Vienna Waits For You #2: Secession

The Secession was the great collaboration of the Viennese Art Nouveau (or Jugendstil, to be more Austrian) artists, architects and designers. This, for me, was a bit of a pilgrimage.

I planned to walk the length of Alserstrasse to the Schottentor U-Bahn station – it couldn’t be very far, right? Well, it took more than twenty minutes to reach it. I bought a Wochenkarte – a weekly ticket, which at €14 seemed like quite the bargain for unlimited travel on the buses, trams and subway. Keen to get going, and somewhat frazzled by the heat and the morning of travelling and bag-dragging, I went down the first escalator and got on the first train without checking the direction (I thought I had a fifty-fifty chance of going the right way, and if not I could fix it) and it somehow turned out to be right. I got myself to MuseumsQuartier, as the map seemed to suggest it was closest to the Secession. Ha, Germanic ha.

I had a bit of a surprise at how far the walk was, even once I could see the “golden cabbage,” as the Viennese dubbed it when it was unveiled.

It turned out that the Karlsplatz station was a far better option. The Vietnamese restaurant en route smelled really good, as it was nearly 4.30 and I hadn’t eaten lunch, but I had a Klimt-related mission to fulfill! The thing that struck me most about the Secession building was the beautiful Jugendstil detailing on the exterior, something that I hadn’t seen before in pictures. And I took a lot of my own. There were lovely doors, designed by Klimt, and Kolo Moser lettering, with the superscription “To each age its art, to art its freedom” (removed by the Nazis, naturally, but replaced subsequently).

Once inside, I made a beeline for the basement, a plain light concrete hall with the Klimt frieze along the upper wall. It was unveiled at the 1902 exhibition, though preserved rather than dismantled, and is an interpretation of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – which Narges, Alissa and I had heard five days previously in Ljubljana! I was interested to learn that many visitors remark that it seems “unfinished”, since it seems perfect to me, but then I love the Art Nouveau style, with lots of plain spaces contrasting with areas of intricate detail. Amazing. You can scroll through the frieze, starting here, on the Secession website. I spent a good forty minutes drinking it all in. Prior to this, and perhaps oddly for a Klimt fan, I have only ever seen one of his paintings in the flesh, so it was particularly appropriate that this masterpiece was the one where I encountered for the first time the gold leafing for which Klimt is so well known.

I moved upstairs. Though none of the works currently on display in the temporary exhibitions captured me, one of the conceptual artists had hung brightly coloured strips of plastic in the doorways that one had to push through, and it was interesting how much more participatory that small action made the exhibitions seem. I wondered if I would have thought in these terms before the last year’s work on ritual. Interesting physical component.

Naturally I hit the shop before I bade Klimt farewell, where I bought two posters with details, and a guide to the frieze. My German seemed to be going better, as I was now enjoying throwing words in as they returned to me.
Having realised that I was tired and sapped, I went back to the hotel, getting on the U-Bahn at Karlsplatz this time, and taking a picture of a billboard for the Third Man – the first encounter with Graham Greene’s iconic novella and screenplay.

Klimt and Greene in one day – and I had Billy Joel’s song “Vienna” in my head. I was happy. Where else could it happen?

I managed to negotiate the tram back, and was charmed by its age and the ringing of the bell – I later found out that the Viennese often call these old trams Bim because of the bells. It was very cute. I just had to get off at the right stop… I got off one stop early (on purpose, don’t worry) and got some food at the Spar. Then I collapsed for the evening.

Read On: Vienna Waits For You #3: A Failed Bid For Church Fatigue

Vienna Waits for You #1: Slow Down, You Crazy Child...

Time to move on. I checked out (as usual, in multiple languages – the people checking out were Italian, and since I was able to get enough to respond appropriately to their horror at the fallen tree, the guy at the desk assumed I was Italian). I found a taxi without a problem, and even managed a proper conversation, admittedly straightforward, about where I had been and where I was going. Then he asked if I was Scandinavian, which was a great compliment. I said I came from Scotland and he went into raptures about the beauty of Scotland – a subject which I am well qualified to discuss in any language. I even got to use “Wallace-Denkmal” for the first time in about eight or nine years.

I found my platform, despite the variety of numbers given, and discovered that I was on the train to Budapest. I found a seat alone, in what would have been a group of four had there not been a table/shelf-type thing running alongside me. A late-twenties-ish man (who, despite the beard, really looked like David Duchovny from the side) wanted to use the table for his laptop and asked if he could sit when my bag would have crushed his knees. Then he inquired if I was traveling further than Vienna, as if not he would happily put it up on the rack for me and take it down whenever I wanted. I was so taken with my own language skills in understanding and being obliging that we had the bag up at ceiling level before I realised that it would not fit… thankfully there was a space behind the seats that would serve the purpose. However, as a result of this whole exchange, I missed photographing the view of Salzburg as we passed through again!

I wrote in my journal for much of the journey, catching up as best I could with the previous 36 hours of non-journalling, and listened to a story – two German-born children were travelling with their Hungarian mother to see their grandparents in Budapest, and it became story time on the train! I love a good story. This was about a policeman, and definitely at my level, I thought, until my vocabulary ran out and I have up in the huff. I spent the remainder of the journey thinking (and writing about it).

When I had said to the taxi driver that I was going to Vienna for a conference, he said something to the effect of, “So, not a holiday then?” I agreed, meaning the conference part, while thinking that I had not only enjoyed the free-time bits of the trip so far, but that the whole experience of a change of focus and getting out of St Andrews had been beneficial to me. I had been near-burnout before I left, I realised, not in any kind of routine with the endless demands of the move, and putting in long hours with little to show for it. I was becoming reduced to my thesis and struggling with even that. Breaking the routine (or lack thereof) has given my brain a break, new stimulation and challenges and liberated my body from its desk-to-bed straightjacket. It’s nice to walk a street that isn’t North Street.

I also have had the time to notice how I have changed as a person since last I paid attention. I used to mentally try to hold trains or planes back, as I didn’t like arriving somewhere and having to deal with the next task, as it seemed like a hurdle. This time I’ve just wanted to get through my mental to-do list, and have without a fuss. I no longer feel apologetic for my existence. I may have similar weaknesses, but I make allowances for them, prepare for their surfacing and deal with them as they appear. I’m as easygoing about the unexpected while on the road as I am in obliging others when at home, and I no longer tend to freeze or panic. I seem to have confidence in my own abilities these days.

I think it also helps that I have friends these days, and good friends who seem to find me fairly competent, though the reasons for this are beyond me, given my more worrying recent discovery that I have absolutely no sense of direction. If in the past I was surrounded by people who made me feel marginalised and paranoid, I am no longer willing to feel bad about it. My friends seem to think I’m an extrovert, and I miss my social life more than I miss solitude if I have to miss one of them. I have friends who find my self-image as a quiet person a totally ridiculous concept, something I would have found tremendously encouraging ten years ago. Thanks, friends!

Good times. Add to this what I had done in the previous few days, without really a thought or panic, and I didn’t quite recognise myself. My father, in an uncharacteristically affirming mood (when he complains that I’m misrepresenting him, look back on the blog to when he suggested I jump out of a window and try to land on my head), said “Recognise yourself!” Um, okay.

I arrived at Wien Westbahnhof (don’t you just love that I’m giving you the minute details) – it was HOT! And, as per my shiny new personality, I couldn’t wait to get to the hotel. The taxi driver was Peruvian, as it turned out, and struggled with my high German – meanwhile, I was struggling with the heavily accented Viennese dialect, so we defaulted to Spanish, which threw me off for the day! Admittedly, my Spanish is Castilian and not great, but it helps to speak a language of which at least one of the people is a native speaker. At least I got to the hotel. And I maintain that since he thought my “Alserstrasse zweiunddreissig” sounded like “Mariahilferstrasse einundzwanzig”, it’s not me who had the problem.

