Return journey

Ljubljana station at 6.45 a.m.

On Thursday I ate lunch outside and had to take off my coat; this morning I needed both woollies for the 10-minute walk to the station*. It’s going to be a l o n g day: 07.27 departure and (all being well) 19.04 arrival in Cologne.

I have provisions: cantuccini (which also did for breakfast), an apple, nuts and a cheese sandwich from yesterday which I hope not to have to resort to. I made the 8-minute connection at Villach with ease and am currently on a train to Mannheim. Because of yesterday’s Deutsche Bahn strike, I must change in Salzburg – hence not the direct journey I had booked. That suits me: it breaks up the seven hours on the same train I had steeled myself for.

* Quite a lot of snow has fallen since Wednesday on the railway line between Villach and Salzburg, and it is actually snowing lightly at the moment.

Last day in Ljubljana

Wandering around this morning I realised what the short antennae-looking structures were on the front of so many buildings, private and public: they are flag supports. I also discovered that, unlike Trieste, Ljubljana is equal ops in the matter of semi-nudity. I found crumbling art nouveau apartment blocks. While recce-ing routes, I realised once again how tiny Ljubljana is: a stone’s throw from the railway station, the streets wouldn’t have been out of place in a large village. Spaced-out low houses with large gardens where an hen or pig would not have been out of place. I also went into the folksily painted bank opposite the hotel: yes, it is equally garish inside.

After lunch, the group reconvened and we finished off Plečnik: St Michael’s on the Marsh and the Žale cemetery. St Michael’s (1937-38) was designed for a never-built suburb. It’s on (obviously) marshy ground so is lightly built and the tower is detached from the church. Ingenuity played a part to keep costs low: the columns are repurposed sewage pipes and the wood is salvaged. As with the reading room, the steps are dramatic.

Finally, the cemetery (1940): a giant propylaea at the entrance marks the passing from one sphere to another. Behind are several mortuary chapels (built on site to relieve the traffic jams caused by the cortèges from church to cemetery). It draws on all aspects of classical and Mediterranean architecture – and all done in concrete.

By this stage I was definitely drawing parallels between Plečnik in Ljubljana and Gaudi in Barcelona. Two pious, innovative, single-minded architects who left their marks on their cities.

News came to me after lunch of today’s Deutsche Bahn strike. (At least we in Britain have plenty of warning about strikes.) Relief that I had rejected my first idea of catching the sleeper train tonight from Ljubljana. Cancelled, of course. Phew!

Ljubljana day 4

Heavy rain this morning sent us to the National Gallery, where I discovered Slovenian artists I had never heard of. As I wandered around I thought about the themes I was following: observing the influence of the Impressionists, plein air painting, influences of Cézanne, divisionist painting and the importance in the last years of the Austrian-Hungarian empire of nationalist/patriotic sentiment: the recording of the Slovenian countryside (poplars, willows) and peasant life. My favourites were the poplars and willows.

After lunch, we visited the University reading room designed by Jože Plečnik. He was definitely an idiosyncratic and occasionally inspired architect: the full-height windows in the reading room are wonderful. The outside is a curtain wall, so the textile-like walls are not load-bearing; the windows are angled, giving articulation to the elevations. The stairs – funnelling you from benighted darkness up to this enlightened realm of knowledge and study – were sombre, more like the entrance to a tomb. Sadly there were no books and no students for us the disturb: everything is online now and the books are packed away.

And then, since the sun was shining, we walked back to the hotel past more Vienna Secession houses. Many have been restored and others are undergoing that process. I enjoy seeking out the decorative elements.

In other news, I have been given a different room in the hotel because the keypad failed in my old one. I now have a balcony with a view:

It’s a bank: the two female figures at the top are holding a distaff and bag of money to represent industriousness and prosperity.

Ljubljana day 3

The day when Ljubljana ceased to be a swirl of atomic impressions and coalesced into an historically grounded unity.

On a side note, on my post-breakfast walk I realised (for the umpteenth time) that anything I do to promote “green” causes is entirely quixotic. Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders – but it makes not an iota of difference. Waitresses using leaf blowers to round up a dozen recalcitrant leaves or fronds from the riverside cafés, each high table with its own electric heater . . .

Today: a close-up on Jože Plečnik, whose career stretched from the Austrian-Hungarian empire (trained under Otto Wagner) to Tito. He also worked in Vienna and Prague, but Ljubljana was his big drawing board. He canalised the river and redesigned the river banks and sluice to regulate the flow, built bridges, created through-routes up from the river, and designed the University library, the market colonnades, churches and the cemetery. His style began as Viennese Secession and became more idiosyncratic, combining classicism with an ideal of town planning.

As a character, he sounds unaccommodating and dictatorial. His house (which he redesigned and added to) is simple but very particular: a simple wooden chair built to fit into a particular corner with underseat storage for cigarettes, a meeting room big enough for only three people to sit, furniture and floors made up of scavenged leftovers and unwanted (or unmissed) odds and ends. His work, though, endures, and I realise that some of the vistas I was inspired to snap on my first afternoon were practically curated by Plečnik: the footbridge with its columns, the stairs up from the river to the square with its light-dripping ionic column. (He was very good at light fittings.) The Church of St Francis of Assisi in a nearby suburb is most unusual: elongated pyramids and cones pleased him, but the interior is quite shockingly square..

