Ljubljana, Slovenia

In spring of 2012, I took a tour to Slovenia, Croatia & Bosnia. Wence, the tour director Mom and I had back when we were on the Central Europe tour in 2008 (which ended up being her last tour) was from Croatia and talked about his country with great fondness. So, once we got home, I started researching what there was to see in Croatia. My usual tour company (Globus/Cosmos) had this trip to Slovenia, Croatia & Bosnia. It looked perfect to me, so I booked it.

One of the things that appealed to me was that, although all three countries had once been part of Yugoslavia, they were very different. Bosnia was Muslim and highly Turkish in style. Croatia was much more Mediterranean as a very large percentage of the country bordered the Adriatic. Their influences were Venetian. Slovenia, on the other hand, was mostly mountainous, with an Alpine feel – more like Austria.

The tour was to begin in Slovenia, so I needed to learn how to pronounce the city into which I would be flying (since they always ask where you are going when you check in at the airport). I found that Ljubljana was pronounced along the lines of LOO-blee-aw-nah. I was quite pleased with myself when Ljubljana, Slovenia slid easily off of my tongue. Not that it made any difference. The person on the other side of the counter responded, “huh?” So I still needed to show them my boarding pass so they could read the destination from that. Oh well.

My first flight was from Minneapolis to Paris. I then had several hours in Paris before my flight to Ljubljana. The Charles de Gaulle Airport has numerous terminals with buses that travel between them. So a couple of hours between flights can be very helpful to allow for going through the European Union passport entry and getting to whatever terminal is needed for the next flight. I think this time though I had about four hours between flights.

There was a couple from Woodbury (a Twin Cities suburb) who sat next to me on my flight to Paris. We had stayed together through the entry process and on the bus to the next terminal, so we had lunch together before going off to our separate gates to catch our next flights. After lunch, I still had over an hour, so I read a book until boarding the plane.

On the plane, I sat next to a very nice woman from Peru. Although her destination was the same as mine, she was not going on the tour. At the airport, I met two couples from Australia who were on my tour. We were all picked up by our tour company and taken to our hotel. Mindful of the time difference, I gave Mom a call and repacked for the tour itself. I met the tour director and the rest of the group for drinks at 7pm and dinner at 7:30pm.

Slovenia has had people living there since prehistoric times. They have bounced around a lot between various ruling entities. After the Romans and some Germanic tribes (such as Huns and Lombards) the Slavics appeared in the 6^th century and Charlemagne conquered them in the 9^th century. It changed hands many more times with the Slovenes (some descendants of the early Slavics) eventually emerged as the main group. They joined with the Serbs and Croats to form Yugoslavia in 1918. This was short-lived and the Slovenian portion was annexed into Austria. During World War II, they bounced back and forth between Germany and Italy and ended up as a Nazi puppet state. After the war, Yugoslavia was re-established and became socialist under the Soviet Union.

The following morning, we headed out of the city to the Postojna Caves. These are natural caves, carved out by a river. When the caves were “discovered “ in the 17^th century, there was graffiti found dating to 1213. We took a small train two kilometers (1.24 miles) into the caves and then walked another kilometer (0.62 miles) in. Here and there we had some pretty decent light to get a good photo. But there were a lot of people in there, so getting a good photo without other people’s heads and such was a adventure for a vertically challenged person like myself. I have to say it was quite the cave – very expansive. On the way out, I was on the correct side of the little train to get a photo of the river and some waterfalls inside of the cave.

In the city itself (which became the capitol after World War II), the main square was called Congress Square. It was built on the ruins of a Capuchin monastery and is used mainly for ceremonial purposes. Ljubljana Castle overlooks the city. The promontory it sits upon has evidence of being settled as far back as 1200BC. In fact, the marshes upon which the main part of the town sits have signs of settlement as far back as 2000BC. The oldest wooden wheel in the world was discovered there.

The castle was built originally in the 11^th century and has been rebuilt and refurbished several times since. Ljubljana University (originally founded in 1810, dissolved and then re-founded in 1918) is centered around Congress Square.

The city straddles the Ljubljanica River with the older part of the city (mainly 15^th century) on one side of the river and the newer part (mostly 17^th & 18^th century) on the other side. The Town Hall is on the older side. It was built in 1484 with a major renovation in 1717 to 1719. Just outside of the Town Hall is a lovely fountain call the Robba Fountain, which was built in 1751. We took some time to explore inside of the Town Hall, which is now a museum.

One of the coolest bridges over the river is the Dragon Bridge, which was built in 1819, but needed a major renovation after a severe earthquake in 1895. The dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana. It is based on a legend that says that Jason & the Argonauts founded the city after slaying a dragon there.

In Preseren Square, which was laid out in the 17^th century, sits a lovely Franciscan church, which was built in the 17^th century and then had a Baroque façade added in the 18^th century. The square was originally named for the church, but was later renamed for 19^th century Slovenian poet laureate, France Preseren. A statue of him sits in the square, which acts as a gateway to the medieval part of town.

Next time – we venture into Croatia.