Notes on the first part of my 2025 Europe trip. See also the middle part and the last part.

Last year, Rick Flynn told me about his bike trip in Croatia, and it sounded like my kind of thing, so I book a tour (the wimpy kind, where they carry your stuff from town to town in a van) in Slovenia, and combine it with visiting Vitalii and attending part of Maryse's Ancient Music Festival. Ann, on her way to Vienna, joins me for a few days at the start.

Thu 17 July

Eli drives Ann and me to SFO in plenty of time for the 1:35 flight to AMS. At checkin, KLM weighs my computer bag and carry-on; it's just over their 12 Kg limit (WTF??) so I have to check the bag (see below).

The flight (787) is smooth. There are lots of movies but none appeals. I listen to Bach arrangements for 2 pianos by Tal & Groethuysen, and Khatia Buniatishvili playing the Schubert Bb sonata, which (at least the 1st mvt) is great.

The walls are covered with an irregular dot pattern. Turns out these are overhead views of people - interesting. They serve chopped-up pancakes for breakfast.

Fri 18 July

We have a tight connection (1:05) in AMS. The plane lands on time but parks far from the terminal. There's an inexplicable 10+ minute delay while they find a rolling staircase. Business class gets to deplane first - grrrr. Then a lengthy bus ride to the terminal. They let us get in a 'short line' for passport control, and that's pretty fast. Then we race-walk about 1 Km to the B terminal, making our flight in the nick of time.

Question: why are they parking planes on the fringes of the airport and using buses? There are plenty of gates.

The 1.5 hour flight to Ljubljana seems to take forever. My stomach is killing me; maybe something I ate. I spend some time in the lav.

At baggage claim there's a big group of youth picking up backpacks. Our bags don't emerge, and we report it to the clerk, who says they'll arrive tomorrow - there's only 1 flight per day. So I have no sleeping pills etc. Thanks, KLM, for making me check my carry-on. Grrrr.

We take a cab with a young female driver. She tells us about 'open kitchen': a big outdoor food court every Friday.

We're in the Allegro hotel, on the south edge of the pedestrian-only Old Town. It's nice but run down. There's blueberry brandy (local specialty) in the lobby.

The room is just OK. There's AC, and it's on, but not actually cooling. It's a hot day - 80s or so.

Ann realizes she's lost (presumably on the plane) a bag with various things including sleeping pills. She makes many calls to the airline, airport etc. but it never turns up.

We walk uphill to the Castle. Supposedly from the tower you can see 60% of Slovenia. They show movies in the courtyard at night: the Dylan movie in this case.

We descend the N side of the hill, next to the funicular. We visit the DM (drugstore chain) to get toothbrushes. They have lots of makeup and herbal crap, but no actual drugs or anything useful.

We need sleeping pills. I lead a wild goose chase, first to another DM, then to an actual pharmacy that sells us 10 Claritin for E10.

We go back to hotel to rest, then to the 'open kitchen' for dinner. There are lots of stalls with various ethnic foods. We settle for a sort of bready chicken taco.

We go back to the hotel around 7PM. I do some research on beer places. We head S to a place called Lajbah. When we cross the street delimiting the old town, suddenly there are no tourists, and my mood improves greatly.

Lajbah has a beer menu similar to Fieldwork; lots of IPAs. I get a 'Pliny the Uncle' (ha ha; good). We observe a group of loud muscle-bound youth.

We cross the Ljubljanica river, and go up a side street where the Sax Pub has an outdoor band playing 'stoner rock'.

The Sax Pub

It's a groovy family-friendly scene. We sit and watch. An 8 yr old girl plays with her 5 yr old brother; charming. We check out some adjacent restaurants.

Near the pub is a small house painted in the style of Klimt.

There's also Klimt-related stuff in various stores in town. I'm not sure what the connection is.

I have a zero-sleep night. There are no top sheets, and the comforters are way too hot. The pillow is too thick. Other noises. I make TP ear plugs; uncomfortable. I get up and slam into the sink and door frame in the dark. I set up white noise on laptop. Eventually I give up on sleep and do PHP programming from 4-6 AM.

Sat 19 July

The breakfast buffet is good; eggs to order, warm croissants, Nutella. There's an espresso machine; it's kinda slow, and you need to make 2 double espressos to get a significant amount of coffee.

We head out. I get CBD gummies. We go to the main plaza at 11 AM for a free walking tour of the city. A duo called 'Oskar and Wild' plays street music. There are 3 groups of ~15. The guide (Lucia / Lucy) is fabulously knowledgable and enthusiastic.

