My friend Keren, the same one who chastised me about my lack of deserving of first class, was the one who clued me in about Slovenia. She said "I'm only going to tell you, because you won't ruin it." So here I am, telling the rest of you, so don't fucking ruin it, either.
Ljubljana is a tiny town with a tiny airport, and is the capital of Slovenia, which, along with Croatia and Bosnia/Hercegovina made up Yugoslavia. It's tucked away between Austria and Italy, so those of who have been asking me repeatedly "where the fuck is that," now you can happily avoid that shitty American stereotype of not knowing anything about anywhere.
It's a cheap 9€ shuttle to the center of town, and our Airbnb is a short walk away. Lauren picked it... the main feature is a giant actual wine cask that has been carved out so that a bed fit into it. There's lighting and a tv in it, too. Ridiculous. In fact, everything in the Airbnb has been made from a cask: the heating vent cover, the closet, the bedside tables.
Your average Slovene, from what we gathered, is slim, not terribly tall, brunette, green eyed, and really fucking attractive. And white. This is one of the whitest places I've ever been to.
So it was really weird to see that on the side of the Airbnb was some shitty graffiti that said "MS-13," a Latin American gang. I'm trying to imagine a scenario explaining how this occurred.
We wander around this pleasant little town, just to look around. It's completely walkable, and most people are biking or rollerblading to wherever they're going on this unseasonably warm day. There are bars and restaurants lining the street full of people casually enjoying their lunch or their beer, or their wine, sold in precise .1 liter increments at a mere €1-3 cost.
Slovenia produces a lot of wine, and people really like drinking it. Which is a good thing, because that's about all there is to do in Ljubljana. There's a pretty underwhelming castle at the top of a hill, but aside from the outdoor activities of walking, biking, or rollerblading, decent food at a pretty good price and wine at a really cheap price is about all Ljubljana has to offer. Which to be honest, is really ok with me. Eating and drinking are pretty much my top two favorite activities when I'm traveling.
We wind up at a recommended bar for a snack. Lauren orders the "cucumbers in yogurt sauce" and I order the dessert that they're known for. The waitress is super friendly and speaks perfect English, which is par for the course in Slovenia. Everyone we encountered spoke wonderful English and was warm and very welcoming.
Lauren is presented with a huge bowl of cucumbers and yogurt all over it. Very literal and very strange. My dessert was a strange concoction of poppy seeds, ground walnuts, cottage cheese, formed into a lasagne-baklava hybrid. Not bad, not great. But at about 4€ each, who can complain?
We wander through the town, and although it is truly lovely, we're glad we booked only 2 days there. Lauren gets her first gelato and we go to take out cash at the soc gen bank. I'm at the cash machine and Lauren pokes me and simply says, "uh, Cindy, look." I turn to my left and it seems that the TV screen that would normally be advertising Societé generale's financial tools and offerings was hacked, and instead was playing porn on repeat.
And when I say porn, i don't just mean a photo or two, or those weird Asian phone sex ads. I mean: one girl surrounded by 6 guys simultaneously ejaculating on her, followed by a good long time of her showing just how much she enjoys being drowned in semen, hardcore bukkake porn.
We just couldn't believe it. It just kept going. I was completely convinced we were on some candid camera show where people were watching us watch this porn in broad daylight at this bank in this sweet little town.
That was pretty much the all the excitement Ljubljana had to offer.
Slovenian food is hard to describe; it resembles a lot of food from its neighbors. Some of it is vaguely Mediterranean, desserts that seem Austrian like strudel and tortes, pasta dishes like you might get in Italy, gnocchi everywhere, and meat platters like you'd find in middle eastern or Slavic countries. One of my students, when researching Slovenia for me, called it "borrowed meat," which has made us laugh ever since. The food was very diverse. Over the week I ate prosciutto, duck confit, polenta, an assorted meat platter like a churrasco, gelato, fresh seafood. Much of it delicious, some of it less spectacular, but all fresh and prepare with local ingredients. You could get a good portion of fresh fish and a side dish for €18 at one of the best restaurants.
