New Thing #86 - Balkans Trip - Day 5 (Travel Day to Ljubljana)

June 17, 2015

Finally. We're heading to Slovenia today. Sorry, Vienna, but we were pretty excited to be leaving. So much so, that we got up early, packed and had a leisurely breakfast while we waited to head to our train. The train station was right down the street, so we waited awhile before we left. I took the opportunity to get a few photos of our hostel, since I had neglected to the previous two days.

Open slightly to let in the "chill of the night".

We slept foot to foot, in case you were curious.

This desk was handy.

Lounge area. We never made it in here.

Guitars for your use.

Adorable courtyard.

Where we ate breakfast.

Free herbs!

I want this chess set. I must have it!! (Sadly, I couldn't fit the pieces in my luggage.)

After printing our tickets at the train station, we tried to find out which platform our train would be leaving from. Even with all of the Austrian/German words, we still couldn't find our departure. A quick run up to the ticket office and we discovered we were at the wrong train station.

What.

The.

French.

Toast.

Had to keep it PG, but I assure you, I did not say French Toast at that given point. Now, I've been fairly lucky with my travel karma thus far. A few slight snafus over the years, whether domestic or international (remember us almost missing our train out of London to Edinburgh two years ago?), but nothing put me into a panic like this did. The lady at the ticket desk informed us we needed to be at a completely different train station (How did we miss this? And how many other train stations are in this damn city?), and we had better hurry if we wanted to make our train. No sh*t, lady.

According to her, she told us to go ACROSS the street and take the 18 train. It would take us to the station we needed. I cannot stress enough that she emphasized we should go ACROSS the street. Which led us to believe that we needed to get on the train going north (left), because that was the train on the furthest side of the street. Nikki and I frantically dragged our suitcases and ran as quickly as possible, hustled to buy a damn train ticket and waited for the train that should arrive any moment. In our hastiness, we failed to realized that there was both a north and south 18 train, and we never bothered to ask the ticket lady if we should go north or south. She just said it would be a few stops until we got there.

Well, two stops later on our north bound train, and I discovered we were going the complete opposite direction of where we needed to go. Insert panic and dread here. I can honestly say I'm slightly embarrassed by how I freaked out. I think it mainly stems from zero knowledge of the language. I couldn't make heads or tails out of the words.

Good news: a lovely young Austrian lady could sense our sheer panic and came over to help. Bad news: she spoke less English that we spoke Austrian. Through a series of hand gestures and pointing on the map, she realized where we needed to go. She motioned for us to follow her off at the next stop, and walked us over to the south bound train. She mimed "18" and pointed where to wait for the train. I wish I could have thanked her more, but she left to get back on to her train. Not sure if we were doing the right thing, Nikki found another girl who spoke English, but her directions were convoluted and confusing. Fortunately, the 18 train arrived, and we hopped on.

Worse news: it didn't look good for us since we had 10 stops to go in a short 20 minutes. Turns out, luck wasn't on our side this time. As soon as we got off the train, this new station was overwhelming and even more confusing than the first one. We had no idea what platform our train left from, and no idea where to find it. Instead we headed to the ticketing desk to find it, and we missed the train by 4 minutes.

Four.

French-toasting.

Minutes.

We weighed our options on how to get out of this place, whether it be a short flight (that left within an hour) or waiting for another train. After seeing how far away the airport was from us, and not knowing if we'd make it in time for the one flight to Ljubljana that day, we chose to stick around for a train instead. Our options were a 12:30 train with one transfer, or a 9:50am train with FOUR transfers. While we had to wait four hours for it, we were more confident about having one connection versus four. Plus, that was preferable than trying to make the 10am flight. Who knows how difficult Austrian customs is to get through? Or how quickly taxis navigate traffic? (Had we thought about it earlier, we could have just rented a car, and it likely would have only taken about 4 hours...provided we didn't get lost. Good to remember for next time.)

So, we spent quite a lot of time in a Viennese train station cafe. I'm sure the people were tired of us stealing their free internet, but it at least gave us something to do. We read, took naps and did some window shopping before heading down to the little market to pick up something for lunch on the train. There really wasn't much to choose from (they didn't exactly have pre-made sandwiches for easy pick up), so I got some fruit and water and went back to the Subway to get a sandwich. No, I do not like getting American chain fast food in foreign countries, but at this point, I needed a bit of home comfort to get me through this day.

Not sure if this is a men's, ladies' or unisex clothing store.

Lunch of champions. :(

We opted to go find our train platform and be ready in case it was early, and good thing we did. It was already there waiting for us with the doors open. We hopped on, checked the departure information a BILLION times, and settled in to our seats. It wasn't crowded, so we each had our own little 4-seat section with a table to ourselves. I was able to eat lunch, read Book 3 of GoT, and stare at the gorgeous scenery flying by. It was still a long boring ride, but I wish these were the parts of Austria we had gotten to explore.