He let me out of the taxi, where I couldn’t see the hotel at first, but followed the numbers (see? No panicking) and saw a plaque next to a door. I went in and found myself in a long hall, elegant save for the wheelie bin parade. I followed it around the corner, up some steps, then saw a sign for the hotel pointing upstairs. I decided it might be better if my bag and I went in the cage lift, so we piled in and emerged outside the Pension door.

Inside, a great welcome awaited, and I began in German. As usual, I reached the point where, “Tut mir leid, ich verstehe nicht” was my fallback.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to confuse you, it’s just you started in German and some people get very angry when you don’t help them “practise”.”
Breakfast would go on until 11 – whoo! – and I had a huge room, even though I had just booked a single. It was pretty much a king size – two twins pushed together. I had to sit on the toilet with my elbow in the sink, but the bed was comfy and it was the coolest of the rooms I had stayed in.

I took an hour to unpack and have a shower before hitting the pavements again. In my sights? The Secession…

Read On: Vienna Waits For You #2: Secession

Mozart in Munich #4: Le Nozze di Figaro

Pride comes before a fall, as we all know, and it was with great and terrible pride that I ventured into the shower having replaced my broken shower gel, only to realise that I had left my conditioner in Slovenia. Oh dear.

I was right in the middle of the complicated dress-getting-into routine, hair dripping, when there was a knock on the door.
“Danny?” I yelled. A vague response I took as a yes. “Just a minute!”
Poor guy. About five minutes later I opened the door to find him sitting in the corridor, doner kebabs in hand. Hopefully the prospect of the opera made him feel a little less like a glorified delivery boy. After identifying which sandwich was “ohne salat”, and once Danny was eventually convinced that the yellow handtowel tucked into my dress was for cleanliness and not a fashion statement (there was some confusion) we ate. And what a fabulous doner it was, and a true Münchner experience, or at least Danny’s Münchner experience.

Danny went to change, and I tried to stick my feet together. After stepping into my shoes, I suggested we leave at 6.25 instead of 6.30. “That’s in four minutes,” Danny pointed out incredulously. “Can you be ready in four minutes?” Of course I could, I declared, and applied my makeup with due expediency. Eschewing foundation and starting to put on sun cream, Danny mocked in a way I felt was unworthy of him.
“The sun is going down, Kathleen.”
“I have sensitive skin,” I protested.
The thing that held us up was my ridiculous necklace, that was all tangled up. Eventually I just put it on knotted and continued to untangle as we walked. We descended the stairs, with me trying to highlight the different artistic themes of each flight. “I really like this modern one,” I gushed, and stuck my arm in a cactus.

Outside… well, fine then, yes, the sun had gone down enough that sun cream wasn’t really necessary. And I was all sticky. We found our way back to the opera, and took the requisite pictures demanded by Mariam (though I wish I wasn’t doing quite what I am doing in them – I had the envelope with the tickets out, then stuck it back in my bag for pictures, then didn’t want to have it fall out, so I’m clutching my bag before me in both hands, like Miss Marple). Then began the challenge of finding our “seats” – “Stehplatz”, now there’s a word I should have looked up. We were standing with a not wonderful view of the stage, on the end of a row, so we spent a good few minutes climbing up and down the steps to let people past. Sorry, Danny.

But he took it in good spirits and as soon as the overture started, I had forgotten the inconvenience. You can’t be in the Munich opera house, listening to the Marriage of Figaro, and not feel somewhat fortunate. Likewise, to be in an auditorium with so many great performers on stage, live! The countess sticks out in my mind – played by Anja Harteros, a fact that had escaped me before as I know of very few current opera singers, and didn’t pay attention. Her aria in Act III, E Susanna non vien!...Dove sono i bei momenti, captivated me, and my goodness how the auditorium erupted at the end. I’ve never seen anyone actually stop a show before. But numerous cries of Brava later, things continued. Se Vuol Ballare, the Cavatina, was great fun. People jumped out of windows, horses didn’t see things, gardeners complained (the gardener was great); it was a riot! Danny particularly liked Figaro’s aria, Tutto è disposto...Aprite un po' quegli occhi, about all women being evil and only using love for their own ends, while I liked the same aria because it began “Open your eyes, you stupid men”. A primordial conflict given contemporary restatement through the classical era? It was all over too soon, though possibly not too soon for our feet, as we both spent a lot of time stepping in and out of our shoes – barefoot at the opera; what would Mozart think? Also, our knowledge of what actually went on was patchy, but we got the gist. We think. Since I was struggling to see the German supertitles under the silly little fringy curtains they dangled from the balcony, I was fairly confident that it would be even worse for Danny, who is some inches taller. Sure enough, we found that we had only a vague understanding between us – he understood pretty much everything he read but didn’t risk his spinal alignment following all supertitles. I, meanwhile, was reading everything and getting about eighty percent. Curtains – bad idea. I bought a programme with libretto (in German), so I can look stuff up later.

Once Danny had picked up his stuff, we had to part painfully. He admitted he would probably cry later, and through his brave front I could tell he would be incapacitated till Monday. Wouldn’t you? Really, I don’t know how some of you get through the day without me. I have this effect on people.

Before bed, I remembered to take a few pictures of the cafes below, since they looked pretty in the evening.

I had just gone to bed when the rain started, as if someone had switched a shower on. It was heavy, and at the same moment a refreshingly cool breeze swept into my room. Lovely. Lightning followed, but the thunder was quiet, and I was soon asleep. About an hour later I was awoken by a deafening thunderclap. As I lay watching the reflected lightning play on the ceiling there was a bright flash, a crack, and the shadow of something falling – followed by a loud clattering, like debris falling from a building site. I was still half-asleep, so I resisted the urge to rush to the window to investigate right away, but an hour later when the chainsaw started up I was forced into alertness. There was a police car outside, a bunch of policemen standing around with a woman in a dressing gown, one at one end of the platz with a chainsaw and another shining a torch around. Between the two more active members of the assembly was a large tree, now lying between the two cages on the wreckage of a few tables and umbrellas.

An unexpectedly dramatic end to my brief but memorable visit to Munich.

Read On: Vienna Waits For You #1: Slow Down, You Crazy Child...

Mozart in Munich #3: Sparkly, Pretty Things

Opera day. I woke and went down to breakfast, hoping to wolf something down before Danny arrived. I had a more successful conversation in German (confidence building) with the waitress, involving Apfelsaft, and got myself a bowl of cereal. When she brought the juice, along with it – on a silver tray, no less – came butter, leberwurst paste (ew), Johannisbeere jam (I had to ask Danny), Babybel and honey, accompanied by a basket with rolls and bread. How do you know you’ve been staying in a youth hostel too long? When you’re overwhelmed by breakfast!

Afterwards, I stood outside until Danny materialised beside me, as I was applying my sun cream and didn’t have my glasses on. We decided to visit the Residenz. Initially it seemed cool inside, but these things are all relative and it remained a bit humid. The first courtyard we came to had an impressive, if slightly weird, shell-encrusted fountain. I was focusing on the prettiness when Danny asked an important question - “Where did they get the shells?” We discussed issues of design and shell acquisition and decided that, well, one really just had to be a pragmatist about some things. The designer was obviously not much of a stickler for detail, as the central statue whom we eventually identified as Hermes had some wings on his helmet and one (only one) on each foot – no shoes. He looked a bit like he was ten-pin bowling, if slightly underdressed, and standing on the wind is probably cheating.

