I arrived in Slovenia’s capital pre-dawn, so decided to escape the -5°C temperatures, in the warmish train station with the rest of Ljubljana’s homeless until the sun got his groove on.
When the sun came out to play – and he did – he revealed a pleasingly attractive city. Along the river, Baroque and Art Nouveau buildings shimmered in the frosty sunlight and Ljubljana castle watched, from its hilltop position over the empty streets of an early Sunday morning. The only sound came from church bells pealing for people to cross over the quaint ‘triple bridge’ and go to the day’s first Mass; all surrounded by the glory of the snow topped Julian Alps. Sounds like the opening to a Disney movie; I half expected a chorus of blue tits to come and bid me good morning through the medium of interpretive ribbon dancing.
There was one downside – Slovenians don’t seem to have jumped on to the idea of eating out for breakfast – unless it is a cocktail pitcher you fancy instead of scrambled eggs. Tempted by a Mojito, but more famished than anything else, I scoured the city centre, crossing back and forth over the Plečnik designed Triple Bridge (Tromostovje) for an open café. Fine, there were plenty open but they were just selling alcohol. Even McDonald’s was just selling their ubiquitous chicken burgers, and as much as I love Ronald’s bistros in an emergency, fried chicken at 9am did not appeal. Any people I asked seemed puzzled by the idea that I would be looking to buy breakfast. Maybe they just don’t eat it at all. I eventually found Cacao, a place that was willing to sell me one of yesterday’s pastries along with a strange concoction of fruits, cereals and peanut butter that was whizzed into the most awful tasting smoothie that I have had the misfortune of forcing down a somewhat resistive throat.
Full of questionable flavours, I set off to find the hostel I had set my sights on. Celica enjoys a bit of a cult status and received unanimously glowing online reports. Converted from an old prison and army barracks, it is situated in an artists’ commune that has some of the most wonderfully strange sculpture I have ever seen. I managed to get a room, sadly however, not in one of the individually decorated former cells.
It’s amazing what a blue sky can do for the soul, and it helped me fall in love with this compact yet bustling city. It doesn’t have gargantuan monuments, famous ruins or a grand avenue filled with Italian designers, but the whole place just exudes beauty and almost dares you not to walk around without a smile on your face. Even the brutish blocks of concrete from the 1950s and 60s come into their own here.
Climbing up to the castle, the view is nothing short of breathtaking. The church domes and spires of the city centre are followed by houses and fields, which continue endlessly until halted by the imposing Alps. I stayed for a long time before coming back down to see if I could find a forgotten Picasso at the riverside flea market. Instead I found the best ever Croque Madame I have ever eaten at the inexpensive Le Petit Café, a popular place here in Ljubljana, followed by my best ever hot chocolate (and that is a hard category to win), in Zvezda, not the cheapest café in the city, but a must for the cakes. I returned to both places the next day, just to confirm things of course.
In the evening I went to see Igor Stravinsky and Coco Chanel, a film that I had never heard of, but was a great discovery, at Kinodvor. It was here that I met a temporary end to my love for this city.
The cinema itself is wonderful – modelled on an opera house complete with balcony and Royal Box and the film was great – I managed to follow despite it being in French and Russian with Slovenian subtitles. However, the cinema has the policy of assigned seats. Whilst this is not necessarily bad in itself, everyone always ends up huddled together in the middle section and you are guaranteed to end up next to a relentless talker. Yes, the bane of the cinemagoer – the film commentator. Somehow, they are even worse than the heckling teenagers, crying babies and popcorn hurlers combined, because they know exactly what they are doing, shamelessly exerting assumed superiority over everyone else in the room. I contemplated jumping overboard and sitting somewhere else, but I have – from previous experience – found that this is often not met very kindly by the rest of the room and I didn’t want to start a diplomatic row.
What followed instead was the best sequence of Britishness I have ever employed. I did a bit of quiet tutting, followed by some subtle seat shifting, cleared my throat and finally caught the culprit’s eye, fumbling some international sign language indicating that I had a recently sharpened axe in my bag that would be suitable if I felt the need to recreate all three instalments of Scream. It worked. Kind of. She did shut up. Mostly. Except when she didn’t; but I still felt a small victory. Even when, as we were leaving, she whacked me in the face with her baby rabbit fur shoulder wrap as I made my way to catch my train to Italy.
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