We had a nice dinner at a nice place and enjoyed the peace and the warm weather and eating outside without a coat and went to bed in our romantic wine cask bed.
The next day, Lauren decides we should go to lake Bled, a popular summer destination for Slovenians, and it's closer than we think, about an hour away on bus.
It's lovely. We order some overpriced coffee lakeside. We realize quickly that this nice little summer attraction is not as big or interesting as it had been described. I don't know about lauren, but I'm not a super outdoorsy person and I wasn't super up to a hike or rowing a boat. So we went up to the castle, about 100 steps up, saw some lovely views of the lake, and solidified my perception that the outside of castles are really fucking nice, but the inside of castles are pretty fucking boring.
We get to a little restaurant and ask to look at the menu. There's two men drinking a beer at the place, no one else. He says "if you must." We almost left. But we stayed. He speaks perfect English, but his initial welcome must have been lost in translation because he was SO nice. Lauren and I decided to share a mixed meat platter and a side order of Slovenian cheese pierogis and he looks dissatisfied with our order. We ask if it's ok, and he says "yes, but you should probably get the mushroom sauce for the pierogis because it's bland." This dude totally undersold the meal; it was delicious and a lot of food for the €15 it cost us. He joked with us the whole time and it was a really great way to spend the afternoon... eating traditional food at a traditional place with some local cold beer on a hot, beautiful day.
We get back to Ljubljana in time for a sunset and dinner, although neither of us was particularly hungry, still full from that not-light-at-all meal of meat and dumplings.
We get the last table at Julyja, a charming restaurant only outcharmed by our delightful and very attractive waiter. We ask for his recommendations, and after he gives them, I decide I don't like his recommendations. This continued through every course, my asking for a recommendation and then picking the exact opposite. He laughs at us. There was a lot of wine, all of it great. That was probably the best meal we had in Ljubljana.
We ask for dessert, and once again his recommendation, and god bless this guy, he's still recommending shit after all the crap we gave him. He suggests ice cream, and even weirder he admits, drizzling pumpkin oil on the top. Our eyes light up and we proclaim that we will in fact take that recommendation. And he was right. It was spectacular.
At the end of the meal, we ask what Slovenians typically end their meal with. He quickly replies "schnapps! For the ladies, I recommend the blueber..." and I quickly cut him off and shout "NO!!! WE WILL HAVE THE MAN SCHNAPPS!" He laughs and suggests the pear schnapps. He brings it over, and suggests that we shoot it because it is very strong, even for him. I shout "NO!!! WE WILL SIP IT!!" Because clearly I like to leave people with that stereotype of being a loud, obnoxious American everywhere I go. We indeed sipped the schnapps, and decide we need the blueberry as well. This seems to tickle him, our commitment to drinking.
The schnapps is served in a tiny little cordial glass with a couple of tiny little blueberries at the bottom. Not some super sized, genetically mutilated American blueberries. Tiny, trim, really fucking blue, Slovenian blueberries. Lauren drinks hers and one lone blueberry is stuck in the glass. I tell her she has to get it out. And we look at each other and say in near-perfect unison "no blueberry left behind" and cackle very loudly. Teachers. We're all the same and we're never truly on vacation. He must have liked us, because another order of blueberry schnapps appeared on the house.
We did so much that day, and we're pooped. But on our way home we walk past a bar that is still open and decide that we weren't quite drunk enough. It's a wine bar, and tiny, with a lot of wine options and another impossibly attractive waiter who very sensually describes to us our wine options. We're cracking the fuck up because they're playing portishead and other dark and vaguely sexy mood music from the 90s and I felt like I was in a scene from Eyes Wide Shut. He gave us a taste of orange wine, a new concoction slovenias are fucking with. It was good. We went home pretty drunk and very happy.
Ljubljana is lovely and definitely warrants a day or two visit and we had a great time. Affordable, good food and wine, nice to walk around, nice and attractive people, and free porn. What more could we possibly ask for? We started our trip in Slovenia in Ljubljana and ended it in Ljubljana and it was a happy beginning and ending for us. A happy ending indeed, for us and at least 6 dudes here.
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