Ljubljana, Slovenia. D-Day plus 19
Events have rather got the better of the blog at the moment. And also the internet connections have been shocking. As a result I am now on the computer in Venice - sorry to spoil the conclusion for those of you wondering whether we would complete the trip alive. On Sunday we moved from Budapest, the capital of Hungary, to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Having spoken to lots of travellers on our trip so far, it seems that most people barely know of Slovenia’s existence. A lot of those who do assume that it is some kind of twin of Slovakia. This is not the case, despite the similarity of their names and flags. Slovenia gained its independece from Yugoslavia in 1991, whereas Slovakia gained its independence from Czechoslovakia in 1993. At no stage have the two countries ever been one.
We said goodbye to Tom in the morning, as he sets off further east to Romania and Serbia, while the remaining four of us headed back west. This was to be our longest journey by both distance and time - an approximate straight line distance of 240 miles that actually ended up taking 9 hours. For some reason central European trains seem to be unable to a) gain any reasonable amount of speed, or b) travel in the same direction for a sustained period of time - on many occasions we would leave stations on the way in the same direction as we had entered. Luckily we had chosen a direct (I use that term loosely) train and had compartments, so were able to just sit back and relax. Lonely Planet (our travel bible) recommended taking a long train journey through central europe and actually it was a really good experience. It was a really nice day and we had an epic sunset. Also the lack of light pollution meant that the night sky was second only to the one that I saw from the Costa Rican jungle last year. Unfortunately there was a connecting bus for part of the journey due to line maintenence and it was on this transfer that my passport fell out of my pocket. This was not only a body blow due to the obvious reasons of losing my identity, but also because I lost 10 passport stamps including the irreplacable Istanbul stamp I had got on my 18th birthday. I was, and am, completely gutted.
It was only once we were at our hostel in Ljubljana that I realised it was missing. We had arrived at about midnight and were greated by a very amusing drunken receptionist who had been asked to do overtime to let us in. He made me promise to buy him more beer. Luckily I didn’t see him again. The next morning therefore, I went straight to the British embassy in Ljubljana. This was actually quite an interesting experience, though I don’t quite know what it is that the British ambassador to Slovenia does with his life. The people there were really helpful and told me that they could get me an emergency passport if I provided them with a police report and €115. I therefore spent my morning being interviewed by the police and the British embassy, while the other three lazily got out of bed. As if to prove my point about the pointlessness of the life of the British ambassador, the embassy was only open for 3 hours a day, so I was told to come back the next morning before my journey to Venice.
That night we planned to go back into the centre where there was a free concert. Unfortunately it had started pouring with rain, so we decided to have our meal at the restaurant that was underneath our hostel. Ellie and I opted for the “platter” which is always a massive mistake because when they say it is suitable for two, they must be thinking in terms of Bavarian portions. We barely scratched the surface of the pork chop mountain that arrived. The rain put us off doing anything else the rest of that evening - having found that our hostel amazingly had both a TV and a computer we were able to entertain ourselves.
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