Ljubljana, Slovenia

 

When we got off the ferry at 7a.m. today, we realized that nothing is really open, the Croats make much better early-risers than the Germans though.  Usually, when we get up before 9 in Heidelberg, it is just us and the tourists out on the streets.  We looked through our Lonely Planet guidebook about Rijeka and it basically told us to avoid it or pass through as quickly as possible.  We did do just that, but one o’clock was the soonest we could catch a train to Ljubljana, so that meant 5 hours to kill with only one shopping street even worth stopping at.  To be fair, it was heavily decorated in streamers for Carnival because the city apparently holds one of the biggest celebrations in the world.  We sat in a coffee shop for a while but when I got the vibe from the waiters that they were sick of our loitering, we were back on the street with our 50-pound backpacks strapped on.  We walked through a few stores and a couple of small malls where we weren’t helped by anyone and they just looked at us annoyed.  I think they might have been able to tell that we were tourists.  We had looked up our train information on the Deutsche Bahn website and it said it was a direct trip that takes about 2 and a half hours but when we went to make our reservations, they told us it was actually a bus to the Croatian/Slovenian border and from there we would get on a train and go the rest of the way.  When the bus pulled off the side of the road and started going down a single lane “road” alongside train tracks we realized we must be there.  There was a gate surounding everything and only one entrance guarded by two Slovenian police officers who checked passports before allowing us to board the train that was waiting there for us.  It was a little bit unusual and you really have to put your trust in the people in authority to believe that they aren’t taking you to some remote location to shoot you or something, but like always it worked out just fine. 

 

In Ljubljana, we are staying in prison!  The building was used as a prison by the Austro-Hungarian military and has recently been artistically converted into a hostel.  There are 20 different cells which were each decorated by a different artist.  Ours is not really so artsy but it surprisingly doesn’t feel like we are staying behind bars, despite the actual physical presence of bars for a door (there is also a solid door behind it so people can’t watch you sleep and change).

 

Deep Fried Bull Testicles

Austin and I didn’t really go about seeing any of the sites tonight after we got here because we were kind-of hungry.  We asked the receptionist where we could get some “traditional Slovene food.”  This was our first mistake.  Don’t get tradtional food of another country if you don’t have any idea what they traditionally eat!  The restaurant we went to had other foods also but for the sake of a new experience, we both stuck to the Slovene portion of the menu.  Austin was even more daring than me and got the deep fried bull testicle with mashed potatoes and a very mediocre house beer while I had the “Country Feast” which was described as sausage, another type of sausage (turned out to be blood sausage), pork, cabbage, turnips, and a dumpling.  I got those things but I also got two other types of mystery meat, one of

"Country Feast"

which very well might have been brain.  None of which was very good.  In fact the only thing that I could choke down was the normal sausage and the blood sausage literally had me fighting back the urge to vomit.  You wouldn’t have expected it but Austin’s bull testicles were actually better than what I ordered.  After all that you would think that we had learned our lesson and steered clear of the Slovenian food, but we didn’t.  We figured they couldn’t mess up desert but I think they may have put the brain meat from my dinner back into my desert along with squid and sardines all covered up with powdered sugar, as if that would trick anyone.  Austin got the “Cottage Cheese Rolls” served with some type of licqory sauce.  We were both envisioning a roll like a bread roll with a sweet sauce on top (more like the Germknödel we had in Germany) but they used the word roll more in the sushi sense.  There was no fish involved but it was some sort of gummy dough with cottage cheese rolled in the middle.  Not particularly sweet, and not particularly good.  At least we tried it, that way we never have to again!  Austin told me that it’s another thing I can add to my “manumé” at least.

How we felt after our dinner!

After dinner, we just walked along the pedestrian areas doing some window shopping and searching for some good chocolate to get the taste out of our mouths then heading back to the hostel.