Christmas Lights

It was Christmas market time again and by undertaking detailed research of the flight schedules and destination options there was an opportunity on December 13^th 2007 to visit two neighbouring countries by flying to and staying in Ljubljana in Slovenia and taking a day trip to Klagenfurt over the border in Austria.

For a week or so before the holiday, as is our normal practice, we had been keeping an eye on the weather in Ljubljana and although it had been a complete mixed bag Micky was still reasonably optimistic and was forecasting snow and extreme cold and we all hoped that he was right.  You can imagine our disappointment therefore when we landed in a wet and soggy Slovenia with a sullen sky full of rain.

The airport is about twenty-five kilometres from Ljubljana, which was a bit too far for a taxi but we found the transfer bus with an obliging driver who drove us the forty minute journey into the city and then took a detour off of the scheduled route to deliver us directly to the front door of the City Hotel and in view of the rain we were grateful for that.

The hotel had been recently modernised and was clean and new with a slightly curious combination of Mexico and Salvidor Dali as a theme in the public areas.  After a bit of unnecessary confusion over room allocations Micky was disappointed to find that this hadn’t provided him with the opportunity that he had been hoping for and we all retired to our rooms for the quickest of freshen ups and then a return to the bar in the lobby for a quick beer to familiarise ourselves with the local brewing arrangements.

Outside the rain had got progressively heavier so we needed our umbrellas for sure as we set off on foot towards the city centre and the Christmas market.  It was about ten o’clock now and the bad weather had cleared the streets of people and the city was prematurely quiet and many of the market stalls closed already for the day.  Even in the dismal weather however the street lights and decorations looked spectacular with a theme of planets and other heavenly objects all based on a principal colour of bright royal blue.

We walked through the deserted main square and down the left bank of the river Ljubljanica before crossing Cobblers bridge to the right bank where a number of stalls selling mulled wine and gluvine were still open and dispensing drinks.  At one of these a group of boisterous young men were waiting under an umbrella that was swollen with rain and waiting for a passer-by to deposit the contents over.  As Micky walked by one of them sprung the trap and a torrent of water was despatched to the pavement missing him by a matter of inches.  Good job that it did because although this would have given him a good soaking these boys would have got a lot wetter swimming in the adjacent river if they had successfully hit their target!

It was all a bit wet and disappointing but I suppose if we had done our research properly then we shouldn’t have been surprised because Ljubljana has the dubious distinction of being the wettest capital city in Europe and at one thousand three hundred and fifty millimetres a year (fifty three inches) that would certainly take some beating.  Before I knew this I would probably have guessed that it would be Cardiff, in Wales, because that is fairly damp as well but the Welsh capital city is left way behind at only one thousand and seventy four millimetres.

Well, the good thing is of course that it doesn’t rain in bars and in the main square just over the Triple Bridge we found a pavement bar with a rigid roof and blazing patio heaters and we enjoyed a couple of final drinks in the comfort of the warmth and the dry while the rain beat out a steady rhythm on the plastic roof sections above.  It was about midnight by now and we were the last customers of the day and after a couple of drinks I think the barman was pleased to finally see us go as he hurriedly packed up behind us to make sure that we couldn’t change our minds.

Slovenia and the Ten Day War

I never travelled to Yugoslavia when it existed as a single state but since the break up in the 1990s I have visited Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.  I visited Slovenia twice in 2007.

Yugoslavia had been created in 1918 after the First World War by the victorious western allies in the hope of bring some stability to the Balkans but this had been a hopelessly optimistic attempt to impose a solution on a disparate region of Europe who were never going to coexist easily as one single nation.

The Balkans is where east meets west in Europe and Yugoslavia was a mix of Orthodox looking to the east (Serbia), Christian looking to the west (Slovenia and Croatia) and Muslims who could not be reconciled to either (Bosnia).  Here was a recipe for disaster!  Slovenia is clearly more Central European in character than any of its Balkan partners and being more prosperous and increasingly resentful of providing support to its national partners it is not surprisingly that when the grip of Tito was removed in 1980 it was the first to break loose from the Yugoslav Federation in 1991.

Yugoslav tanks, troops and aircraft swept into the small republic of Slovenia forty-eight hours after it declared independence on 27^th and 28^th June. Federal forces moved to seize control of border crossing points with Italy, Austria and Hungary and launched an assault on the airport near the province’s capital, Ljubljana.  The Slovene administration rejected a call by the Yugoslav prime minister for a three-month truce to allow negotiations to take place, demanding that troops be withdrawn first.  Road access to the capital was blocked by police and paramilitary and the government in Ljubljana said they had seized or destroyed fifteen tanks and shot down six helicopters.

