I’m in Ljubljana today. Came in by plane yesterday.

Slovenia from the air Ljubljana airport

Got into the city on the public bus (refused to take the airport shuttle). Went to the railway station and booked my train ticket for tonight, and had a balkan sausage sandwich for dinner.

Cevapcici

There’s a surprising amount of German influence here. I passed a few german branded shops (DW pharmacy, native Lidl/Aldi), the public bus company is part German-owned, and my train ticket (to Serbia) is written in both Slovene and German. I knew Germany had interests in the Balkans but wasn’t expecting it to be so visible; am curious about how this came about.

Other things I knew about Slovenia before coming here. Some famous Slovenian philosophers are Slavoj Žižek and Ivanka Melania Trump.

The country recently had an election, resulting in insurgent nationalist and populist-social-democrat candidates entering government. The Left also made gains, and I know this because a Slovenian politician got very angry about it on twitter and wrote a long post on Facebook about how the country would go back to how it was under socialism. That doesn’t sound so bad, but last I read the Left have refused to join the governing coalition. I don’t really intend to look into this too much but if I spot anything interesting today I’ll follow it up.

I had a good night’s sleep at the hostel, showered, ate some pastry thing for breakfast.

funny-tasting pastry

Ljubljana has your standard medieval European town centre. Narrow winding streets snaking through high buildings. Lots of cyclists.

riverside riverside

Some very pretty streets all around, here you can see the castle up the hill.

road with castle

There’s a little ‘square of the French Revolution’ - which hints at a time Ljubljana was part of the Napoleonic conquests.

However, I didn’t come here to see cute little buildings.

big old building...

No, I’m here for the funky futuristic Balkan architecture.

tower blocks!

Check out this tower block in one of the main squares.

pure beauty

It looks like it’s made of metal panels, but if you go up to it, those are stone panels cut to size and bolted onto the structure.

At the top there’s a huge digital clock, like some sci-fi Big Ben.

clock tower

I really like this, it’s weirdly anachronistic, because the idea of putting clocks on large towers is something we phased out in the 21st Century. And of course because it’s a modern building you get a digital clock in bright red neon.

There are concrete passages running underground around the square. This one has a small garden in a glass box, lit by natural light tunnels.

glass garden

Tunnels and raised walkways, plants growing over curved concrete staircases, red metal banisters. I approve.

Lastly, since we’re in a former socialist country, here’s a metal statue of some Workers in a side-street.

the Workers, 1975

I still have the whole afternoon to carry on wandering around, here’s my list of things to visit:

and tommorrow: Belgrade.