The next main room was the banqueting hall, which – along with some serious sideboarding – had statues of Roman emperors everywhere. And who doesn’t want to look at Octavian over their roast chicken? The overall effect of the paintings on the ceiling was impressive, and it was a very pleasant room in which to spend some time sitting looking up, though we agreed that we liked the decorative touches and the effect more than the individual paintings. There was one I was reasonably keen on until I went over the look at it the right way up, when it turned out to be a mean-looking angel blasting some kind of trumpet at a child’s head. Am still slightly disturbed by cherubs.

The Residenz has some fun rooms and very entertaining china, some like a tour through Art History, some on the theme of death. It was good to find out that Danny thinks death is as much fun as I do. Thematically and artistically, of course. He has pictures of preaching skeletons. That’s pretty cool. We devised an educational teatime game, in which one must guess which picture is on the bottom of one’s soup bowl, receiving extra points for the volume of soup remaining in the bowl when the correct guess is ventured. The rooms themselves were extravagant, and in some cases overpowering, with heavily embroidered wallpaper. I love the white doors with the gold decoration, however, and there were a few dappled bright red sideboards with inlaid designs of silver and enamel that I would have wanted to bring back with me were it not for my already heavy bad. There were also some lovely wooden ceilings. There was an interesting trend for ornate floor-to-ceiling mirrors with small built-in shelves, onto which were placed various small vases. This seemed odd, though no stranger than Danny’s suggestion that they put small military figurines there instead.

We emerged and explored the Schatzkammer, the Treasury. There were many pretty and shiny things, and a few that were startlingly orange. I was concerned that the King of Bavaria’s crown was sort of girly, but it turned out I had missed the “–in” in Königin – it was the queen’s. We also found another St George – now one of my favourite themes in art – aggressively bright and sparkly, with the cutest dragon yet. The horse, however, was so tall that I would question whether the saint’s diminutive sword was quite equal to the task. The horse looked like it was doing most of the work, to be honest.

Lunch next. We ended up at a sort of outdoor pub-type place, right below my window, and opposite an improbably tall tree. We had yet more wurst – me, Nürnburger rostwurstel mit Kartoffelsalat, and Danny Müchner Weisswurst, another traditional local experience.

We got our food with pretzels and sweet Bavarian mustard, actually pretty good mixed with regular German mustard, as per Danny’s suggestion, though I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that.

Danny had to go off to class then, and I managed to handle the whole bill process in German – go me! I think I was improving. The heat was becoming a bit much, but I had a mission – the Asamkirche, a pint-sized Baroque wonder church. My route took me through the Viktualienmarkt, and if I happened to come away with a new bag (very cute) and a while lot of fruit for snacking, who can blame me?

Then I passed some very modern-looking shops – this really is a proper grown-up city! Walking alone with my ears open, Munich suddenly seemed to be full of Scots, perhaps as a result of Easyjet? A clock gave the temperature - 26° in the shade. Yikes.

Asamkirche even looks ostentatious from the outside.

I was briefly distracted by Lush, though in my defense I only ever go to Lush abroad. I did need shower gel, and settled on the delightful Flying Fox – “Das Honig Duschgel mit Sex-Appeal”, if you believe the hilarious hype.

Inside Asamkirche, it was cool, at least. The small oval entrance had towering statues and stars on the ceiling.

With an ornate grill separating the entrance from the sanctuary, one of my favourite things in the world.

The sanctuary itself is narrow and high, and quite beautiful. Ornate, as one might expect from a Baroque gem, but absolutely spectacular beyond your average.

Gorgeous sunbursts. Amazing frescoes. There was a particularly excellent deathly figure, and in the Harry Potter buildup week I was excited to have found the Dark Mark lurking in a corner. Seriously:

The cherub count was mercifully low. This was my other favourite church on the trip. I sat for a long time, just gazing upwards, as someone practiced the organ not too impressively, though happily they were going over my favourite bits.

I dragged myself away, eventually, to wander some more. I poked around Marienplatz for a bit, spotting the glockenspiel – though the timing on this trip was all wrong to actually hear it play – and the famous fish fountain, in which one is meant to rinse one’s purse for good fortune.

I wanted to say I had at least seen the Hofbräuhaus, so I went in search of it. On the way I found a beautiful, quiet and air-conditioned craft shop in which I was able to buy my mother’s traditional Christmas decoration. I debated the notelets – or what I thought were notelets – but when I opened the box, loud Bavarian folk music blared out, shattering the silence. Suddenly the small group of teenagers who had just walked in all stampeded towards me, and all I could do was smile at the first one, whimper, “Es macht viel Spass, ja?” and squeak as I relinquished the card and retreated. Scary. I did manage to chatter away about my mother’s foreign Christmas ornament collection, though I couldn’t remember the German for “Latvia”, and that boosted my confidence further. I decided I quite liked this language practice, even though the evening before, listening to Danny talk about his classes, I had imagined that I would find nothing more cold-sweat inducing. It was interesting, on returning, to catch up with the articles saying that British people are most likely to go on holiday to countries where they speak a little of the language. While Scots felt the most awkward not being able to communicate well in the local language, I was amused to see that the reason given in most cases for not attempting languages they had studied was “fear of looking stupid”. That’s so typical! I can identify.

When I checked the map, I found that I was not yet lost, and was just around the corner from the Hofbräuhaus.

Having looked and photographed, I remembered I was in the general area of the Hard Rock Café and also had a shot glass buying mission (a family friend collects them and I had it on good authority that Munich was not among them). I got the map out, and was about to try the next street over when it struck me that the brass lettering opposite was not spelling out German but English, specifically, “Love all, serve all”. Inside, I couldn’t see the shot glass but I thought it was worse asking. Success! I walked back up to the English Garden before I decided it was time to go back for opera preparation.

Read On: Mozart in Munich #4: Le Nozze di Figaro

Mozart in Munich #2: What's the Wurst That Could Happen?

Excuse the pun.

On the way out, while waiting to hand in my key, the woman at the desk suddenly turned from the Mancunian guests she was checking in and barraged me with a stream of German that, once I processed it, was roughly equivalent to, “I forgot to tell you, when you arrived, that breakfast will be along the corridor on the left, in a room on the last right, and is served from seven to ten.” Maybe she didn’t think I was that stupid after all.

I found my way up to Heiliggeistkirche in good time. I, being obsessive in my organization, had found a photo of Heiliggeistkirche on the internet (and not the one in Heidelberg either – first hurdle), which featured prominently a hedge with a bicycle stand. I sent Danny this picture, and expressed every confidence that we might rendezvous there. Being also extremely incompetent, however, naturally the hedge was on the other side of a biergarten, having been brought to Heiliggeistkirche by the magic of the telephoto lens. At the very moment Danny was discovering this, I was circling Heiliggeistkirche looking for foliage. We did meet, though! Turns out I had consistently typed Heilsgeistkirche (a small but significant detail), but luckily Danny has a perfectly functional brain of his own, and was happy to use it in the absence of mine.

The Heiliggeistkirche confusion occurred as the name – which means the Church of the Holy Spirit in German – kept coming out of my mouth as “Heilsgeschichtekirche”, though I knew that was wrong. “Heilsgeschichte” in biblical studies means “Salvation history”, and is a way of approaching books like Chronicles. I could go on, but I would be even more boring than usual. I explained all the to-ing and fro-ing involved in my getting the name right (gerund! Love them) to Alissa on the bus to London, and somehow we decided it made an excellent exclamation, in the vein of Alissa's“Holy Geschichte, Batman”, which is funny if you’re a biblical scholar. Actually, it’s pretty hilarious, though when you dissolve into giggles over it, normal people tend to look at you funny.

