road with almost no cars on it. (I took this up with Tourist Info when I got back to town, and they just said "Yes, but that's a school bus". "Okay", I thought. "If it's a school bus, then I can understand why you wouldn't have mentioned it, even though the only passengers were adults and it took me exactly where I was going at exactly the right time". NOT!)

Anyway, at this point I'd already seen one remarkable sight that day, and I wouldn't have been overly concerned if the Postojnska Jama (caves of Postojna) had been on the average side of average. An hour later, though, I was taking a five-minute subterranean train journey through chamber after chamber filled with some of the most intricately decorated limestone I'd ever seen, thinking "Wait a second, stop the train! Surely you're going past all the good bits!" But I was wrong. We were going to the good bits.

The Postojnska Jama were huge and ornate and just beyond belief. As the train ground to a halt, I found myself in a cavern that resembled the Grand Hall of a large railway station - except that it was completely natural (apart from the tracks of course). The roof was absolutely teeming with stalactites, the walls decorated with translucent shawls. This in turn led to an even larger chamber - not quite as decorative but still extremely impressive - where you could see signs pointing you to a tour guide who spoke your language.

Most of you know how much I love limestone caves, so I think you'll believe me when I say that, as I wandered toward the "English" sign, my mouth was hanging open, my legs were shaking slightly and I was swearing under my breath. This place was un-frikkin'-believable, and I was completely in awe. It was larger, grander and more beautiful than any cave I'd previously visited, or even imagined visiting.

So we toured the Postojnska Jama, I took loads of photos (knowing that only a small % would turn out), went "wow" a lot, and got into quite an interesting discussion with the tour guide about earthquakes. (I seem to have developed a talent for choosing earthquake-prone locations lately - as partly evidenced by the fact I live in one.) Finally, after passing my seventeen-millionth stalactite for the day, we saw the other thing I'd trekked here for: the Proteus Anguinus or 'human fish'.

These odd little guys had also been on my extensive "things that must be seen whilst in Slovenia" list. More salamanders than fish really, their 'folk name' comes from the fact that they have a remarkable feature on the ends of their forelegs: tiny hands that look eerily human. The weirdness doesn't end there, though. Because they live in complete darkness, Proteus are blind and their eyes are regressed, yet for some reason they've evolved photosensitivity - not just in their eyes but in their skin as well. Bring them out into the sun, and they tan. Not sure why, but the idea of a salamander getting a suntan just tickles me.

The Proteus' other senses, meanwhile, are amazingly well-developed. They have a Jacobson's Organ (the contraption in snakes' heads that allows them to 'taste' the air), and they get a really detailed world picture by detecting stuff we can't - chemical variations in organic compounds, vibrations beneath the Earth's surface and so on. Also, they're the only known animal whose gills never regress as they grow up, meaning that you can basically see their lungs hanging off their bodies like little fins. And lastly - as pointed out by my delightful Kazakh colleague Assel while I was showing her my holiday snaps - when Proteus nuzzle up together, they make a cute little heart shape :-)

Given their multi-faceted strangeness, it probably won't surprise you to learn that Proteus have no cousins. They're in a genera all of their own. And they only live in the Mediterranean Karst caves - i.e. Slovenia, a little bit of Croatia and the area around Trieste in Italy (though you can see an artist's impression of them on a public fountain in Venice). In other words, they're freaks. But as I mentioned before, being in the company of freaks is something I tend to treasure, especially when I haven't seen any for a while.

Anyway, the speleobiologists at Postojna catch a couple of these guys every month, throw them into a marble tank and let visitors wander past each day and gawk at them. Then, at the end of their month-long shift, the little Proteus are returned to the comforting darkness of their underground river and two others are caught. Were it not for this project, there'd be pretty much no chance of the average human ever laying eyes on one. So meeting them was ... well, it was just very cool.

4: A MULTIPLICITY OF DENOUEMENTS

The last part of my Slovenia Plan entailed a brief visit to the city of Maribor, which is a reputedly elegant red-roofed marvel. (It looks a tiny bit like Dubrovnik in photos I've seen.) Unfortunately, said plan was trampled on by the weirdness of train schedules. I thought I had an extra day-and-a-half up my sleeve, but when I returned from Postojna to Ljubljana and looked at the timetables, I had the following unpleasant realisation: "Oh no, I have to leave tonight!". The rest of my stay in The Beloved City therefore consisted of trying to find things to do until 2am (when my train left) on a weeknight. Not the most climactic end to my holiday, but I wasn't too bothered. The last week had been more or less a dream come true, and I certainly had no reason to complain.

And so it was back to Budapest briefly to meet up with Scott, then another flight through Moscow (and another surreal Sheremetyevo ordeal), before landing in KZ on a frosty February morning to resume my everyday existence. Within ten minutes of returning we found ourselves caught up in the 'Almaty experience' once again. It began when a taxi driver tried to scam us out of 6,000 Tenge (US$50) and we had to exit his cab on a highway, amid much heated discussion (mostly between the driver and Scott - I was feeling strangely philosophical about it all). Then another guy picked us up, shoved our bags into his 98% unroadworthy van and thoroughly charmed us on the way home with his amiable chatter, all for a very reasonable price. It was both sides of the KZ coin encapsulated in one half-hour journey, and a more fitting 'welcome back' could scarcely have been arranged.

So ... was it good to be 'home'? Actually I wasn't sure, but there were certainly moments when it felt that way. Looking out the window of the friendly guy's van and seeing the snowy peaks of the Zailiysky Alatau towering over the city's outskirts provided a few tingles, and there were definitely people I was looking forward to seeing after my time away. In any case, I did feel strongly that the therapy had worked. I had a perspective on things that I'd been lacking before, and it seemed to be helping.

And then four weeks passed. I got back into the routine of things, was re-acquainted with the office politics and the bad food, the school was raided by police (again), I got into my studies ... basically life resumed. There have been times when looking back on the whole Transit Therapy adventure has appeared to offer some real insight, and other times when it's seemed like just another convoluted circuit to get me back to exactly where I was before. Either way, though, it did allow me to cross one more travel ambition off my ridiculously long list ... and that can't be a bad thing :-)

To conclude: as I said in the email, I hope you've enjoyed my little 'mini-series' of rants. It seems to have borne some strange fruit. For example, a close friend from Sydney has written a song about my moment of crazed exhiliration in the Lada. (Thanks Benji - very gratifying!) Meanwhile, another good friend has tried out that particular form of therapy (i.e. the former Soviet republic urban death-ride) for himself in Uzbekistan, with reportedly good results. So ... if you haven't done so yet, be sure to put it on your list of things to do before you die. I promise I'll be there with you in spirit ;-)

Bye!

(*Sorry for the $10 words, btw. I'm not showing off, honest! I just love the word "vulpine", and it isn't one that you get to use every day. Same with "epiphyte" - which, btw, is the generic name for any plant that grows above ground, attaching itself to a host as a parasite would, but deriving its sustenance non-parasitically from moisture &/or nutrients in the surrounding atmosphere. There: aren't you glad you know that? Who needs 'Word of The Week' websites when you've got me, eh?)