Ljubljana, Slovenia

Congress Square, Ljubljana

We entered our 97th country this morning on our way to Ljubljana, the capital. Slovenia is known as a green country, 60% of the country is covered in trees. We did see, however, a lot of destruction from the last winter. After a 3 day snowfall, the snow started melting on the trees and then they had a prolonged cold spell turning the snow into ice and breaking the branches of many of the trees. The country is quite unusual in that only 40% of the two million in population lives in the cities, most live in villages and towns of less than 5000 people. Ljubljana was first colonized by the Illyrians (again). The town was built here because of the Ljubljanica River. This river actually has seven different names, because it goes underground six times as it travels through the country. Recently many of the old wooden houses built on stilts were unearthed preserved by the swamps of this region. The Romans established their city here in 14 AD. Then came the Germans and in 1335 this area became part of the Hapsburg empire. This was the time when many of the castles of the region were built. Napoleon conquered this region briefly and then it became part of the Austria-Hungarian empire until 1918. The town itself has been heavily influenced by two large earthquakes. The 1511 earthquake destroyed all signs of the medieval structures. The town was rebuilt in Baroque and Renaissance styles. The 1895 earthquake destroyed part of the town. Those sections were rebuilt in the Art Nouveau style. Another strong influence was Joze Plecnik who designed over 300 of the twentieth century structures. We toured the three separate sections of the town, mostly built during different timeframes. The architecture was quite interesting and varied with many picturesque buildings. We also encounter a "play with me" festival with lots of kids playing at various games in the squares. One of the most interesting features we saw was the door to the Cathedral which had been recently made for the visit of Pope John Paul II. Here was depicted the Christianization of the country from the early Christian era, the crusades, the reformation, until present times.

Door to the Cathedral

Another interesting factoid was that they had discovered tunnels underneath the street connecting the Franciscan monastery to the Nunnery several blocks away (and several small skeletons buried there.) We tried a couple of the local delicacies for lunch: mushroom soup and a veal stew. Both were declared worthy. After an afternoon stroll through the town we headed for Bled, our headquarters for the next three days.

Mushroom soup and the local beer