15 October: in Ljubljana

I hadn’t intended to post after yesterday. But I can’t help myself. The current addiction.

Hostel Celica is not just a former prison. Adjacent buildings include an ex-Yugoslav army garrison. Read all about it at the hostel website, https://www.hostelcelica.com/en/ex-prison-hostel/

I could make use of the fact that the hostel, is located only a couple of metres away from a former artist squat, now known as Metelkova Mesto, an autonomous social and cultural centre in Ljubljana. If you are into wicked good art, concerts of alternative bands and graffiti, Metelkova will be right up your alley. So now I know. I check the Metelkova website and find that Channel Zero are playing tonight. YouTube refers to them as “psyhadelic stoner rock scene”. And possibly a fast route to a splitting headache. Maybe not.

I experience Ljubljana on a relentlessly wet day. Booking onto a guided walking tour, being drip-fed fascinating nuggets of history over a 2-hour period and a couple of kilometres, is a good option.

In no particular order, these are the facts that have remained with me: 

• Slovenia has the highest per capita number of churches, Michelin stars (?!) (in Europe? the world?), and private vineyards. It produces 80 million litres of wine per year, of which 6 million is exported. The population of the country is 2 million. You can do the maths!
• In mediaeval times, the capital totalled just 6000 people – half the size of Bradford on Avon!
• It likes to think of itself as a leader in things ecological: 70% recycled, bike rental at €3 per year, free taxis to compensate for the increasingly pedestrianised areas of the city centre and inconvenience thereby caused
• There are two main architectural styles: Baroque (Slovenia was within the Habsburg empire for 650 years) and Secessionist (much building after 1895 earthquake). The main concert hall was the testing ground for the Vienna greats – Brahms, Beethoven etc
• Asking a Slovenian if they think the country was Communist – as opposed to socialist – is likely to cause some embarrassment.
• Slovenia has an architect with a reputation as big as Gaudi or Foster: Jože Plečnik, who worked in Vienna, Prague, and Ljubljana. A passionate nationalist, he anticipated Ljubljana becoming the capital and designed grandiose buildings ahead of its time.
• Occupied for 1000 years (our guide mentioned this all-important fact on several occasions), and successful military figures therefore being thin on the ground, the statue chosen for the square outside the cathedral (to which he has given his name) is France Prešeren, Slovenia’s most revered poet. His importance is reflected in one of his poems being used for the national anthem of the Republic of Slovenia. France was considered as the chief representative of the Romantic school in Slovenia. Undoubtedly, his pieces were full of emotions, sentiments, and deep meanings. Furthermore, he was one of the greatest European Romanticists, as he was recognized not only regionally, but as one of the developers of European literature standards. (Seehttps://sloveniatour.si/what-are-the-most-important-slovenian-writers-and-books/)
• 93% of Slovenians voted for independence prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
• Slovenia has a meagre 47km of coast – a sore point, to charge by the way our guide related this fact. (Later in the day, film footage at the SEM (Slovenian Ethnographic Museum) of the last fishing boats being used, dating from a time when seaboard families would survive from fishing, was particularly poignant.)
• We were told that “Karst” is the one word Slovenia has given to the rest of us. But, Googling it, I found that Slovakia has a bigger area of Karst landscape. Hm. 
• In former Yugoslavia, Slovenia had 8% of the population but 25% of GDP.
• I showed the tour guide the article written by Andrej Aplenc – Polona’s political agitator friend, who I met at Šenkova Domačiya. He was lamenting the apparent loss of democracy in media institutions, but the guide commented on how that periodical comes from the extreme right wing, and that it represents the views of her parents. Clearly, Slovenian politics is a minefield.
• The Slovenian language is expletive-free. All vulgarity is taken from Serbian! And the arrival of the printing press was huge importance to attaining Slovenian as a language, and the state’s integrity.

All in all, a fascinating couple of hours. But I must learn never to follow food-related recommendations from Slovenians. I have lunch in a dumpling joint and have to abandon a ginormous tarragon and cottage cheese specimen. It is served with a massive bowl of barley, bean and vegetable stew and a bowl of buckwheat. 

Defeated by the rain I head back to the hostel. The SEM is on my way, so I stop off for a look. I’ve already mentioned the boat. Amid many interesting artefacts from the past there is an intriguing caption to some bread-making realia:

In the past, when there was no yeast, such as in the area around Mokronog, as late as the 1950s, bread was kneaded on a mentrga (a special kneading table), to which kravaji (sourdough) were added. Once a year, in the autumn, they made kravajce in the form of loaves for the whole year. The loaves were dried on a board in the sun and then in the oven on a rack.

Have I understood correctly – they made loaves to last for a whole year?!

Browsing in the museum shop I hear the two girls at the ticket desk breaking intermittently into flawless English. I have to ask them – why. And it’s kind of as I suspected: English is so dominant – in the capital, at least – and they are so conscious of the smallness of the Slovenian-speaking world. Why huddle in the shallow end of the swimming pool when the open sea is next door. Also, English may be more flexible for certain words – they cited “awkward” as an example. 

Back at the hostel, I slide downhill into a huge piece of pizza, grateful to avoid a trip out. The teacher leading a large group of French schoolchildren launches into a karaoke session. At the point when Céline Dion is taking over I call it a day and retreat to my cell.