Austrian countryside!

As we neared our connection station in Villach, we started to panic again. We were looking at less than 7 minutes to make our connection, so Nikki and I, along with half of our train, went sprinting off the train, down the platform and up the escalator to find our last effort to get out of Austria. Turns out our connecting train was 25 minutes late! Well, at least it wasn't early and left before we arrived. We talked a bit with a guy named Logan from TN who was backpacking solo (I really wish I had done that while I was in college) in his last summer before his senior year of college. Yikes! These kids are just babies! He did think we were students though, so mark that in the win column. :)

Our train finally showed up, but with no markings to indicate where the hell it was going. We had to ask over and over again with the attendants, who somewhat assured us it was going to Ljubljana. And then it was a free-for-all to find seats. The train had clearly been overbooked, and some people ended up standing in the aisles due to no empty places to sit. We managed to find two spots in a little 6-person cubbie with a lady from Bled, Slovenia, a lady from Germany, and two girls from CA (one of which who desperately needed some deoderant).

We ended up having a delightful conversation with the lady from Slovenia She was so incredibly sweet, and was asking us all kinds of questions about where we had been, what we were doing next, and where we were from in the U.S. Once she found out we were doing a day trip to Bled the following day, she gave us some pointers on what to see and do (though, we didn't really have control over that since we would be there with a tour group). This is one of my favorite parts of traveling to foreign countries. Meeting random nice people you have nothing in common with except a chance encounter. I'll never see her again, but the few hours we all spent together were really nice.

Wow, I got really sappy there for a second.

After numerous delays, and running around 5 hours behind, we finally made it to Ljubljana (prounded Loob-li-yana), and our first impression was sheer horror. The train station was disgusting, and I don't even want to talk about the state of the bathroom. I turned on my Map Maven skills and got us the hell out of there and down to our hostel. Shortly after leaving the train station, I fell in love with Ljubljana. It was so adorable and quaint (reminded me a bit of Galway, Ireland), and our moods completely changed. The previous few days and our snafus kind of melted away as we walked through a charming city center to our hostel housed inside an old bank.

Hostel Tresor, right next to a Spar grocery store that has a serious addiction to Garfield.

Our hostel was in an old bank, and the entire place had a money/bank vibe to it.

We stayed in the Turkish Lira room (how appropriate!) Loved the design! It listed the type of money in Slovenian, English and the native language. In this case, Turkish.

Above my bed. 20 Turkish Lira equals roughly $7.

Nikki was about $1.75.

Lots of quotes involving money throughout.

So much room for activities! Not sure why it was necessary to have the beds so damn close together though.

Didn't get to use any of these.

Our room was HUGE (you could easily fit 10 girls in there), with big windows and A/C! We freshened up a bit, and then headed out to sight-see and grab some dinner. Due to our delay in arriving, we didn't have as much time to look around as we wanted, but what we saw was very charming. The Ljubljanica River flows right down the middle of town, and shops/restaurants lined the river banks. It was so nice outside that all of the restaurants had outdoor seating aplenty. Hell, most of the restaurants had very few people actually eating inside of them.

A general meeting place for lots of people. It was always busy!

Made it to Slovenia!!! (You can see Ljubljana Castle in the background on the hill.)

Wanted to take this up to Ljubljana Castle, but we just didn't have time.

I had to see the famous Dragon Bridge before we did anything else. It was fabled that Jason and his Argonauts slew a dragon where modern day Ljubljana now sits. The dragon has now become the "mascot" for Slovenia's capital, and the Dragon Bridge was built with four dragons (two on each side) standing watch as you cross. I was expecting this massive bridge with enormous statuesque dragons standing guard. While they were still pretty cool, I have to admit, it wasn't as massively impressive as I imagined.

Behold! The Mighty Dragon!

Ljubljanica River

Streets along the river.

Some growling stomachs forced us to find a restaurant, and though horse meat is apparently quite popular here, we chose to avoid the place offering that up. Instead we stopped at "Most", found a fun spot by the river front to people watch and relax with a glass (or ten) of wine. THIS is what we had wanted in Vienna. It was a lovely evening with great scenery and spectacular sunset, amazing food, adorable waiter, and fire/musical entertainment. What more could you ask for?

Our appetizer: buffalo mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto on rocket lettuce with a garlic bruschetta and home-made pesto. SO GOOD!

We split the beef steak (god, I hope it was beef) with whole grain cheese "struklji" with baked bacon in a Porto sauce with morel mushrooms. Also friggin' delicious.

Grilled veggie salad with mixed greens, vegetables from grill with young cow cheese and balsamic glaze dressing (I'm pulling this description from their menu!)

We had dinner AND a show!

Raspberry sorbet and creme brulee for dessert.

Random church on our way back to the hostel.

Despite our waiting/traveling kind of day, we were exhausted, so we opted to head to bed after dinner. We have an awesome day trip with lots of walking planned for the next day!