Right, so having met Danny, we decided we were both hungry, so before we went very far we found a beer garden and settled in. Wurst abounded, mine with bread, Danny’s with sauerkraut (how German), and beer flowed. Well, Danny had one, and so did a lot of other people, so it counts. It was a good chance to catch up with the life of a foreign language student, especially as it was nearly two months since I dropped Danny and Jeremiah at the airport to go to France.

There was an organ concert at Frauenkirche, and being generally enthusiastic about culture, we went along. On the way, I had my first sighting of Marienplatz, complete with a – probably foreign and mission-trip-related – group of people, in garishly coloured outfits, brandishing large placards in German and English that read “Jesus Loves You”. Love the sentiment, not sure about the design choices – electric green and sunshine yellow. Yikes. They were wearing T-shirts that read, “Will I See You In Heaven?” to which we had definite, if distinct reactions. Danny’s was more about theological questioning, whereas mine was, “Well, I’m planning to be there; I don’t know about you.” I should probably be kept away from well-meaning people.

We reached Frauenkirche, where Danny was able to show off his language skills at the ticket desk (it’s nice to travel with an interpreter). We discovered that being too obliging isn’t necessarily helpful when trying to decide where to sit, but quickly realised that it doesn’t really matter at an organ concert. It was a great performance(details to follow), and we both particularly liked the Elgar. There was a more modern piece called “Kreuzweg” which I found really interesting, especially to trace the theme of the way of the cross through the music.

After the concert we went wandering, back through Marienplatz and all around the centre. I saw so many things! Here’s me approaching Feldherrnhalle, and the building itself, based on a similar structure in Florence – though I’m almost positive that it’s bigger than the real one!

We passed the Residenz, the former palace of the king of Bavaria:

And the opera house!

The garden of the Residenz was all green and shady, what I had come to really appreciate in a park, though as the sun was setting it didn’t matter all that much. We wandered around and happened upon a salsa dancing event of some sort, which provided a few minutes’ entertainment.

Then we continued into the southern end of the English Garden, a cool green place (okay, yes, now that the sun had gone down), and stopped at a bridge over what looked a bit like a large puddle, but had been a raging torrent when Danny was last there – the heavy rain before his arrival and the heatwave before mine clearly having a dramatic effect. Looks pretty, anyway, and who doesn’t love a park by streetlamp? There were these odd newty-type things that I need to remember to look up.

Turning around, we passed the American consulate, or rather the security cordon around it – the consulate itself appeared to be several days’ hike away. Poor Danny had already had to go in there. As it was getting late (not to mention dark) and Danny had homework, we walked back towards my hotel, then round it a couple of times before I found the door (which, of course, we had passed before I realised where we were). As a result of this, Danny suggested that I should perhaps not leave the hotel again until he picked me up in the morning. I think he was joking. He’s had a couple of kind of unfortunate encounters with my sense of direction lately.

I had yet another shower and found an episode of Buffy on the TV – Season Six dubbed into German. I love Buffy in any language, and was amused by the voice they had given Tom Lenk, but I didn’t get very far before giving up, defeated by a combination of Deutsch-fatigue and regular fatigue. Slept.

Read on: Mozart in Munich #3: Sparkly, Pretty Things

Mozart in Munich #1: Through the Alps

Munich-bound!

I packed up – not without some difficulty, even though I thought I was doing well – then dragged my bag down four floors. This encouraged me, as I was pretty sure that the worst part of my day would now be over. It was also nice to think that while I was the only person taking my unique trip, I was leaving two good friends in one country and meeting another in another, though I was sorry to miss Alissa’s paper later that day, which I hear went very well.

I checked out and went to meet the taxi that I had arranged the day before – my first phone call in Slovenia. The taxi, sadly, never arrived, and I tried to flag one down after fifteen minutes. Unsuccessfully – it’s like they don’t want my money.

Though I had left plenty of time just in case something like this happened, eventually I had to start walking – sore feet and all – towards the train station. I got all the way to the Dragon Bridge, outside the university and halfway to the station, before finally two taxis competed for me – typical. Anyway, while both the Rough Guide and local advice had promised an €8-9 trip, it cost less than €2.

I went into the information office to check whether I needed to validate my ticket by machine or not (something one must do with all printed tickets in Italy, for example, but I was unsure of the custom elsewhere). Having found an English speaking gentleman who ushered me to a seat, I launched forth.
“This may be a stupid question, but…”
“No, no, don’t worry. Continue.” He was very reassuring, though he seemed to think one could use the word “lady” in a similar manner as “madam” in the UK. I was a bit taken aback when, having (reassuringly) taken the ticket from me and pointing to the relevant section, he began, “Look, lady…” but I did eventually catch on. It was quite charming, in the end.

With a final, “Thank you, lady,” I was sent onward, to the lift, trying not to smile too broadly when leaving. I was trying not to laugh, but in a very happy way.

Getting on to the train, first class of course (well, there was a special deal for students), two well-to-do American ladies of advancing years were rather alarmed by the automatic closing of the doors on a timer, and began to bang on them and yell loudly. I was able to assist, demonstrating how one presses the green button at the side to open them again. It’s amazing what one takes for granted (especially the European rail network), which on reflection doesn’t actually seem all that obvious after all. Three Italian men materialised from one carriage down to help with their bags, and two were summoned back by the third with – as far as I could tell – seemed to be chastisement for less than chivalrous behaviour in leaving me to lug my own bag up the steep stairs! Italian became my fourth (I really hoped final) language of the trip.

As I hoisted my bag onto an end-of-carriage luggage rack, I overheard the two ladies (the only other passengers in the carriage).
“I’m sorry I lost your contacts.”
“That’s okay. I’m sorry I mixed up the passports.”
I recognised this sort of trip – the sort of appealingly chaotic – from my own “best laid plans”-type scenario that morning. I find this sort of thing incredibly encouraging.

Shortly after pulling away from Ljubljana central station, we were gliding by aquamarine and turquoise waters fringed by a thousand trees, a sheer cliff on the other side, and overhead a biplane. Soon we saw high, rocky Alpine peaks, with wooded church-adorned hills and fields of sunflowers. An overabundance of the picturesque. Made a mental note to ask God why he didn’t save some of that kind of beauty for Cumbernauld, or if we could put in a transfer request. “One Alp, please.” I was sorry to be leaving Slovenia, though ready to move on, should moving on have to occur.

In a worrying insight into my character, my illusions of originality shattered when I realised that my travel diary this time was probably completely inspired (ooh, sudden tunnel) by the writings of Michael Palin. Who is not only funnier than I am, but since he crossed the Sahara on a camel, travelling first class to go to the opera in Munich while listening to my iPod doesn’t exactly seem intrepid.

We went into shadow and the drop in temperature made me shiver. It was a good feeling, and I relaxed into the comfortable seat.

The man behind me moved to the seat opposite as I composed a limerick about Lake Bled (see, nothing rhymes with “gondola”). He asks if the seat is free in a familiar and very English voice. It’s… Michael Palin? I knew he was working on something in Central and Eastern Europe, but I never expected to run into him. We talked about Doune Castle and arterial sclerosis until he suddenly burst into song, “The hills are alive…” and out came the voice of Julie Andrews, circa 1965.

I awoke somewhere high in the Alps, near the Austrian border.

You couldn’t look ten feet in any direction without some serious neck carnage. It was all stunning. We stopped at Jesenice for passport control, and the German was music to meine Ohren! Austria seemed pretty, at first, but then we disappeared into a tunnel for fifteen minutes.

