I Don’t Even Know How to Pronounce the Name of Where I am Right Now

I can pronounce the country—that’s easy: Slovenia. What I’m not quite sure how to pronounce is the city, Ljubljana. In fact, that’s part of the reason why I chose to come here for a few days. (The other two reasons were that it’s close to Venice and because freshman year I had an awesome math TA from Slovenia.) From searching on the Internet for the correct pronunciation and from hearing it spoken by locals, it’s something like “LYOO-bl-yahna.” If I were smart I would have been able to figure this out since my math TA’s name was Jernej, which he told us is pronounced “Yer-NAY” (that is, j’s are pronounced like y’s). However, I still like to say it the way I originally thought it was pronounced, in which I pronounce every letter in sight as if it were English: “Luh-JOO-bul-jahna.” I’m in LAJOOBILJANA!

The lack of vowels in the language was the first thing I noticed in Slovenia. I’ve seen some words on signs that are eight or more letters long but have just one or two vowels. As I walked through the dark night to my hostel the first night, I tried to read every sign I passed and chuckled to myself every time because of how funny they sounded in my awful pronunciation; Njegoseva, Resljeva, Vrhovceva…

I’ve been to a fair number of hostels, but none can even compare to the one in which I stayed in Ljubljana: Hostel Celica. (Another pronunciation lesson: I learned from a local Ljubljanian on the airport shuttle that it’s not pronounced “SELL-eeka” as I had thought (I naturally pronounced it like it was Spanish), but instead it’s “TSELL-eetsa.” That “ts” sound is like a sparkle in your mouth.) Anyways, within the word “Celica” is the word “cell,” which is fitting since the building is a renovated prison. All the rooms are unique former prison cells with the bars and all – except for mine apparently, since I chose the cheapest one, a five-bed dormitory room, which due to its slanted ceiling looks like it used to be the prison’s attic. It’s ironic to think that what used to be a place of misery is now an artfully designed hostel. What’s more, Hostel Celica is a tourist sight itself: there’s an art gallery, a bar that serves excellent Slovenian beers on tap (Lasko Pivo, with a v-shaped accent over the ‘s’) and affordable Slovenian and Italian dishes, free internet, outdoor seating, regular parties and other events such as live music, a buffet breakfast included, on and on – all for 16 euro a night (at least for my room, the cheapest). Lonely Planet certainly was accurate when they labeled Hostel Celica the “hippest hostel in the world.”

Being a European capital city, I thought it would take me at least two days to see Ljubljana, but despite my efforts to calmly and thoroughly see the big sights so that it would take me two days, I saw the whole city in a day. As I walked around, I occasionally listened on my iPod to what turned out to be the perfect album for Ljubljana, Gogol Bordello’s “Super Taranta!” – perfect since Bordello, a Chernobyl survivor with a Ukrainian accent, kindof sounds like the Slovenians here. His music and voice reminds me of the hilarious Ukrainian guy in the movie “Everything Is Illuminated” (one of my most favorite movies).

Ljubljana was once a Roman city called Emona (to this day they are unearthing remains from this time period) supposedly founded by Jason and the Argonauts. At one point I walked along a hundred-meter stretch of the Roman wall; it was a lot smaller than the Roman wall I walked ontop of in Lugo in Galicia in the north of Spain, which was rare in that the Roman wall completely surrounded the old quarter. Ljubljana is located in a strategic trading position at the intersection of three rivers, just south of some mountains and north of what used to be marshland. The old part of town is located on a bend in the River Ljubljanica; on one side of the bend is a castle perched atop a steep hill. (I could see as I climbed the steep hill how the peasants failed to overthrow the castle during the Middle Ages.) The castle, built in the 12th century but destroyed by an earthquake and later rebuilt in the 16th century, was rather unremarkable as castles go (wow am I blasé), but its clock tower affords a great view of the city and the snow-covered Julian Alps on the horizon. The city viewed from above – colorful, medieval façades and red tile roofs densely clustered along the river – reminds me a lot of the view from the church in Old Town Square in Prague (which happens to be one of my most favorite sights in Europe). The castle also had a cool 3D Virtual Museum of the city that provided a good preview for what I was about to see around the city.

