Last week I was on a vacation for a couple of weeks, and decided to spend a couple of days in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. The fact that Swizec was on his way home with a car then (he’s from Ljubljana, mind you), made the decision easy. Thus, on the 18th of July, I woke up early in the morning, and by 7AM was off on the road for the trip.
The highway to Ljubljana was rather empty and it took us some 5-ish hours to get there from Belgrade. Swizec is a rather good driver, if we omit the fact that he almost drove through the Slovenian customs without stopping. Luckily, no cavity searches were conducted on us as the result of this little… bug.
I first checked in the Hostel Celica (hostelcelica.com), which is an old army prison redone as a hostel. It is located some 5 minutes from the bus and train stations and is surounded by “Metelkova”. Metelkova constists from a couple of streets with houses and warehouses completely reworked to be of service to the Ljubljanian youth and alternative/underground scene, full of cool graffiti and young people. At least that’s how I saw it. I planned to take pictures of all the graffiti, but somehow forgot about it. It would also probably taken me an entire day, there’s just so many of them! Anyway, the hostel is nice (this was my first stay in a hostel), it’s 28 euros per night and you get free wifi and breakfast. They have rooms with 2, 3, or 4 beds, but the beds are kinda small, even for me (I’m 180cm tall), but don’t forget it’s an old prison after all! The people working there are nice and ready to help, so I can’t say anything but praises about the place.
Later on we went to pick up Ponywithhiccups, went to grab some tasty dinner and enjoyed the view of Ljubljana from NebotiÄnik’s 12th floor. The day ended with some drinks at the Green Rabbit - pri Zelenem Zajcu - and pancakes at some place where they mixed up our orders but got tasty nomz after all.
On the second day I got up early and got some time to walk around Ljubljana alone, like a real tourist, with a map in my hand, taking random pictures and just going around. The downtown of the city is rather small, so I was done with the sightseeing in about 60 minutes, so I went to Bikofe to wait for Swizec and to have some tea. When he finally! showed up, we had more tea and went to do the most important thing in these 3 days - to buy me a longboard! And so we did. I even managed to get me a nice 30% discount which saved me some 60 euros on the board, the helmet and the gloves. Awesome!
The day continued with a nice lunch and more tea, so we have enough strength for our next task - climbing up Ljubljanski Grad, which is an old castle overseeing the entire city and much of the region. Went through some museums, longboarded in the castle yard and climbed the tower. From up there, Neboticnik looked like a dwarf.
Once we climbed down, and after we had dinner, we ran into dude_dh and went to chill by the river. After that we joined up with the guys and girls longboarding at Kongrejsc, the main square in Ljubljana. The people were nice and friendly once again, sharing tips with me how to stay alive on the longboard, how to brake properly and how to control and/or avoid the speed wobbles. The night ended with me just cruising back to the hostel.
The third day was travel-back-home-day, so I woke up early (again!) and caught the 8:15AM train back to Belgrade. Some 12 hours later I was back home in Novi Sad, ready to pass out in the bed.
All in all, a very fun 3 days, spent with good friends and nice people. Can’t wait for my next trip to Slovenia.
P.S.: Have a look at some pictures.