We hit our first Alpine lake at 11.45 – and how improbably blue.

Halfway up a mountain, looking down on an idyllic valley, the peace of the carriage was shattered by the whiniest family ever. And they had to sit right across from me, didn’t they? They gave the very competent and longsuffering conductor the worst time. At one point the parents actually moved away to get a break from the kids. Not cool.

At length we arrived at Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, which was, sadly, the most glamorous part of Salzburg (long a coveted destination) I could hope to see on this trip – though as I had a good moan about that in my journal, we crossed the river and got a great, if fleeting, view of the fortress and iconic skyline of spires. Sigh. Next time, Salzburg, we meet properly.

I wondered what it is that makes all these rivers cloudy and turquoise. We crossed into Germany under cloud, which was at least promising. Danny had spoken of rain. I earnestly hoped that coolness and not mugginess ensued.

Traunstein looked interesting – apparently mediaeval and compact, a little like a Tuscan town, though I had never heard of it before. Listening to Keb’ Mo’, I started to get squirmy, with only fifteen minutes to go. I was quite ready to get off the train. Then the sun came out. Great, I thought. Now we can die of the heat in Germany, too.

The first clue that Munich was an actual city, and Ljubljana a generously proportioned town, were the miles of suburbs the train travelled through. I disembarked (wrestling with my bag – I hoped I “grazie”d enough to convey my gratitude towards my Italian helpers in Ljubljana) at the station – an actual station! Even Salzburg just had platforms. It was also hot. Definitely hot.

Fighting hunger, I barreled past the many food stalls in the station and found a taxi rank. Despite having looked up the address of the hotel and mentally rehearsed – “Ich gehe nach Hotel Am Markt, Heiliggeiststrasse sechs” – all my German totally deserted me in the moment of truth. “Ich gehe… ich gehe nach Hotel Am Markt-” by this point the driver had my bag in the boot and was reaching for my carry-all, nodding intently “-Heils- um, Heiliggeiststrasse vier… nein! Sechs.” And I’m supposed to speak this language. It’s the only one I’m any good at. Doesn’t bode well.

Despite this, I got there without incident. I noted immediately the multi-laned roads, and some attractive Art Nouveau detailing on huge buildings. Suddenly I remembered what a city feels like! And the guidebook said Munich has a reputation as provincial. It seemed big enough to me.

I tried to redeem myself, linguistically speaking, by attempting conversation with the taxi driver. But I had not yet recovered from the humbling experience outside the Hauptbahnhof, and I resorted to such ravings and inanities as “München ist so schön” – Munich is quite beautiful – which sounds all right, but by the time I regained my composure and was confident in my sentence construction (well, my confidence was bruised), we had descended into the underpass beneath the old town.

Clearly I had made an impression as a linguist, as the driver proceeded to explain in English that one couldn’t get right to the hotel, but it was just round the corner and he would bring my bag and show me. I traipsed wearily along behind, and managed to check in with the clerk, bouncing back and forth between German and English. Feeling a little better, I crammed myself, my expanding suitcase and a carrier bag containing a pair of men’s shoes, two rubber ducks and an assortment of other items into the tiny – seriously tiny – lift. Travel by Rene Magritte. Unbidden, the Mikado rose into my mind and I spent the ride humming – with apologies to G&S – “I’ve Got A Little Lift”. Groan. I know.

My first glimpses of Munich.

Read On: Mozart in Munich #2: What's the Wurst that Could Happen?

Slovenian Summer #5: IOSOT in the Heat

Monday. Blisters were now on the top as well as the bottom of my feet, with some painful broken skin. To make things worse, I was determined to wear my skirt, meaning that I donned Sunday’s sandals again – and predictably, almost as soon as I began to walk one of my worst blisters burst. Oh, the pain! I went to IOSOT, tested my German – which is not easy when it’s German with a strong American accent… As will happen in Vienna, as soon as the conference starts, all coherent narrative leaves my recollections.

I tried to ask two ladies sitting at the post office desk in the university where I would find a post box, only to end up with no idea but three further sets of international air mail stamps. Huh?

It was hot, 38°, inside with no air conditioning. In recognition of this fact, I decided to skip the first papers of the afternoon (which had no real relevance to me) and have a long lunch by the river in the shade.

I ate again at Pizzeria Ljubljanski Dvor, this time opting for the Bavarska pizza. I felt a bit pathetic, with my “table for one, please”, but thought I’d better get over it before I launched north alone. I felt terribly official, lounging around with my IOSOT bag and conference badge, looking up at Ljubljana Castle. Though Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in Slovenian emanating from the bar opposite was a bit surreal. This soon changed to Samba. Then a string of hits by Italian favourite Eros Ramazotti.

The pizza arrived, and they weren’t kidding when they promised garlic. Yikes. I dug in, as the bar continued its Italian theme by sticking Andrea Bocelli’s Cieli di Toscana on the CD Player. I decided it wouldn’t be too bad to stick around for a while, perhaps in the manner of a siesta! Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that – and I’m neither.

I decided to go back for the Qumran papers taking up the last half of the afternoon, which started at 16.40. This gave me an excellent opportunity to return to St Nicholas’s Church (closed during our regular lunch break). Even better – the choir was rehearsing for the IOSOT German-speakers’ event at night (pictures of the church interior with said choir in action are here, on the IOSOT site). They sounded wonderful, and I sat down to listen. The church is very baroque, plastered with frescoes, but without clashing colours or too bold patterns in the marble, so it is not overpowering. It was also cool.

The pews were odd – they sat on a 50cm high platform and leaned back, in blocks of fifteen-or-so pews. Sort of like a one-horse open church.

I decided it was time to leave for the 16.40 session, but I was so absorbed with the choir, who were running over an alto part at the time, that I forgot that the pews were not on ground level. I dropped like a rock, before staggering about a bit, desperately trying to locate my misplaced balance. The non-alto portion of the choir dissolved into laughter, to the consternation of the altos and the frustration of the choir director, which only made the other singers laugh harder. Once he realised that they were reacting to something rather than merely failing to take the task seriously, he looked angrily up into the organ loft, then realising that he was about to look my way, and still being a wee bit off-balance, I did something ridiculous but instinctive – I hit the deck. This made the choir collapse again. I made my exit.

Despite all this hilarity, I made it back to the Law Faculty for the papers. When I gave up for the day, I sought Alissa and Narges to tell them I was disappearing with the room key (back to the room, so it was okay), then detoured via a supermarket for a litre of pineapple juice and some snacks for tea. Mmm.

Tuesday dawned. With papers of some relevance all afternoon, I missed the first part of the morning in order to pack. It was hot again, so once I had had a shower, I went looking for cool spots. Unfortunately the door on the ground floor of the hostel, which had given us some promising breezes, was closed. Happily, I found a tiny local supermarket with air conditioning and decided to hang out there for a while. When, after a good 25 minutes, I was cool enough to proceed, I realised that the only exit was through the checkout, and after being there so long I felt I had to buy something. So this is how I ended up with another litre of pineapple juice – it was either that or salami. But there comes a point when water doesn’t cut it, and you need some kind of extra sustenance, so I was glad to have the pineapple juice all the same.

I continued to the university via the Bible exhibition put on for IOSOT and the Slovenian Year of the Bible, at St Jozef’s church. It was mostly facsimile, but beautifully presented and there was a display of some of the earliest Slovenian language Bibles and liturgical objects. Also, there was a modern Slovenian artist’s (I wish I had written down her name) interpretation of the way of the cross and crucifixion. She sees events mostly as the interplay of light and colour so her paintings were atmospheric and impressionistic.

