Ljubljana :: Slovenia
How to work with the Bosnians.
Places: Innsbruck, Graz & Ljubljana .
Coolest thing I did: Spent hours and hours walking along the ridge tops in the Alps.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: You can learn all about world politics from hostel toilet doors.
If the first near week didn't convince me that mass tourism was alive and well in Austria, nothing could have prepared me for Innsbruck on the weekend. It's a town on the Inn river (funnily enough) in between two arms of the Austrian Alps. Having never seen Alps of any nationality, I was quite excited to be going out there. What I didn't realise is a) just how close the place is to the Italian border and b) just how many Italians flock over for the weekend. Walking down the main street you couldn't move without bumping or shoving someone (by accident, I swear). After wanting to get away from the loud American tourists walking around Vienna yelling "gee, isn't that big/old/pretty" or explaining how they thought it was unreasonable to be charged 7 euros for entry to a museum when they (and I quote) "kicked your asses in the war and then paid to rebuilt this goddam country", I was hoping for some peace and quiet. Not to be.
However, thanks to Innsbruck being one of the biggest European ski resorts, the surrounding peaks are all accesible by cable cars. I took a couple of days to get up early, go up on the first lift and then walk along the ridges at 2000m + and leave all the hordes behind me. Some of the paths are a bit sketchy (in places, it's all on a 45 degree angle and covered in loose stones), but there's nothing like slowly crunching along just above the treeline before dipping down into a steep alpine forest on your way down to town. The fact that the only people I saw in 5 and a half hours were a guy walking his dog and two young girls was just what I needed. You keep trying to find the best place to take that perfect photo, fir trees in the front, peaks in the middle and glaciers in the rear, then once you've taken it, an even more perfect shot is just around the corner. I'm starting to think I'm wasting too much time in cities getting annoyed with the other tourists.
This was, however, the most exausting thing I've done to myself in a long time. Despite sharing a dorm with 11 other guys, I was asleep by 9 and having a good 10 hours every night I was there. I also regained my appetite, which was cut down a bit by the record heat Central Europe has been experiencing over the last week.
While I think of it, Austria must have the best tasting tap water in the world. It's cleaner tasting that anything you buy in a bottle.
So, a quick overnight stop in Graz saw me climb the hill to the castle to look over the city, and discover that the local soccer pitch is known as the Schwarzenegger stadium. That's all I learned in Graz. I then took the morning train to Slovenia. On the way, I read Franz Kafka's "The Castle". The guy is brilliant. In one of those strange coincidence moments, I happened to look up and notice the young bloke across from me was reading Kafkas "Der Schloss". It took me a while to realise it was the same book in the original German.
So, Slovenia. What did I know about it? I read a book just before coming away by a travel writer retracing a trip through Yugoslavia she made in the 70s. From this I learned that in the 1991 independence war, Slovenia fought for a mere 10 days before the Federal Yugoslavian troops pulled out. Apparently, the Slovenians, being far too European, prosperous and clever saw Milosevic's annexing of Kosovo in 1988 for what it was and made plans to be out of Yugoslavia before all the trouble started. Wise move when you see just how unspoilt this is compared to the pictures of Sarajevo after 1995. In it's pre-Yugo history, Slovenia spent most of it's time as a part of the Holy Roman/Austro Hungarian Empire. This shows in the architecture. You wouldn't know you had left Austria if it wasn't for the fact the road signs have far less vowels. In fact, if it wasn't for Napoleon splitting off the Hapsburgs Adriatic possessions for 20 odd years to land lock his opponents, Slovenia would have remained a little Austrian backwater famous for only being the southern fontier against the Turks. The French gave them an education system and stirred up nationalistic intrests that hadn't existed before, which led eventually to the Slovenians to seek protection from the Austrians after WW1 by becoming a part of Yugoslavia.
Ljubljana looks like somewhere in Northern Italy. Cafes line the streets on either side of the river, old white Austrian style bridges string back and forth over it to join up the cobbled streets. It's not got that much in the way of living history, but the cafe culture is nice for a few days. And sitting watching the pretty girls walk past is good for the health. So the locals tell me. Having only met cafe owners though, this may be a biased viewpoint.
In a small panic, I belived the Lonely Planet and some bloke I met in Graz and thought I had discovered I needed to get a visa to enter Bosnia-Herzegovina. So this morning, I treked into suburban Ljubljana to the Bosnian embassy, which is in someone's garage. The nice woman assured me in broken English that they were desperate for tourists to come and spend money and I had no need for a visa. Hooray. They were kind of more happily curious that I wanted to go, which is a good change from these countries where the embassy staff think their job is to discorage anyone from trying to visit them.
I really have to start thinking of the LP like it is, a guideline rather than gospel truth. It's the best solution out there, but research becomes so out of date so quickly.
Right, a week more of seeing the sights of Slovenia (which goes from alpine to beach in about 80km) then off to Croatia next week sometime.