A "Night Out" In Ljubljana.

After being woken up every half hour by some person in a uniform wanting to see tickets or passports, on a train that seemed to be stationary more of the time than it was actually moving, Mr T and myself were deposited in a very dark train station somewhere on the outskirts of Ljubljana at 2am. To my horror I discovered that I had found the only train station in all of Europe with opening hours and was faced with the prospect of camping outside for what was left of the night. As I walked passed one of the late night bars that was “location location location”, situated in the train station underpass, I was scooped up by a bloke called Urri. He was a local Slovenian guy of my age that thought I was the most sorry looking sight he had ever seen grace this train stations underpass and for the novelty factor he brought me a beer. He was a student and spoke excellent English because as he put it "I like Rock and Roll and all the best bands sing in English". A few more beers where drunk, the finer points of music and EU were discussed (installed upon me) as well as what New Zealand was like and that travelling from Dublin to Sydney overland was the funniest, albeit, the dumbest thing Urri had ever heard. This lasted until we were kicked out an hour or so later and Urri was off to the craziest night club in town. After explaining that my back pack didn't make a good date for a club and kicking myself for what I thought was going to be a sure fire free night at a locals place with breaky thrown in, I found myself a secluded cafe doorway for Mr T and me to sleep in just off the platform.

Now I have slept in some dodgy places before, mainly with the army, however I discovered this night that its not so easy to sleep without two of your mates on guard duty and not having the comfort of a automatic machine gun with enough rounds to start world war three should anyone come by. So the next few hours were spent waking every five to ten minutes at the slightest sound. However, as I found the next day, Slovenians are some of the friendliest people I have ever met and the only thing I had to worry about was being laughed at by passers by rather than waking up without my worldly possessions.

Come five o'clock I was forcibly removed from my possy by the cafe owner who then made me a double espresso to start my day, smiling and giggling to himself the whole time.

Ljubljana itself is a very pretty town established on river with patches of forest scattered everywhere and a very impressive Castle on the hill overlooking the city. I spent the day wandering around looking at the wares in the huge weekend market they had going on and being entertained by bands and other performers out and about for the Marathon that was being run. After a very nice day it was back to the train station to get the night train to Zagreb and then eventually Split in Croatia to meet back up with the girls and return the very useful Mr T to Ullrika.