Thankful to be no longer clad in sandals, I hobbled up to the market and got some random fruity-type lunch. I was happy to take it easy after yesterday’s pizzastravaganza. It was really too hot for the papers, but some were interesting nonetheless, and we all traipsed along the river to find food afterwards.

We stopped at an Italian-sounding café (Caffe Romeo), but it turned out to be a Mexican restaurant! Alissa was concerned that all the burritos appeared to include a fair amount of cabbage and zucchini (that’s courgette to the more British among us). I ordered beef nachos, and needed help!

By the time our quesadillas and “Quesada” (which we’re pretty sure was actually a tostada) arrived, I think I was almost full. But it was all excellent, and a surprise! Here’s Alissa looking happy about it all:

Before bed, I had a shower, but waking up at 1 am after only dozing, I needed another to get off to sleep again. Then I had another at 3.30, and woke again at 4.30 despairing of ever sleeping again. But before I was forced to jump under another icy downpour, I walked around our floor and found an open window, with an acceptable breeze. I stood there for almost an hour, thinking about my time in Slovenia and the fun I had had with Narges and Alissa, overlooking Ljubljana at dawn and watching the silhouette of the Alps emerge to the north.

I lay back down to catch a couple of hours more sleep before leaving Slovenia. I gazed up at the grafitti once more. Farewell, Marjeta and Tomasz, I hope it all worked out.

As I was drifting off, I noticed another, more recent scrawl in the same hand.

"Marjeta [hearts] Ivan"...

Ah.

Read on: Mozart in Munich #1: Through the Alps

Slovenian Summer #4: Lounging Around in Laid-back Ljubljana

We tried to visit St Nicholas’s Church, but of course we had forgotten it was Sunday, and turned up during the service. It looked pretty though, with huge heavy bronze doors. We walked in a circuit around it before making a beeline for the castle funicular. There were beautiful views from the castle – apparently you can see one third of Slovenia from up there on a clear day, and I think it was a clear day!

We nosed around for a bit, though there was not overmuch to do or see, alas, and still very hot.
There was a small exhibition of “small paintings” which I just loved!

We investigated the tower, though after braving the castle steps I was in no hurry to clamber up there and have to come down again! But as I prepared to deposit myself under a shady tree, Alissa called me over, announcing the presence of a chapel in the lower levels. As we were about to descend, we ran into Grant again, who recommended the subterranean coolness of the chapel. I was glad to find that a fellow northerner was not enjoying the heat much either. It was indeed cooler in the chapel, and very pretty, though plastering church ceilings with boring family crests always seems like a waste of a good fresco to me. There were some beautiful curving Art Nouveau pews.

The German inscription on the ceiling dated the renovation to 1747, but clearly it has been restored since. I sat there for a while as Narges and Alissa tackled the tower – apparently the views were well worth it. Alissa promised me pictures. In the meantime, I found a bench, sadly without shade as there was no room in it, and wrote a couple of postcards, even putting stamps on them! When they returned, Narges spotted a dragon fruit tree and was keen to try some, even with Alissa’s warning that she hadn’t liked them much.

After the tower, we were all ready to descend, so we boarded the glass carriage again and watched the ground come up to meet us. We walked back along the market colonnade via the market itself (where Alissa called me a “bad influence” – the cheek!). Narges bargained for a necklace, while we meekly paid up at the glassware stall.

Shopping wore us out enough to need lunch, and found a café where Alissa got some exciting-looking bruschetta and I had what was, based on price, apparently destined to be a modest pizza, but was of course larger than normal. Narges’s eyes lit up when she saw the large bottle of Tabasco sauce our waitress brought – Narges is the kind of person who eats with the sandwich in one hand and the bottle of Tabasco in the other. She then decided that after said sandwich was the perfect time to try the dragon fruit. Borrowing my knife, off which, thanks to Alissa’s brilliant napkin suggestion, she got the cheese, she sliced through the spiny outer shell to the fruit within. None of us were all that sure what she should do next, so she reverted to the walnut method since they look kind of similar. Having liberated some wiggly-looking white flesh from the fruit, she popped it into her mouth, chewed nonchalantly, then froze with an expression of horror. Next thing we knew she had disappeared around the corner, arms flailing. When at length she returned, she downed my water and managed to kill the taste with two particularly Tabasco-laden slices of my leftover pizza. We did not speak of dragon fruit again.

After lunch we all split up for the afternoon. I announced that I was going in search of impressionists and modern art. Since I had a map with the modern art museum on it, however, I didn’t expect to have to search very hard. I pointed myself directly at the National Gallery, and proceeded to wander every street west of Presernov trg trying to find it. I came across Plečnik’s library first – I didn’t venture in for the tour, but I had a good ogle at the lobby. I had already lost all sense of direction, it seems, as I next went north (I thought) and came across the Illyrian monument (to the west). Huh. I roamed the wide boulevards, none turning out to be the one I thought it was for more than twelve seconds, and directed (correctly I hope) a couple a Spanish tourists, in Spanish, who did not seem to have good instincts about people, thinking as they did that I (a) was Slovenian and (b) had a sense of direction. Clearly misguided. Hopefully not by me. I passed the Ursuline Church, where I resisted the temptation to duck into the Slovenian Schoolhouse Museum. Passing the opera house, which is currently a hollow shell due to a renovation project, I eventually arrived at the National Gallery, as the digital display on a nearby office building announced that it was 32°… ugh.

The airconditioned lobby of the National Gallery was a relief, but a short-lived one as their method was to blast cold air, which sinks, from the floor in a large building made entirely of glass. It was unbearable upstairs, in the temporary design exhibits, so I contented myself with the permanent collection, a relatively modest number of mostly Slovenian works in a former mansion better suited to the heat. The mediaeval to Renaissance collection was actually fun (not necessarily my favourite era), with dragons a theme. The first example was a carving of St George, posed like an action hero (though now spearless, so he looks like he’s gesturing the dragon to death. Mime – the deadly art). Second, which made me laugh, was St Margaret and the dragon, an impressively colourful, some might venture so far as “garish”, statue. St Margaret wears a gold dress with a bright blue robe, and while she gestures into the middle distance with a bored expression, she stands with one foot of the neck of a disgruntled dragon, bright green with a fire-engine-red tongue hanging out. The third, and my favourite, was a painting of a very indignant dragon, a nervous-looking horse, and an apologetic St George.

Next came the sculpture. I discovered a new sculptor, Franc Berneker, and was rejoicing to find that I liked something from before 1880 when I realised I had passed through to the next era, and the sculpture I was looking at dated from 1909. Ah well. Then there was the melancholy Cossack's Dream by Ivan Zajec.

The impressionists were all wonderful, and I heartily recommend a good look at the national gallery website, which has the entire permanent collection online. Some of the impressionist paintings can be seen here.

In the shop, I agonised over whether to buy the postcards or the book, then decided I really wanted the book. I met Alissa in the shop – she was amused about the sculpture of the fire after our investigations into the history of Ljubljana.

Next, I decided to look for somewhere shady to have a drink. I was tempted into the modern art museum, my next stop anyway, by the big “BAR” sign in red in the grounds. I began to suspect false hope when I was inside and I found that “bar” was scrawled across the walls in bright red. I think it was something to do with a conceptual citizen project, but who can be sure? The gallery was seriously cool, and seriously odd. I didn’t understand a thing, but it was wonderfully entertaining. I especially liked the work of art that took up an entire room – you walk across sand to get in, which is fashioned into a big desert island idea hosting a huge papier-mâché palm tree. On the wall above it reads, “This revolution is for display purposes only.” There is a large wooden frame in the middle of the room, and a massive pile of cardboard boxes. In another doorway there was suspended a cluster of paper-stuffed bin bags attached to a plank. The last entrance was three-quarters boarded up, with a ladder leading over the barrier. Excellent, but really, no clue.

