My train to Ljubljana was not crowded and I shared my six-person compartment with an elderly couple returning home from visiting a relative. Soon we were on our way and into the countryside. It had been hot weather my entire trip so far and even in the middle of the night I was never cold in shorts and a t-shirt. But now a chill was descending which provoked mists from the wooded country the train traversed. I fished out my jacket and zipped it up and folded my arms against the cool damp.
The train trip was lovely and so was Ljubljana. It is a small town of cobblestone streets and baroque buildings with pastel facades and much sculpture and ornament at the accents. A river cuts through the town and the tall, narrow houses flush against the water foreshadowed Amsterdam.
I checked in at my hostel and walked into my dorm room to find a girl changing clothes. I turned around and waited outside the room while she finished. She was from England and had just met a group of English guys staying in another room. They were going out for dinner and would I like to come?
I had planned on walking around Ljubljana by myself and taking some pictures but I said yes. Dinner was fine and afterwards we were off to a bar with strange, macabre decor. It was basically the cryptkeeper's pad, full of skulls and bones and skeletons climbing at you out of coffins. Here we joined up with another group of young people from England and with a 2-for-1 drink special the cocktails were flowing.
I looked around the table choked with plastic cups containing Mai Tai's, Mojitos, other dyed concoctions of sugar and booze. I was the only person sitting there who was not from the UK. They were all nice people; friendly, welcoming, not insular. But I felt like I was at a Uni bar in Leeds that had been transported to Slovenia. This wasn't what I came for. I got up from the table and walked out into the night alone.
I got down to the wandering that I'd earlier denied myself. Following any sound of life, no matter how faint. Going down any darkened street, as long as it might lead somewhere.
By and by I came to some kind of outdoor music hall. I could hear the production going on inside but couldn't see anything for the whole place was surrounded by a high stone wall. I walked to the rear where the wall ran along a leafy street and sat down on a bench. A man with long hair and a beard walked past and we regarded each other with the respectful wariness that people in cities employ when their paths cross in dark places in the night. He sat down a couple benches over and lit a cigarette.
I listened to the music and the scattered applause and I wanted to see what was going on. I looked at the wall. It was uneven, with the building stones jutting out from the masonry here and there. It was climbable.
I had just propped my arms up on the top of the wall and was pushing my head up when the man smoking on the bench noticed what I was doing and started shouting at me in Slovenian. I lifted my head up and saw nothing, just more dark. I jumped down from the wall and asked him what was wrong.
He responded in English saying that there's nothing to see, it's just another wall. He was waiting for his friends to get out of the concert so they could go to a bar. I told him why I was in Ljubljana and we talked about traveling. I was waiting for him to invite me to go out with him and his friends but he did not. I said goodbye and we parted ways.
I walked on and the street I took led under an arch of a building straddling the roadway. I went through and came out in the middle of a curving street that looked something like this:
I could go either left or right. I started left and then stopped in my tracks. I smelled marijuana.
I turned around and saw two men passing a hand-rolled cigarette in the otherwise deserted street. I approached them and asked to smoke. One of them passed me the joint and the other one addressed me.
"You are a tourist?"
"Yes"
"Where you from?"
"America."
"America," he said, repeating the word as if my answer was unexpected but still vaguely displeased him.
After hitting it a couple times I offered the joint back to the man who'd given it to me but he waved it off. "It's our second one," he said. Then they walked away.
The joint had tobacco in it which I don't use and it gave me a wicked head buzz that I had to sit down to let pass. After a minute it did and I got up and continued wandering. The night was ending now and I watched the groups of locals who'd been drinking together come out of the bars and split up, saying Great Night and See You Later, I imagined. I watched the couples walking arm-in-arm home to their flats, to make love in their warm beds.
On one street I heard someone calling 'American, American' and saw it was a group of Slovenians I had talked to for a minute back at the skeleton bar. They asked about a girl from Northern Ireland I was talking to there, asked where she was. I told them I had left them and when they asked why I said I just wanted to be alone. I don't think it translated because they just waved and said goodnight and kept walking. The town was pretty much asleep at that point and I walked on home myself.
It ended up being what I'd call a great night. I'd had some run-ins with locals, seen the city in its pretty dark, gotten high. It sure beat staying in that bar. With that crowd I had been a tourist. Without them, I was a traveler again. I knew that to the locals there wasn't any difference, but that wasn't the point. A sage advises about traveling, "see, do not be seen". It's the first part of this advice that's the more important. And you simply see more alone.
On to Venice. A few more picture of Ljubljana below.
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