The statue in the main square is not of a General but of a poet. He was obsessed with a young woman (unrequited; she married someone else). The statue is gazing into the distance.

Main square and poet statue

At the point where he's gazing, across the square, is a hard-to-see statue of the woman in question.

His love interest

It turns out that most of the city's public spaces and major buildings were designed by one very prolific architect, Joze Plecnik, who also contributed to Vienna and Prague. He designed the triple bridge, the colonnades along the marketplace, the library at the University, and the 'Baker's bridge', where cheating bakers were punished by being lowered into the river in a metal cage and pelted with rotten apples.

Adam and Eve

Castle atop hill

Library; looks climbable

Plecnik didn't have a distinctive style (as did e.g. Gaudi) but had an excellent sense of societal function; e.g. he built wide footbridges so that they'd serve as public meeting places.

Ann buys strawberries in the produce market.

There's a fairly narrow street through the old town. If it were only peds that would be great. But there are also bicyclists, who ride too fast and carelessly. Worse yet are the occasional way-too-fast electric scooter assholes.

We return to the hotel. Our luggage finally arrives around 3:30 PM.

Around 6 PM we search for a restaurant in old town and up the hotel street. We give up and return to the beer place, which serves food. I have chicken lomito, Ann gets fish & chips: OK, but barely.

We walk past Sax Pub again (which is quiet), and continue to the Plecnik house/museum, which has a groovy garden. We visit the adjacent church which has some modern religious art.

Compare with library above

Back at the hotel, we complain about the AC situation. The young woman does what she can. We get a floor fan, and some top sheets. With this (and half an Ambien) I sleep well for a change.

Sun 20 July

Hot again. We take a cab to the bus station and get tix to Bled: only E3.60!

We check our luggage, then walk to the Slovenian National museum, which has two parts: natural history (whale skeleton, minerals, snakes) and human history (archaeology, 60K-year-old bone flute fragment, prehistory, metallurgy, Romans, Celts, Slavs, Christians etc.

Earliest musical instrument?

As usual, when I see a museum like this I'm overwhelmed by the scope of human history, the genius that went into our progress, the hardship that most people endured, and the tendency to have a few privileged assholes who rule by intimidation and violence.

We go to an outdoor cafe around the corner which has big food signs, but no real food. I get healthy but unappetizing cake; Ann gets ice cream.

We visit sprawling Tivoli park, and discuss 'Night and Day' by Cole Porter, and its parodies by Ring Lardner.

We return to bus station, retrieve our luggage, and get on the 3:15 PM bus (Arriva) to Bled.

The 'central bus station' in Bled is a bench. We do the somewhat arduous walk to our lodging (Apartmaji Koman) on Koritenska Cesta, pulling roller bags up a hill. We pass a promising-looking bakery, and a farm stand selling fruit and tomatoes.

The owner, Kristina Koman, welcomes us warmly. It's a fabulous apartment with (working) AC and a kitchen. There's a split of champagne in the fridge to greet us.

Most stores are closed Sundays, but three vending machines on the corner sell eggs, meat, and milk. Ann rests. I walk to the vending machines and bakery: they take cash only. I go back with cash, wait for pizza at the bakery, and buy a loaf of bread, pastries, and a slice. I buy a melon and tomato at farm stand, and quart of milk and 10 eggs from the vending machines.

We walk to the lake (15 min).

The town is one big tourist trap, with many money-extraction businesses: zip lines, adventures, guided hikes, ebikes, tours. All E50-100.

The tourists seem to be almost entirely Slovenian. There's a giant tourist scene along the lake, a gauntlet of food/drink stands. Gelato everywhere, including a blue flavor called 'Unicorn'. Oskar and Wild (see above) reappear.

Everyone's trying to look outdoorsy, walking around in expensive hiking boots like La Sportiva, though (it seems to me) their bodies don't reflect much exercise. Maybe I'm being too harsh.

A line of thousands of cars crawls through town, returning from the national park up the road, headed back towards Ljubljana.

Back home, we have bakery pizza and melon for dinner, with champagne. Nice.

Mon 21 July

Another bad sleep night; no reason. We have breakfast on the balcony, overlooking the beautiful back yard. The guy next door is working atop a scaffold. We notice that the tiled roof have handle-like projections; turns out these are called snow guards.

Kristina brings over 2 slices of home-made walnut cake. What a sweetheart!

