- Ljubljana, or "thou shalt NOT pass...without a vignette!"

Dober dan (doh-burr-dhan) and Dobrosodli (doh-broh-doh-shlee). That is to say, "Good day and Welcome".  Yesterday, we spent the day in Ljubljana.

It's about a 2-hour drive Northeast of Piran.  During the drive we discovered our biggest error to date.
Since leaving Italy the toll crossings in Slovenia have all been "unmanned-booths-drive-straight-thru-no-stop" affairs. Although, we wandered about this for the first few passings, we never investigated much because there was noone present in the booths to ask. Besides, we noticed the trucks would always be separated from the cars so we just figured, "okay, the trucks are either getting weighed or being charged and the cars sail right through - easy". Ahhhh.... if we had just been able to read the street signs! It would have been so much more clear,"Vignette required before entering highway".  These vignettes are sold at petrol stations: generally, not at the booths. Having driven straight into the country with full ignorance three days prior, we had nothing posted on our car.
Not until we exited the Autostrade on our way to Ljubljana did we encounter a person actually present in the booth. He asked, "do you have a vignette?" As soon as he asked the realization that we had passed through multiple "toll" booths over the past several days, each one equipped with a camera that, as we sat at this booth discussing our situation with this person, now seemed blatantly obvious pointed directly at our windshield right where you would place the required vignette allowing access to the autostrade.  Whoops!

After purchasing our vignette from him he informed us, "dis is not good" quickly signaling us to move on. What we now realize he was saying was, "I am sorry, but this is going to cost you when you get home". In looking up the fine we learned it is applied in hefty 300 - 800 Euro doses. Ouch.

Here is a good website that we should have checked before entering Slovenia. This will be our lesson learned for the future.

http://www.rearviewmirror.tv/toll-booth-vs-vignette/

During our drive to Ljubljana we left the limestone based Karst Region with its extraordinary maze of caverns (hopefully covered in a future blog), and entered the long Ljubljana basin containing the Slovenian capital. It's a beautiful city in a very fine valley surrounded by a combination of low lying hills and the Julian Alps. With the prior days rain the air was clear and you could see most of the surrounding area.

Partial view of Ljubljana from Castle

Ljubljana itself was very impressive. It was the first large city that we visited that had a truly "car free" central downtown. People were out walking and visiting and listening to the various local musicians who abound in the city central.  

Musicians downtown

Bikes and walking downtown

Interesting artwork along one of many footbridges

Another shot of downtown

I wish I knew

Again, I wish I knew

Taking a break from the flute

Here are some interesting notes we found on Ljubljana. 

• Slovenia only recently gained independence in 1991. Therefore, this capital has a strong residual Yugoslavian culture. As the struggle for independence lasted more than 1000 years, Ljubljana passed from one ruling nationality to another.  Resulting in a diverse population and culture. Many Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians stayed here after the break-up of the old country. The music, food, and general culture is considered to be very diverse. We certainly found this to be true. Our waiter spoke 5 languages.
• There are around 250,000 people in Ljubljana. Ljubljana is a city of students, with one-tenth of the city's population studying in one of the faculties here.  We noted young people throughout the city.
• Some suggest that the name Ljubljana comes from the latin word "Aluviana", as a result of a massive flood the city once experienced. A more sentimental suggestion comes from the Slavic word for beloved “Luba”.  We found a lot of information on this question when searching the web. Certainly there is more to this than posted here.
• The food was fantastic. For lunch we enjoyed excellent salad (a staple everywhere we have been), celery root soup, a Slovenian version of ravioli, and last, but certainly not least, prekmurska gibanica (folded cake). The gibanisha was really something. Our waiter explained  that this traditional dessert is something his grandmother has always served. Basically, it was a layered cake topped with ricotta cheese, apple, honey, poppy seeds and walnuts.  Here is a photo.

Gibanisha

We thoroughly enjoyed this city, especially walking amongst the historic buildings, listening to the musicians and enjoying the fine weather along the Ljubljana River that winds through city central.

Along the river

Clock and Bell Tower

This is a city we could easily spend an extended period of time exploring. Above all else, we noticed the friendly and open people we met. For example, as we were leaving we had a moment of confusion trying to understand how to pay for our parking. Along came a guy who not only took the time to walk me over to the pay booth, explain how it worked, but he then instructed us to wait for him in our car.  He proceeded to guide us out of the city to ensure we did not get lost. 

We had an excellent time in this wonderful city. It was well worth the drive and one of the highlights of our trip to date.
   

If you are interested, please look for a future blog on Ljubljana focused entirely on our hike up to the castle including a visit to the "museum of torture". It was too much to include here.  

Lastly, I apologize for the length of my blogs when I encounter a place I enjoy. But, after all, reading this is completely voluntary on your part. You can always just run through the pictures or skip to the end. Having properly apologized I hope you enjoyed this recount of our visit to Ljubljana.  For now, I'll just say "Nasvidenje" (nas-vee-deh-nye).  That is, "goodbye"...