Tiffany's Birthday- Slovenia!

(Sat. Dec. 12th- Sun. Dec. 13th)

Aaaaaaaaand we arrived in Tiffany's second (or third?) home- Slovenia! Ljubljana, to be exact- the capital of Slovenia. They have their name stamped into the grates of the sewer, which I guess many cities do.

Here was the sign for the bus station- my first bit of Slovene language.

I think when we arrive it was 2am or so. We had checked before to make sure that someone would be working at our hostel and that we could get in that late. Luckily, it was pretty close by, and Tiffany (mostly) still remembered her way around the city. It wasn't in the best neighborhood but it wasn't too bad either, we were right on the edge of downtown (which wasn't very big).

Our hostel was Tiffany's pick, I don't remember if she knew about it from before or just read about it, but it was a converted jail, I think for political prisoners. It was quite small. Hostel Celica: http://www.souhostel.com/

The hallways were crowned with drainage on the sides obviously so they could hose down the floors.

Each hostel room used to be an individual cell, and they left the cell doors on the rooms, behind the actual normal door. So you could lock the cell door if you wanted to, too :)

It was kind of a fun place! It was one of the highest rated hostels on HostelWorld.com. And wasn't terribly expensive, as hostels go, though it was more than many of the ones in Ljubljana. Worth it though. They even had decent breakfast, which means they had more than toast and watered down juice, like many places.

Also, each room was designed by a different architect or firm, and their names were on the outside of the rooms. Sometimes they give tours of the hostel and show other rooms- I of course was dying to see in all the rooms, cause I saw in one and it was totally different from ours.

But here was our room- walls on the left and right, with the bed diagonal across the middle (yeah, TINY rooms) and another bed above it going the opposite diagonal. Pretty cool. Tiny, but lots of little cubbies and stuff. Hey, at least it had a window...and there was another that tipped open, up by the top bed for when I got hot :)

Here's the outside, the next morning. This is the entrance on one end. I liked the bright colors, mostly :) It was Tiffany's birthday that day, so hopefully it'd be a good one! I was glad we were in her favorite country (who she rooted for over the US in the World Cup, just fyi)

The hostel was in an artist's co-op kind of place- a small block that was fenced in, with a couple other buildings that must be studios, which also had small bars in the first floors. Lots of...art, everywhere...

These just speak for themselves. Maybe people live here too...

I don't even know where to begin with this stuff.

Here's the back of the hostel- the yellow and red windows are what was by the lower bed, and the caged-in window was up by my bed.

We started off on our day's adventure though, walking towards downtown, mostly by Tiffany's memory/intuition. She lived here for five years when she was in high school, and did quite a bit of walking, since its a pedestrian-friendly European city with everything pretty nearby.

Across the way, behind the train tracks we'd come in on, I could see this mountainous Dutch-looking building, and requested that we explore it later on.

This was the side of a building. Dunno why there were circular recesses in the concrete, but someone decided to decorate them. It was funny.

The mountainous building.

A glassy building- we're right on the edge of downtown now. The building up ahead is the tallest in Ljubljana, and is where Tiffany's parents used to work (if my memory serves me :)

Just around the corner was the main north-south street that cut through Ljubljana.

These boxes were interesting to me because they held advertisements on all four sides- and yet they were boxes, with interiors, so what was in them? Weird. The second box back you can kinda see actually is uncovered and they used the inside for a display, which makes more sense. But maybe they've been getting robbed or something...

I like cool shaped buildings, I like cantilevers.

Dunno what we were talking about, but Tiffany got frustrated with me and made her annoyed-slightly-angry face. I made it back to lighten the mood and show her what she looked like and disarm her a bit. Sometimes it works :) I thought twice, or five times, about posting this picture cause I look supremely gay.

Apparently I succeeded in disarming her since she decided to take a picture, thinking it was funny...

Another cool cantilever, though this one is pretty easy, structurally.

All these pictures were really from the same plaza, around in circles. This was some art piece or something. Tiffany decided to lay down and have a little rest.

We made our way from the more modern section of downtown (this sounds big, but we're talking about a few blocks) into the older part of the city- narrow pedestrian streets, with cobblestones. More my style :) We were gonna go find the place Tiffany lived, and some of her other favorite places.

Here is one of my favorite places- any place in any city November and December that is selling hot spiced wine :) (kuhano vino).

Here was a purely pedestrian street with some very contemporary buildings stuck in between the old ones. I like seeing something different like that.

You can't quite tell here, but this is a place where three bridges cross the river, right next to each other, fanning out from the center of the old city center. You can see one bridge in the middle and one off to the left. All pedestrian. This is where the Christmas market was, and the Christmas tree, and lots of decoration. Triple bridges is weird, but was cool.

Just a cool decorated building.

An old church, also right on the main city center area.

Church in the background. We were walking down the river, down the row of temporary booths, selling mostly handmade Slovene things, from artists and other people- jewelry, clothing, candles and other trinkets, candy, etc. Lots of fun. Festive. Christmasy. Tiffany liked to say that Slovenes were so crafty :)

Here's a little booth of honey liquor. We got a little bottle of it for my dad- and some for me too :) It was spensive though! Cool little bottles though.

