Ljubljana, Slovenia

It’s been some time now since I last posted something, I have been quite busy with work and a new role in my volleyball career these past few months. Being occupied with a lot of other things, meant that I haven’t had a lot of “good” ideas what to write about. Now I have decided to write a post about my home city, Ljubljana. I know that most of you who will read this post, already know a lot about the city, but still, you might learn some new things, and see how I present it through my own point of view. And for anyone else that hasn’t been to Ljubljana yet, I hope this post might make you decide to come visit it in the future. 🙂

For those of you that have never heard of Ljubljana before, let me first tell you a few general facts about it and then we’ll move on to my own views. So, Ljubljana is the capital city of a tiny European country, Slovenia. According to Wikipedia, it’s population is 289 518, which also makes it the biggest city in the country, although I usually just round up the number to 300 000, with all the students increasing the number, coming to the city for their studies. There’s a small fort, called Ljubljana Castle, overlooking the city, but I will write a bit more about that some other time. Ljubljana had a few different names throughout its history, and the first one being Emona, when it was a Roman settlement. The earliest mention of the name Ljubljana, or it’s predecessor Luwigana, dates back to early 12th century.

As we’re in the middle of December now, that’s what people describe as the most beautiful time of the year in the city, with all the holiday decorations, Christmas market and everything else happening in the city center. I will admit that it is nice to see the city all lit up with the decorations and everything, but to me it doesn’t really feel that special to be honest, at least not anymore. I’ve already mentioned Ljubljana Castle, and some might already know that I used to work there for 5 years, or rather at the funicular (cable car) going up to the Castle, so seeing the decorations all the time kind of took away that whole magical feeling of the festivities surrounding this Christmas spirit. People might disagree with me on that, saying how can I get tired of all that, but that’s the way it is for me. And those that really know me, would be able to tell you that I don’t really like winter in general, I prefer summer, so that’s another reason why I’m not as excited about this time of the year as most of the other people. But let’s get back on the topic of this post. 😀

Of course Ljubljana has a lot of things happening during summer as well, every friday there’s Open Kitchen going on, next to Ljubljana’s cathedral, where people can try different kinds of food, drinks and anything else like that, you can always find some concerts in the city in the evenings and more and more sports events are being moved to the city centre. But I would point out two events that take place in the summer, that are the most interesting to me. One of them is Beer & Burger Fest, which you can probably figure out what it’s about 😀 and the other, Ljubljana Beach Volley Challenge at Congress Square. If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you already understand why this tournament is among my top events. The tournament itself never ceases to amaze me. We can see a lot of great volleyball games, and the atmosphere surrounding it is always phenomenal! Even though all the matches at the tournament can be interesting, the most spectacular ones happen at night. I’m not only talking about the quality of volleyball displayed on the court, but with everything around the tournament and the ambience.

The city also offers a lot of different choices on what to eat, as is the case in any other big city. People can choose from a variety of world cuisines, starting with Slovenian of course, and then Italian, Mexican, Chinese, some Japanese restaurants as well, fast food is also pretty popular, and I can’t go past all the Balkan food restaurants. You can find almost anything you like here, so anything you want, if you explore the city a little bit, you can find. 🙂 Since I’ve been living here my whole life, and with traveling abroad a bit, I think the prices in the restaurants aren’t that high. You get good food for the amount of money you have to spend. I know some will disagree with me, especially my friends from other parts of Slovenia, where prices can be even lower. Also with that, choosing a good bar or a pub in Ljubljana isn’t that difficult, some offering more diverse selection of local and foreign beers than others. I must say that I don’t go out to clubs very often, I know where most of them are, but that’s about it. 😀

Now, Ljubljana Castle. As I’ve already said in the beginning, I will write more about it some other time, but I will write a few words about it here, too. Since the Castle is one of Ljubljana’s most popular tourist attractions, I do have to include it in this post as well. It is possible to get to the Castle by car, although I would not recommend it, so the other choices are to take the funicular (cable car), take a small tourist train ride from the old part of the city, or just walk up the hill, which takes around 10 to 15 minutes. Apart from the Castle, Ljubljana has to offer quite a lot of boat tours along Ljubljanica river, which flows right through the city, you can visit lots of museums, art galleries and Park Tivoli, the biggest park in Ljubljana.

For the ending of this post let me say that many foreign people I met, at least by my experience, discovered Ljubljana more like by accident, meaning that most of them weren’t really planning on staying here for more than a day. But after spending just a few hours here, everyone wanted to come back and have a little more time to really explore the city without having to rush from one place to another. So, for anyone reading this from some distant part of the world, Ljubljana is well worth the visit, not just to pass by it but to really take the time and see how beautiful it can be. 🙂