Afterwards I walked across into Tivoli Park, where it was harder than you’d think to find a bench in the shade. I finally did, and sat there for a while to cool down.

When I ventured back to our rendezvous point in front of Franc Prešeren, I looked at the map before setting off to make sure I didn’t get turned around and lose myself again on the way back. It took me less than ten minutes to get back to Prešernov trg by the direct route. Oh dear.
I found Narges chatting to a nice but non-English-speaking man, and I joined them. We all looked at pictures in my National Gallery book for a while, a man rode by on a penny-farthing. Which was bizarre, but reminded me that it was another great feat of Scottish invention. My knowledge is haphazard but interesting.

We found a handy, slightly posher than usual café for tea, where I coveted Alissa’s garlic soup, though I knew I couldn’t handle hot liquids. We moved tables to get out of the setting sun, but of course it followed us!

At the IOSOT opening ceremony (IOSOT's own photographs of the event here, and worth a look), there was already a crowd gathered around the seating area. With the Prime Minister speaking and the whole affair going out live on national TV, the IOSOT conference was clearly a big deal for Slovenia. I wish Britain was so excited about biblical scholarship. Let’s face it, some biblical scholars aren’t all that excited about biblical scholarship. Speeches ensued, mostly in Slovenian, and I don’t think I’m being overly cruel if I say that, in some cases, “charisma” was not the word that came to mind. There was a special address entitled “The Transmission of Semitic Popular Names in Greek and Latin Linguistic Traditions”.
I was getting pretty tired by this point, after the previous couple of days and inadequate sleep, but thankfully before I was forced to gnaw my own arm off the Beethoven began.

It took me longer than usual to get into it, since I was pretty zonked and sitting up straight was becoming a challenge. It was, however, a wonderful experience, and the orchestra were excellent. The conductor was one of the most entertaining I’ve seen, and the bass was fabulous. The massed choir, from several countries, attacked the fourth movement with something akin to welly.

After they were done, we filed out and around St Nicholas’s, where we spotted a sign that seemed to capture the pre-Beethoven mood – “Let Me Out!”

It was far too hot to sleep, and I had to take a freezing shower at 3am just to nod off… ugh.

Read On: Slovenian Summer #5: IOSOT in the Heat

Slovenian Summer #3: Caves, Castles and Crushed Digits

Bastille Day! Apparently the French Revolution has some kind of great significance to the Slovenians – it’s everywhere – but we hadn’t quite worked out why. Rather than sticking around to represent the Auld Alliance in any resulting festivities, however, I had plans – cave and castle plans.

Things began to go wrong in a typical Kathleen way. The gift I had bought Meg at Lake Bled already began to fall apart. I had a short-lived panic – where were the bus tickets we had bought the day before? A frantic search ensued, until I had to give up and go down to breakfast. I cringed as I walked towards Alissa and Narges, ready to admit my stupidity.
“Did I have all the bus tickets?” I asked.
“No, I have all of them,” replied Alissa, and I felt relieved and even more stupid. They were very nice about it, though Alissa expressed her concern that I was guardian of the room keys for the day.

We walked up to the bus station, Narges again making her case for fruit trees everywhere. I suggested she should become an advocate and make speeches to councils around Scotland, possibly hooking up with garden centres in a move that would surely make her rich. She seemed to think it was too much work.

We got the bus without incident. I enjoyed this driver’s radio station, including U2, though I hoped his choice of song – “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – did not reflect his sense of direction. We were on a schedule. The music continued. I suspected Anastacia was not traditional Slovene folk music. It seemed this driver’s tastes in music are more mainstream and – somewhat mercifully – less Eurovision-worthy.

Today, we saw more flat land with lumpy bumpy wooded hills which looked remarkably like the carse of Stirling.

Coming into the town of Postojna, I spotted (to my surprise) that the residents of a block of flats had painted their windows in an interesting manner.

When we stepped off the bus, I began instantly to feel the heat. It occurs to me in hindsight that perhaps it may not have been the best day to dress head to toe in black (though my nifty cover-up allowed me to get in touch with my inner Austro-Hungarian). We wandered into the tourist information and were told that the only way to Predjama Castle was a taxi, €30 with the driver sticking around for an hour or so. Fair enough, we thought, and headed out to the caves. The sign said less than a kilometre (so I was pretty confident we could make the 10am tour in just over ten minutes), but it was a bit of a trek in the heat, as it turned out, given my heat-absorbing ensemble and the unfortunate fact that the supposedly equally spaced signs read 500m, 200m, 100m… Narges entertained us with another impassioned plea, that what Postojna really needed were fruit trees along this road. Then when we hit what was meant to be the entrance to the caves, we found ourselves at the car park and there was a further sign to the caves reading “300m”. So past the array of souvenir stands we marched, and arrived at the ticket window at 10.03 to discover we were too late. But we bought combined tickets for the cave and the castle and waited for the 11am tour. Meanwhile we sat in the shade, until drums sounded in the square above us and Narges bolted up the stairs, with a joyful cry of, “It sounds Middle Eastern!” We followed.

The music turned out to be from a music and dance troupe from Izmir in Turkey who played Turkish music and were dancing impressively, given the heat and the many layers of their costumes. I was suddenly glad we had to wait.

After chatting with one of the dancers, Narges’s ears pricked up when we began to queue with a large Israeli tour group. “I’m going to ask if they are from Jerusalem!” As I envied her multiple languages, a bilingual conversation ensued with a woman from Tel Aviv which, for someone who generally studies the dead-language part of Hebrew, was absolutely fascinating She told us that it was supposed to be very cold in the cave, which delighted me and worried Narges in her tank top, who didn’t have anything to put over it. The Israeli woman laughed and said, “I hope you will not become ch’ isha Lot” – like Lot’s wife – “She was a pillar of salt, you a pillar of ice!” I was surprised how much of that conversation I understood while listening, though the entirety of my contribution in Hebrew was a well-placed Toda when she ushered me ahead through the closing masses to rejoin Narges and Alissa.

Signs inside warned of 8° temperatures, which on reflection was a slight exaggeration for the purposes of flogging €3 coat rentals, if I may be so cynical. We boarded a train – cute! – and headed for a couple of kilometres underground, where we disembarked and congregated below the relevant language signs. Then we walked up… and up… and up… our tour guide called our eventual rendezvous point “the mountain” and it didn’t seem unjustified! She seemed a bit gruff at first, barking at poor tourists at the rear, “Come along! We do not have all day!” but she warmed up after that.

Postojna Cave was discovered in 1818 and opened to the public in 1819, so the tourist-exploitation theme is long-running. You can still see the build up of soot on some stalagmites deposited by generations of early tourists. The cave finally acquired an electricity supply in 1880 – well in advance of Ljubljana!

We proceeded through the “beautiful caves” – my favourite was the “Spaghetti Gallery” which has thousands of thin, pure white limestone stalactites suspended from the ceiling. While we were route-marching – or I was, as I kept getting stuck behind wandering people with video cameras and was struggling to catch up – through the Red Cave, the lights went out twice. Slightly nervewracking when several kilometres underground.

We did however survive to see the “human fish,” teeny lizard-like amphibians who live in the river that carved the cave, and can survive 10-12 years without food. And I thought my metabolism was slow!

