Ljubljana & Slovenia!

Slovenia is an awesome country!

Ljubljana is such a pretty city it could easily be in Slovakia ;-)

I had a great time here and met some great people.

The train ride from Zagreb was nice and for a lot of the journey the train passes close of the Sava river which, in this part at least, is a milky greeny/blue colour which looks great against the trees and mountains.


This is a view of Preseren square taken from the top of the tower of Ljubljana castle. There is the pink church and you can see a little of the triple bridge.


Preseren square as seen from ground, facing the triple bridge. It's hard to believe that 3-4 years ago traffic used to pass through here.


The statue of the poet Preseren. Part of one of his poems is now the Slovenian national anthem, "A Toast...".


The triple bridge from the side.


Ljubljana is in the middle of Slovenia and there are many places to see that are 2 hours at most away.

This is lake Bohinj which is just within the Triglav national park. It's a great place to see.





This is lake Bled which is perhaps better known than Bohinj and is certainly more developed. It has an island in the middle and you can hire boats!


A recent tradition in Slovenia is "Matura" which is when all the high school students take to the streets and dance in pairs after exams are finished.

It was a really, really cool thing to see.


Much of the architecture in Ljubljana was designed by Joze Plecnik who designed his own house on what was then the outskirts of the city. It is now a museum and contains many of the man's personal belonging and tools of his trade. It was very interesting to see.


I loved Slovenia and Ljubljana especially and stayed for two weeks in the end!

It's a very relaxing city, very safe, very clean and pretty, has all the modern shops, nice places to eat and drink and is only an hour or two from really cool places in the countryside.

Ljubljana is somewhere I can imagine living.

Everyone - visit Slovenia!!

Steve.

Zagreb

I really like Zagreb.

It's a very pretty city with lots of parks and other green spaces.

It felt very safe and clean.

The buildings are not really tall and there seems to be a uniformity which makes the city feel like it's "finished". Other cities cannot boast this.



An extremely short funicular railway. You can actually walk up all the steps in about a minute and it's not that steep.



The main square which is a big meeting place at evenings and weekends.

There are also lots of cultural events happening here and I saw a group called "InCulto" perform their song "East European Funk".

This was actually the Lithuanian entry into the Eurovision song contest and I saw them first!



My visit to Zagreb was really good and I would definitely visit again.

I thought that the museum of the city of Zagreb was especially interesting.

Steve.

Budapest

Budapest was not as nice as I thought it would be.

It's quite dirty and noisy.

When I was there it was also very hot and humid which I don't like and combined with the dust and smoke coming out of the back of the cars and buses it wasn't a pleasant city to walk around.

Besides this though it did seem quite safe and friendly and the architecture is very grand in places.

I think I may like Budapest more in the wintertime.

This is the citadel hill with the statue of liberty on the top. This is one of only a few statues from post world war 2 / pre-communism that were not removed or destroyed by the communist regime.


The chain bridge.


I preferred Budapest at night, when it was cooler. I took some pictures of the city from atop the citadel hill.





The castle hill during the daytime.


I think that the weather spoiled my visit to Budapest so I think it would be a good idea to visit again during the cooler months.

Steve.

Visit to the Auschwitz Museums

Considering its significance in world history, I thought to dedicate a whole post to my visit to the Auschwitz museums.

In Krakow there are many opportunities to take tours to see Auschwitz but I chose to visit it independently.

It was a fittingly grey and overcast day and alone, I took a train to the little town Oswiecim. The train was old, slow and dirty and I had no idea how easy it would be to get from the train station the the museums.

I arrived, asked for directions and eventually found my way to the Auschwitz I camp. Its well preserved and has proper exhibitions detailing things like what happened when new prisoners arrived at the camp, what happened to those who survived to live in the camp, what happened to their possessions etc. There are also individual huts dedicated to the victims of different nations.

I then chose to walk to the Birkenau camp about 3km away. This camp is a totally different experience. It is much, much bigger and it appeared that only the brick built buildings were original, the wooden ones having been restored. But the place is massive and its hard to understand how many people must have lived and died there.

The camps have an extensive history which I cannot give here and so for more information click here.

The main gate at the Auschwitz I camp:


Between the huts in Auschwitz I:



The train tracks leading up to the Birkenau camp. Actually, this is something that the people on the bus tours see only very briefly because the road crosses the tracks just behind where I took the picture.


Inside one of the huts where the prisoners lived.



One of the two gas chambers that were destroyed retreating German army.


A view from inside the camp looking back down the the main entrance.


Those prisoners who we selected to live in the camp were taken to this building where they were introduced to camp life. It contains an exhibition of photographs found amongst the possessions of the prisoners. The photographs are just regular portraits, holiday snaps, baby photos - photo's of the people living normal lives before the war.




It's not a fun museum to visit but it was definitely worth going to see it.

Steve.

Krakow

I really enjoyed my visit to Krakow (pronounced Krakov!).

The architecture is really nice, the town clean and safe and there is a circular park which forms a border against the ring road which surrounds the city center.

I arrived at just after 6:00am in the morning having taken the overnight train from Prague so the city was very quiet at first.

Pictures of the main square:





This is the castle:


A view of the river from the castle walls:


In the park which surrounds the city center, there are fountains and statues and other interesting things. This is a sculpture dedicated to Frederic Chopin:


Krakow is a really nice little city and has some interesting places to visit locally and on day trips too such as the salt mines and the Auschwitz museum.

One thing I noticed was that the people here work very long hours!

Steve.