Along the river there are some interesting bridges, a huge market, lots of “pavement cafés” (as my guidebook calls them), and colorful squares. It was really nice to have some non-Spanish food and non-Spanish beer. (Sorry, Spain, I love ya, but I got kinda sick of Iberian ham and uninspired beer). The food is reminiscent of German and Czech food – sausages, goulash, etc. I bought two delicious apples from the open-air market and an extra-long sausage from a pavement café, where as soon as the vendor found out I’m from the U.S. he asked the standard question – whether or not I liked Bush. (“No, I like Barack Obama,” I told him. “He’s going to be president next year.”)

The other highlight from Ljubljana was its Contemporary History Museum, which skillfully showed Slovenia’s storied 20th century history. Slovenia went through two world wars (including battles within its borders), a painful Communist reign as a part of Yugoslavia, and a ten-day war for independence in 1991. I was the only visitor at the museum, so the curator showed me around and pressed hidden buttons that started visual displays for me. (The week before Christmas must be a slow tourist time for Ljubljana, in fact, since I had a whole row of seats to myself on the airplane, I am the only person in my five-bed room, I saw about seven other tourists at the castle, I was the only visitor at the Contemporary History Museum, and I have yet to meet another American.)

At night I’ve been walking toward the train station to eat a burek, a Slavic street food that is a flaky, pastry-like spiral that is filled with cheese or meat. I like to flex my Slovenian vocabulary whenever I order something: ena (one) burek prosim (please), hvala (thank you). Nearly everyone here starts talking to me in Slovenian, so I maybe look a little Slovenian. It’s fun to see what words in Slovenian look familiar to me. I remember that according to the book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” the words that appear familiar are the words that people used frequently before the Indo-European language split into several languages. People had sheep back then, for example, so the word for sheep is similar from Spanish to Italian to Russian. I’ve also read elsewhere that frequently used words, such as “two,” rarely change, while less frequently used words, such as “stomach,” change more frequently over time. That’s probably why the Slovenian word for one, “ena” looks a lot like “uno” in Spanish, “one” in English, “uno” in Italian...

On Wednesday I went to a popular tourist destination called Lake Bled. While the name may sound macabre, the lake was anything but: it’s a serene lake in the Julian Alps that has a thousand-year old castle perched on a steep cliff and a small island with a church on it. The scenery was unbelievable.

I had some excitement on the bus ride. First, before the bus ride I couldn’t withdraw any money from the ATM’s here (I think because my bank didn’t know I was traveling to Slovenia), so when I paid for the 6 euro bus ticket, I didn’t have enough money left in my pocket for the return trip. I went anyways, trusting that I could somehow get another euro at Lake Bled so that I could pay for the return trip.

Second, because I frantically tried to withdraw money from multiple ATM’s before catching the bus, I wasn’t able to find a bathroom. The bus driver wouldn’t wait for me to run to the bathroom, so I was faced with an hour and fifteen minute bus ride on an already full bladder. Fortunately I had brought a Lanjarón water bottle that I got for free at the Sierra Nevada. However, both it and my liter-sized Nalgene were filled to the top. Unfortunately I couldn’t open a window to dump water out, so my only option was to chug the 0.4 L Lanjarón water bottle and, well, fill it right back up, if you know what I mean. It was a funny compromise since I replaced every milliliter that I expelled. Essentially it delayed agony by about an hour – just enough time to arrive at Lake Bled.

Anyway, back to Lake Bled, I walked around half of the lake with some Singapore students who are studying in New Castle, UK, whom I met on the bus ride (this was after the water bottle incident that I met them). They were funny because they took tons of pictures, often of stuff I found uninteresting, and absolutely loved to do poses. This made them painfully slow, which made me realize how nice it can be to travel and sightsee alone.

Thankfully I was able to get the extra euro I needed for the return trip by paying for two other guys’ entrance to the castle with my credit card, so at 5 p.m. I returned to Ljubljana hungry and without money. Fortunately the ATM at the train station worked, so I immediately bought a jufka kebab, essentially a Slovenian burrito, and wolfed it down.

Staying with my couchsurfing contact Wednesday night fell through since I couldn’t call her using my Spanish phone, so I stayed in Celica another night. I went out to the center of town that night to see what Ljubljana is like at night. What I found were crowds of people in the city center drinking hot wine at the pavement cafés along the river. Everyone is fashionably bundled up and gripping a plastic cup of piping hot wine.

Pictures from Ljubljana

Pictures from Lake Bled