Ran into the same lady from outside, who seemed less enchanted to encounter me again. “Where is your friend?” she asked.
“I lost her somewhere,” I replied, then with a feeble attempt at humour, “Maybe she turned into a pillar of ice!” I was rewarded with a blank look. I’m sure it would be funnier in Hebrew. Really.

We all piled back on the train, and as we speeded back through a tunnel, there was sudden manic laughter from Narges and Alissa a few seats in front of me, which was quite creepy in its echoing. We never got to the bottom of that, as they forgot why by the time we left Postojna.

Outside I was waning, and realised I wasn’t drinking enough. Outside we failed to find a taxi, but taking Alissa’s sensible lead, we trailed back into town and into the tourist information again, to find that the town has only three taxis, and two were booked up. The third was scheduled to do one more trip at 2pm – meaning we would have to give up Piran. We discussed and decided to be positive, given that we already has castle tickets and a way to get there. We bought some fruit – mmm, grapes – and walked back to the caves for pickup!

Then something delightful happened. Narges found a walnut tree! Asking the people, sitting in their garden if she could pick a couple, she returned to share the delights of fresh walnut, very welcome after all we had heard about them.

When we arrived back at the car park, Narges and Alissa ran up to the touristy area for lunch supplies, and I parked myself at the entrance, just to make sure the taxi didn’t go without us, you understand.

While I sat, I overheard (okay, eavesdropped on) a Slovenian driver and two Argentinean cyclists saying goodbye, the Argentinean man praising the Slovenian on how much help he was, and the Slovenian being typically laid-back and self-effacing. They asked a party of passing Swedes to take a photo of them all together, and the Slovenian said, “You know where he’s from? He’s from Argentina. They cycled here!”
The Swede with the camera paused. “All the way?”

The taxi arrived as Alissa and Narges arrived back with a burger (Narges) and a pizza (for Alissa and I). Alissa, being an angel, also brought more water and a diet coke, though she made me promise to drink all the water before the coke. We, and lunch, piled into the taxi with two Israeli women not with the tour group but here for the IOSOT conference and a man from NE England, who must have wondered what had possessed him to get in a taxi with all these people babbling about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We made our way to the castle via an exceptionally windy road (i.e. lots of turns and bends, not the four winds), then when we all disembarked, the three of us did what probably few tourists do and spent the first five minutes of our precious hour wolfing down pizza and bottles of water before walking to the castle entrance. Narges spotted some more walnuts en route and restocked.

We walked across a somewhat unstable drawbridge to the castle entrance, my photographing of which was cut short by Alissa yelling back, “Kathleen, it’s cool in here!” and I bolted.

A nice Slovenian girl took our tickets and asked where we were from – Scotland now our standard sensible answer – and chatted with Narges and Alissa before exclaiming, “Ah! I love the Scottish accent! RRRRR!” There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that.

The castle was indeed exciting, being built into a cliff, with a secret passage behind it and a jousting area in the front. Thrilling! Not to mention the obligatory decorative antlers. Unfortunately the tour route signs took us up a number of steep staircases, so I knew there was no way to get back down them that would make me happy. But the things we do in the name of education.

Predjama had some very pretty rooms filled with furniture that – I must admit – I could imagine turning up at McGregor’s auction in St Andrews. Allison would have approved. Alissa and I were independently intrigued to find Charles Edward Stuart – Bonnie Prince Charlie – gazing down from a portrait…

…and slightly disappointed to find, from the plaque at the bottom, that it was the strikingly similar-looking Count Jozef Windischgraetz.

We saw the toilet where Erazem (the Slovenian Robin Hood, if your believe the stories, though I’m not sure Robin Hood was ever a robber baron hiding in a castle) was finally killed. He was betrayed by a servant who told his enemies that he could be targeted “where even the king must go alone” and shone a light to be helpful.

At this point, Narges had to be dissuaded from disappearing over the side of the lofty balcony to reach some berries she had spotted. Of course, Alissa turned up with her “Go, Narges, go!” and undid all my good work. Bad influence, that one.

We found a shop – of course – and Narges and Alissa tried Slovenian brandy. Narges made an interesting noise, and Alissa settled on a bottle to take back to Matt, which may partly make up for the fact that we went to a cave without him.

Coming back to the taxi, Narges found some crab apples just out of reach. Alissa volunteered to jump up from a high point and succeeded in getting one, which made Narges even happier! While they found the WC, I went on to the taxi, which is how I found myself having a conversation with the English guy about the relative merits of Scottish castles in the middle of Slovenia. Stirling was naturally the victor, with us in agreement that both Caerlaverock and Castle Stalker were pretty cool.

We were ferried back into town in perfect time for the bus back to Ljubjana, and having abandoned Piran we found ourselves with a little bit of afternoon left, so decided to detour through the centre proper, which we had barely glimpsed in our national touring. I looked at the map, and following my finger waved vaguely (I was tired) in the direction of some Art Nouveau (but I still had my instincts), we weaved down beside the very pink Church of the Annunciation.

Finding an ice cream café, we sat down. I found my chair too far away and reached down to pull it forward. Unfortunately the seat lifted up, so when I sat down again I trapped my finger in the mechanism and sat on it. Ow. I briefly thought it was broken, but when the initial pain subsided a little I could move it. I was distracted, however, by Alissa’s noises of approval at the pistachio ice cream, and decided to have one scoop. Excellent! The wedding march blared out of the church. We carried on eating.

After, we found ourselves on the main square, Prešernov trg, with its stature of Franc Prešeren, Slovenia’s national poet.

He lived a tragic life, his great love Julija Primic rejecting him multiple times before dying, his best friend dying of pneumonia after an unfortunate swim in the river, and he died young himself, but he wrote some very upbeat poetry, one of which, “A Toast”, is Slovenia’s national anthem.

Around this square were some of the Art Nouveau buildings by Jože Plečnik, including my favourite, the Central Merkur building.

Plečnik was lured back from Prague (where he also designed a bunch of stuff) by the prospect of a professorship in his native city and the opportunity to redesign the centre of the city in a period of regeneration. So many of Ljubljana's public buildings are seriously Art Nouveau.

We took photos on the Triple Bridge, with us in various combinations – you just have to – before proceeding down the river. There are some stalls and riverside cafes along the banks, but with so many willow trees hanging around it feels relaxed… and there are some lovely buildings.

We sat at a fountain, getting splashed for a while, Alissa with her feet in the fountain, then went on the prowl for food.

We sat by the river in the shade, listening to music from the bridge behind us. Narges ordered a pizza, thinking that the regular size sounded reasonable and the smallest one too cheap to be filling. The result was huge! With her leftovers and a willingness to share, she nearly became the Bird Woman of Ljubljana, until we begged her to stop – the pigeons were gathering all around us in a sort of alarmingly Hitchcockian way. We laughed, though, when a vigilant sparrow stole some pizza crust from right under the beak of a particularly mean looking pigeon.

Narges then said, with real conviction, "You know, I’m pretty sure your finger will drop off," which caught my attention and she went into great detail before she noticed that Alissa and I looked alarmed and said "Sorry, did I say finger? I meant your nail."

After we paid the incredibly enthusiastic waiter – “cashorcard” delivered as a single word in a bored monotone – we crossed the Triple Bridge again and looked around Joze Plečnik’s Market Colonnade (an real masterpiece) where we found a cool drinking fountain, a welcome development.

We came across the rehearsal of the choirs for Beethoven’s Ninth the following evening, at the opening ceremony for IOSOT, where we met one of St Mary’s own lecturers, also presenting at the conference. Then it was back to the hostel, and collapsement.

Goodnight, Marjeta and Tomasz.

Read On: Slovenian Summer #4: Lounging About in Laid-Back Ljubljana