Ljubljana: travelling, parties and cheap food

Hello/Zdravo,

I just got back home from the little country Slovenia. This country is even smaller then my home country, Belgium. My boyfriend, Jan, is on Erasmus in its capital: Ljubljana. He already knew the place, since he has some good Slovenian friends. From what he told me, I knew Slovenia was a nice place to go hiking in the mountains and swimming in the sea and that for us Slovenia is a cheap place to live. So, with these ideas in my mind, I flew to Slovenia on last Friday. My plane ticket with WizzAir only costed me around €20. That is almost as expensive as taking the shuttle bus from my town to the airport in Belgium. From the airport in Slovenia, we directly went to Ljubljana's Open Kitchen. There I tasted some very special vegan burgers and wraps.

I have been told that this Open Kitchen event takes place on every Friday, when the weather is good. After enjoying the cosy atmosphere, the food and some very nice unfiltered white beers, we went partying. We went to a place called “Cutty Sark” and after that to the “Parlament Pub”, where people were dancing on their seats. The music was mostly mainstream, but they had a very good dj and I enjoyed myself a lot. That gave me some good impressions of Ljubljana by night already.

The next two days we rented a car and traveled around the Slovenian coast with Marko, a friend of Jan’s. I will write a second blog about the Slovenian coast soon. On my third day in Slovenia, I finally saw Ljubljana by day. Ljubljana is the largest city of this country and is a very big student city, still I believe the city was quite small. Everything is within walking distance, and even for me it was not a problem (where you have to know, that I ripped my cruciate ligament in my left knee, so that I walk on crutches). Ljubljana, such as all the other cities that I’ve seen in Slovenia, is a city with a lot of nature all around.

At midday, we ate in a place called “Central Station” with Jan’s lunch card, called “Bonni”. Thanks to this card, one can eat for a very low price in a restaurant and gets a soup, a salad, a main dish and a fruit as dessert. Since this is most of the time too much for one person only, we shared our €2,30 meal. The waiters did not make any problem out of it, and even gave cutlery to both of us, which I was positively surprised about. When we wanted to visit Ljuljana’s castle, we had less good news. I couldn’t walk, because it was on the top of a hill. The elevator isn't free there either, one ticket to go and come back costs €3, so together we’d have had to pay €6 just to go upstairs. And in the castle, there would have been a lot of stairs again. Because of this, we decided to wait and come back to see this castle when my knee is healed.

Somehow, I did not take any picture where you can see or feel how Ljubljana really looks like. But to show you the vibes, I share this picture that a friend of mine took on a colder day (Melis Caner):

The following day we had a chiller day and walked around in the Tivoli Park, nearby Jan his campus. The day after we rented a car to go to Treviso, because that is where I was going to take my plane back home from (because the ticket was cheaper via Ryanair). This city was very small. Also, an old Italian friend of mine came to see me for a few hours, which I really appreciated (she came all the way from Bologna). So, the day in Treviso was a very nice closure for my little holiday!

Thank you for reading, if you have any questions about this country or something else, you can always write me!

Here some tips if you are planning a city trip to Ljubljana:

Cheap and good food:

• The Wok
• Burek Olimpija
• Pizzeria Foculus
• Central Station

Clubs/Bars:

• Parlament Pub
• Cutty Sark
• Metelkova (this is an old factory with a lot of clubs and bars)

Slovenian beers:

• Union (definitely try the unfiltered beers)
• Laško