We hike around Lake Bled, with a side-trip up Mala Osajnica, an 800' hill.

Bled castle

Glacial lake, cool colors

The trail up has lots of switchbacks and tree roots. There's a long staircase.

The trail signage is kinda useless - arrows pointing in directions that don't correlate with trails. We make a brief navigational error.

At the top there's an overlook w/ a nice view.

The trail going down the other side is gravely and slippery.

A noisy gaggle of young people is climbing a small hill near the bottom. We rejoin the lake-edge trail at Velika Zaka. There's a grassy area, with a business where you can shoot arrows using various kinds of bows at various animal targets (boar, deer, etc.). Or throw axes and knives if you prefer.

We continue around the lake. The trail is shared by peds, bikes, ebikes, trains, and horse carriages. Kinda chaotic. Robotic lawn-mowers patrol the grassy slopes.

We return home, and have dinner at a nice local restaurant, Petelin (Rooster). Me: lamb stew and dumplings; Ann: roast pork and potatoes; both: a serviceable IPA.

We go to the supermarket (Mercator) for bacon, milk, cookies. Ann goes back for the leftovers she left at the restaurant.

Tue 22 July

We walk to the lake, then up the hill to Bled castle. I take a steeper path, then fork off onto a groovy trail.

Note equations on statue

The castle has a small museum.

Peasants after the discovery of amphetamines

There are incidents with asshole tourists. A couple hogs a viewpoint for their lengthy photo-shoot. Ann gets fed up and shoos them away. A group of teenagers walks toward us, taking up the whole path. I knock a couple of them aside with my bony elbows.

We walk to the bus station and catch the 2:50 PM shuttle to Vintgar gorge. We have time to kill waiting for the guide. Ann gets hot dogs, w/ bacon and cheese; you get 2 whether you want them or not: bad. I get a veggie thing: bad.

The guide is a young man named Jan. I discuss karst and Arecibo with him; turns out he's been there, and he's shocked that I've worked there.

We walk through the steep and scenic gorge. The limestone walls of the gorge shed rocks, and are mostly covered with wire mesh to keep rocks from falling on the tourists. Everyone has to wear plastic helmets just in case. In the off-season, workers take down the mesh to let the rocks fall, then put it back (big job).

Jan points out various birds, a long stone bridge (no steel, carries trains) and the hydro generator used during its construction.

Me and Ann on bridge

Jan is from a nearby village and has started a tour business to tropical destinations. We walk through cow pastures w/ great views.

On the return trip, the shuttle bus inexplicably stops and everyone has to get out at a parking lot. The tour company rep is there, and says the 'drivers made an arrangement'. He's fed up with the company and is quitting tomorrow, to teach at a university.

We stop at the cafe near the apt to (finally) try the vaunted Bled cream cake (not sweet; disappointing) and have .3l IPAs.

We have roast-pork leftovers and nectarine for dinner. Yum!

Wed 23 July

Return to Ljubljana. We pack up and catch the 10 AM Arriva bus at Union station near the apartment. The driver plays non-stop accordion music: frenetic but eventually boring. Sounds kinda Mexican.

We call M hotel from the bus station at 11:30 AM: our room is ready! We taxi to M hotel, which is modern-ish and fairly nice. There's slight confusion about multiple rooms, since I have a single as part of the bike trip.

We walk to the old town along the edge of Tivoli Park. We visit the modern art museum and have gelato.

We have beer and food at Lajbah; I get a potato/cheese/onion thing, which sounds good but is not.

Not sure what this is

We walk to Metelkove, an artsy/graffiti/squatter area that supposedly is happening at night, but also a bit dangerous. We're there around sunset and nothing is happening, except for druggies milling around doing nothing.

We taxi back at the hotel. I do some local recon. There's a groovy outdoor bar with several IPAs around the corner. I get E150 from an ATM. There's a bike store right across the street.

Thu 24 July

The local bike store doesn't have gloves. I walk to the Giant bike store (c. 1 mile) and buy gloves and a handlebar phone holder.

We walk to the old town like yesterday, and visit the City Museum, which has lots of stuff about the occupation of Ljubljana by Italian and German asshole fascists in WWII.

The earliest known wheel?

We decide to skip Lajbah, and instead eat at a charming local place near the hotel. I get the 'cooked beef with horseradish', which is ample but not good.

After dinner, we get beers at the place around the corner. Turns out the upstairs is a music venue.

Fri 25 July

I leave for the bike trip; Ann catches a train to Vienna.