Ljubljana

This morning we got on the car and started our road trip, destination Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Good company, good weather, good roads and a nice scenery of rolling hills and very European-looking little villages made the 3 1/2 hours drive a pleasure. When we crossed the border into Slovenia the scenery did not change much, but it was obvious we were in a different world: I could not easily figure out the meaning of words, and consonants started getting accents, something no Portuguese or English speaker would dare do. It actually sent a chill down my spine when I realized we were in what I think of as Tintin land, the land of The Calculus Affair, the land where people could say "Amai Pleskigladz!"

Lower Austria countryside

By early afternoon we found ourselves dropping of our luggage at the City Hotel and heading out to explore the old city, starting with our first stop, The Naked Lady statue. Ok, technically it was not a statue of a naked lady, but of France Prešeren,  poet and Slovenia's national treasure, author of its national anthem. The naked lady in question is the muse that is the top part of the statue and which, according to my travel guide, caused enough of a scandal that the statue was occasionally covered and the poor woman who posed for the muse was forced to emigrate to South America, never to come back. Of course I had to go see it! We found the square exactly where we were told it would be, right by the three bridges at the center of town. The square was actually a circle, but the statue was there, the naked lady was, as promised, topless, and I was a happy puppy. In case you are curious, a statue of a naked lady on top of a national poet looks like this:

And a circular square looks like this:

After that Erich, Ingrid and I wandered around the inner city for a while, enjoying the atmosphere of the pedestrian-only streets, slowly making our way towards the castle. It was an interesting time-travel experience for me. We started from the Prešeren Square (aka Naked Lady Circle) with its distinctive Art Deco look, crossed the river at the Cobbler's bridge and were soon immersed in the medieval part of town, so picturesque that sometimes it felt like it was a movie set. It was interesting to me how evocative that walk was. Congress square felt like Petropolis, the castle area felt like Heidelberg and our hotel area felt like Budapest. Apparently you can visit three different cities at once by going to Ljubljana!

Talking about cities, the medieval one seemed to have a fascination with hanging shoes. Everywhere there were wires crossing the street, there were shoes hanging from them: tennis shoes, boots, dress shoes, even flippers! We asked the receptionist at the hotel what the story behind the hanging shoes was, and instead of telling us a lie, instead of telling us how the shoes were to honor a soldier that lost his shoes (with his feet still inside them) during the Franco-Prussian war, he told us the truth: no idea, just something that the university students did occasionally. But when you got a medieval part of a town, and look at shoes hanging from wires, you see something like this:

One interesting thing was all the references to Brazil I found. On Congress square we had the Brazilian embassy; at the bar we stopped for drinks they had caipirinhas; we passed a tv showing a soccer game with the Brazilian national team; we saw a TV ad with a famous Brazilian soccer player in it. Made me feel more at home...

We did stop at the cathedral, dedicated to St. Nicholas. It was a Baroque extravaganza, and reminded me somewhat of the churches back in Rio, upped one notch: bigger, much more gilding and three, I counted, three organs! I did take the time there to light two candles, one for my father and one for Sharon, whom I wish had been here with me enjoying the sights.

With such a huge castle towering over the city, of course we had to go and visit it, at least for the view. It was a steep hill, and it probably would have taken us a very tiring hour to meander our way to the top, but luckily the Industrial Revolution happened in the meantime, motors have been invented and there was a funicular we could take to the top. By the way, this is what a castle towering over a town looks like:

I am sad to report that I am not familiar enough with Slovenian history to grasp the importance of the castle, but I still enjoyed the experience and learned a few things. First, you only need to climb around 100 steps or so to get a very nice view of the city. Second, it is very, very windy on top. Third, you should always carry an extra battery with you because your camera will go dead after you climbed to the top, not before. Fourth, forgetting your battery charger in your bedroom in Vienna is not a smart move. Finally, a smart phone with a camera is a very nice thing to have. The view was very nice, though, and I did attempt to use the phone's panorama picture feature. The result was this:

Panorama of Ljubljana from castle tower

Eventually it was time to come back down. We could have walked down, but chose to take the funicular again, if only for symmetry. We walked along the river bank and crossed the river back to the Art Deco side at the Dragon Bridge. It's actually a very apt name for a bridge, as it is guarded by four dragons, one on each corner. If you want to know what a bridge-guarding dragon looks like, they look like this:

Jet lag caught up with me at that point (notice how it's always jet lag, never being tired and/or out of shape) and we went back to the hotel to rest until dinner time, which we had at a restaurant along the river bank. Trying to be more adventurous, and following my travel guide's advice which suggested Mediterranean dishes as the food of choice, I had a seafood extravaganza that turned out to be an interesting experiment in deconstruction: opening shells, removing fish scales, cracking up shrimps; a messy, but very tasty experience.

And thus ended our first day of travelling. Off to bed and to a new adventure tomorrow.