In the afternoon a boat trip, during which I saw some of the coypu which live hereabouts.

More Ljubljana

Fortified by lunch (pizza: when in doubt, stick to Italian) and sun, I found a way up to the hilltop castle. I stopped to photograph the Dragon Bridge (practically compulsory for tourists). It’s from 1901, Vienna Secession to its clawtips, and is made of reinforced concrete, the first to be built without a support structure. (Not sure how they managed that.)

The views over Ljubljana (it really is a Lilliputian capital) were great: I looked down on the skyscraper where I had had my morning coffee. It was nice to be amongst trees again, with celandines and violets blooming in the sunshine: Plečnik’s green spaces are very urban still. I returned to the centre and had a drink beside Plečnik’s colonnaded market, with its loggias and steps up from the river (is that how produce would arrive?). The smell of the morning’s fish market lingered, and I liked the idea of a fresh, daily market still in operation, like the Rialto market in Venice.

Ljubljana day 2

I feel a little more at home now. The centre is closed to motorised traffic, so walking is pleasant and easy. It’s a very human-sized city, despite its capital status, and the river forms a lovely through-and-across route. I shall find out more about Jože Plečnik later, but – as far as I can penetrate the dense academic-speak of a leaflet about him – he designed the centre around public spaces (like parks), thoroughfares and institutions to provide a pleasant environment that meets the needs – social, cultural and political – of its inhabitants. One can see why town planning was once an Olympic category!

There is a “skyscraper” – 12 floors – built in 1933, so of course I had to go up and have a coffee and a slice of gibanica (apple strudel with poppyseeds: it was actually warmer than the coffee). From that height I could see that Plečnik’s principles have not wholly survived: low rise gives way to high rise. Like Turin, Ljubljana is bordered by mountains; at Villach there were passengers with skis which seems to me – walking around without benefit of vest or woollie – quite incongruous.

I walked back to the station to make sure of my route (it’s an early start on Tuesday) and entered a less polished and rather shabbier world. It seemed to me that, like Patras and Kalamata, the railway station had been turned over to long-distance bus travel. From one stand you could catch a bus to Malmö or Oslo.

Since I am currently reading the first part of Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, I am pondering the nature of conquest. I am developing a view of car dealerships as the Panzer brigades of capitalism, paving the way for battalions of tourists to lay the ground for world domination by consumer capitalism.

My photos are still random, but less so to my mind: those poplars on the riverside mark the spot where I am currently eating my lunch in the sunshine. I also indulged myself in a spot of abstract photography.

Ljubljana

This afternoon I finally arrived in Ljubljana, where it is definitely spring. As soon as I had checked into the hotel I set off to wander around at random. It’s a small and walkable city (the capital of Slovenia) with a large population of students and tourists, which means that I can speak English wherever I go.

Ljubljana is delightful but probably rather too polished now for my taste: sushi bars, chichi second-hand shops, Tito-era nostalgia, etc*. I’ve come too late: my preference is for something a little more unrenovated. Zeitz fits the bill – but it’s selfish of me to hold to that view when the locals would probably prefer to have a bustling centre and reasons to keep young people from seeking their fortunes elsewhere. Also hypocritical: in reality, I want a comfortable hotel, vegetarian food and an outward-facing culture that caters for tourists who don’t speak the language.

I love the fact that, when Ljubljana was transferred from Napoleon’s hands back into the Hapsburgs’, it was the centre of the Kingdom of Illyria. (“Twelfth Night” was the first Shakespeare play our class did, and I assumed Illyria was twinned with Ruritania.) There was an earthquake in 1895 and the city was rebuilt; hence many of the buildings are art nouveau/Viennese Secession.

My early dinner was pasta with vegetables: unmemorable but in a pleasant restaurant.

I wandered somewhat aimlessly and my photographs are similarly haphazard. The rest of the group arrives tomorrow evening, so that will give my meanderings some direction on Friday.

* Exemplified by the wonderful awning and entrance to an old department store. I know it was designed as a temple to consumerism, but it’s now a very unsubtle one.

En route to Ljubljana

The beginning of my train journeys today (the last day for a while, thank goodness) overlapped old cycling holidays as far as Rosenheim and Prien am Chiemsee. The spectacular views started outside Rosenheim: snow-covered peaks. I kept looking up from my kindle to see what I was missing. Past Salzburg the railway line followed a valley through which everything was funnelled – both peak-top castles and cement works. I’d forgotten that my coffee of choice in Austria is called a verlängerter.

I changed trains – and centuries – at Villach. I crossed the platform and stood in front of the train door looking for the Open Sesame button to press. Nope: there was a handle. Which I had to turn. And then hoist myself and my case up about 4 feet. The train was a corridor train. The air-conditioning (it’s warm and sunny here) was, despite the compartment controls, an open window. The toilets – scrupulously clean – open direct onto the tracks (single-track, of course). There are foot pedals to flush and for the taps plus that three-pronged device for a shaving of soap. The railway stations are also of their era (although many other buildings proclaim post-EU prosperity). I am in a foreign country at last. I think back to train journeys in Italy or Greece decades ago and expect to see “è pericoloso sporgersi”. I have learned – thanks to the Slovenian in my compartment – how to say “good day” and “thank you”. I am ready for my adventure!