Another view of the river, past the booths, with all the apartmenty buildings on the other shore. Probably another "for my mom" picture :)

And here's a landmark. Tiffany's favorite coffee/tea shop. "Caj" means tea in Slovene, and it was called Cajna Hisa. With some little hats over some letters...I could give you a language lesson but I won't bother. But basically "caj" is pronounced "chai" (like the TEA) because the c has a hat over it and j's are pronounced as y's- like in Ljubljana.

Here was where Tiffany used to live. Took her a couple looks to get it right- she was a little confused at first. (Geez, I thought you lived there for a couple years, right ;)

This was the street her family's place was on- the main shopping street- yes, pedestrian only. Lots of little cafes, chocolate shops, restaurants, etc. The blue shop is apparently where she used to like going to get gyros (I think). So we went there and got a gyro later one night. She was hungry. That happens a lot :)

Here's a little chocolate shop. They had a tiny sleigh outside full of little chocolates, that we presumed were free, since other people were taking them. I uh, stocked up with a few of em :) And we went inside and bought some kinda expensive, kinda delicious dark chocolate squares. They had different spices like curry, poppy, etc. in them. They were Christmas presents for my family. And then I ate most of them cause no one else did...

These I liked. In a few places in the city. Bins hooked to the ground, for recycling different stuff, and it looks like the ground around them opens up, so there must be bigger storage spaces underneath them.

Walking further down the street, we found a Spanish bar. Cupiterija (spelled in Slovene, would be called a Chupiteria). Chupitos are shots. And next to it is the name- Hijo de Puta. Which I found hiLARious, because probably most people had no idea what it meant...and it means Son of a Bitch. That was the name of the little bar!

Aaaaaand the bar had a cow on the ceiling. Upside down. No explanation for that one really.

The menus. They say Son of a Bitch on them. Hysterical.

Tiffany was uh, hungry, so she had some pasta and wine (I guess the wine helps with the hunger?). And we had a chance to warm up which was nice.

In the bathroom there I found something somewhat unexpected. This is a person. They have one leg because the other is crossed over the first, as if the sculpture was sitting down with its leg over one knee...before it got a sink carved into its back.

Ah, the best time in Ljubljana- the evening. The sky turned a cool blue, all the Christmas lights came on, all the booths lit up. Pink church in the background again.

One of Tiffany's favorite booths. Where she bought some gifts- including earrings for her friend Diana (we won't say what happened to those).

Funny thing is when we approached the booths, many people would initially speak Italian to us, assuming we were Italian- the eastern coast of Italy borders Slovenia, and there were a lot of Italian tourists there, so many Slovenes spoke Italian. Tiffany said tourism had changed a lot since she lived there, before their country was on the euro. Didn't used to be all these Italians!

Here was the main square (which was a circle) and some of the Christmas lights. They were very non-Christmasy, but they were cool. There was a outer space theme in the foreground, and in the background was a reproduction theme that you'll see later...you can see the X and Y chromosome in the bottom right though.

Bottom right here you can see a winding strand of DNA...

Dunno what this stuff was but it looked cool.

In this photo (thank you, sweet camera) you can see Ljubljana castle up on the hill, lit in blue. There's a tram car that goes up there, but its not far to walk. So we were gonna walk. But not tonight.

This was just a building I liked. It looked very...early Modernist, or something. Tried to look it up online by the address and figure out who designed it...I failed.

Another "cool building".

We continued walking (always something to see somewhere, never enough time) and we found an art installation down the river, hanging from trees- hand painted, Chinese lantern-type things.

The river in general looked great- lots of Christmas lights. Good job, you crafty Slovenes.

We found another little park, which had some other art installation in it. These little columns, with platforms in them...what the heck were they?

Yeah, they were iron castings of peoples' hands. Weird. Lots of them. All different. One you could even tell was like holding and clicking a computer mouse :)

One more shot of the city center and the lights. Nice. Blue.

We stopped somewhere to finally get dinner, for her birthday, wherever she wanted, and this place looked nice, festive, warm, etc...aaaaaaand they weren't serving food anymore. It was a little French restaurant that reminded me of Paris. So Tiffany got a Coke. I don't remember why :)

We warmed up a bit and found a nice pizza place. Got some delicious pizza. And the drink you can see next to it is something Tiffany enlightened me about- Bitter Lemon. What a tasty soda. We had it a few more times, here and there- its lemon soda, but with a strong bitter finish. Just like my little Italian sodas that my dad got me hooked on :)

I liked the strong verticality of this building. That is all.

This was a parking garage. And nicely designed, a fun building that could have been boring. Good work, someone.

This looks like pineapples. Dunno what its made out of.

End of the night. Relaxing time. Internetting time. Lucky for us, our hostel had a hookah room. Sweet. For those of you who are thinking we were smoking hashish or something, its just flavored tobacco. It goes through water in the vase and is cooled before you inhale it. I don't remember what the flavor was, but we had smoked some in Morocco too. Its fun.

Sorta like smoking a pipe or something. You can get lots of smoke though! Tiffany was enjoying taking pictures of me cause she wasn't feeling like smoking it much.

Dunno what this picture was for exactly. But it was the closing moments of Tiffany's birthday. Happy birthday :)