The Federal Government threatened to re-establish the status quo by force if necessary but the crisis passed and after a short Ten-Day War a truce was called, Slovenia’s independence was agreed and in October 1991 the last soldiers of the Yugoslav Army left. Luckily for Slovenia it was a bloodless separation following a vote for independence in 1990.  The Slovenian secession did however lead to a violent break-up of the country with civil war and ethnic cleansing in neighbouring Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina that persisted throughout the 1990’s.

a-life-in-a-year-22nd-may-yugoslavia-and-the-balkans

ljubljana-slovenia

slovenia-skofja-loka

ljubljana-bus-ride-to-lake-bled

A Life in a Year – 13th December, Christmas Lights

It was Christmas market time again and by undertaking detailed research of the flight schedules and destination options there was an opportunity on December 13^th 2007 to visit two neighbouring countries by flying to and staying in Ljubljana in Slovenia and taking a day trip to Klagenfurt over the border in Austria.

For a week or so before the holiday, as is our normal practice, we had been keeping an eye on the weather in Ljubljana and although it had been a complete mixed bag Micky was still reasonably optimistic and was forecasting snow and extreme cold and we all hoped that he was right.  You can imagine our disappointment therefore when we landed in a wet and soggy Slovenia with a sullen sky full of rain.

The airport is about twenty-five kilometres from Ljubljana, which was a bit too far for a taxi but we found the transfer bus with an obliging driver who drove us the forty minute journey into the city and then took a detour off of the scheduled route to deliver us directly to the front door of the City Hotel and in view of the rain we were grateful for that.

The hotel had been recently modernised and was clean and new with a slightly curious combination of Mexico and Salvidor Dali as a theme in the public areas.  After a bit of unnecessary confusion over room allocations Micky was disappointed to find that this hadn’t provided him with the opportunity that he had been hoping for and we all retired to our rooms for the quickest of freshen ups and then a return to the bar in the lobby for a quick beer to familiarise ourselves with the local brewing arrangements.

Outside the rain had got progressively heavier so we needed our umbrellas for sure as we set off on foot towards the city centre and the Christmas market.  It was about ten o’clock now and the bad weather had cleared the streets of people and the city was prematurely quiet and many of the market stalls closed already for the day.  Even in the dismal weather however the streetlights and decorations looked spectacular with a theme of planets and other heavenly objects all based on a principal colour of bright royal blue.

We walked through the deserted main square and down the left bank of the river Ljubljanica before crossing Cobblers bridge to the right bank where a number of stalls selling mulled wine and gluvine were still open and dispensing drinks.  At one of these a group of boisterous young men were waiting under an umbrella that was swollen with rain and waiting for a passer-by to deposit the contents over.  As Micky walked by one of them sprung the trap and a torrent of water was despatched to the pavement missing him by a matter of inches.  Good job that it did because although this would have given him a good soaking these boys would have got a lot wetter swimming in the adjacent river if they had successfully hit their target!

It was all a bit wet and disappointing but I suppose if we had done our research properly then we shouldn’t have been surprised because Ljubljana has the dubious distinction of being the wettest capital city in Europe and at one thousand three hundred and fifty millimetres a year (fifty three inches) that would certainly take some beating.  Before I knew this I would probably have guessed that it would be Cardiff, in Wales, because that is fairly damp as well but the Welsh capital city is left way behind at only one thousand and seventy four millimetres.

Well, the good thing is of course that it doesn’t rain in bars and in the main square just over the Triple Bridge we found a pavement bar with a rigid roof and blazing patio heaters and we enjoyed a couple of final drinks in the comfort of the warmth and the dry while the rain beat out a steady rhythm on the plastic roof sections above.  It was about midnight by now and we were the last customers of the day and after a couple of drinks I think the barman was pleased to finally see us go as he hurriedly packed up behind us to make sure that we couldn’t change our minds.

A Life in a Year – 29th June, Slovenia and the Ten Day War

I never travelled to Yugoslavia when it existed as a single state but since the break up in the 1990s I have visited Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.  I visited Slovenia twice in 2007.

Yugoslavia had been created in 1918 after the First World War by the victorious western allies in the hope of bring some stability to the Balkans but this had been a hopelessly optimistic attempt to impose a solution on a disparate region of Europe who were never going to coexist easily as one single nation. 

The Balkans is where east meets west in Europe and Yugoslavia was a mix of Russian Orthodox looking to the east (Serbia), Christian Orthodox looking to the west (Slovenia and Croatia) and Muslims who could not be reconciled to either (Bosnia).  Here was a recipe for disaster!  Slovenia is clearly more Central European in character than any of its Balkan partners and being more prosperous and increasingly resentful of providing support to its national partners it is not surprisingly that when the grip of Tito was removed in 1980 it was the first to break loose from the Yugoslav Federation in 1991. 

Yugoslav tanks, troops and aircraft swept into the small republic of Slovenia, 48 hours after it declared independence on 27^th and 28^th June. Federal forces moved to seize control of border crossing points with Italy, Austria and Hungary and launched an assault on the airport near the province’s capital, Ljubljana.  The Slovene administration rejected a call by the Yugoslav prime minister for a three-month truce to allow negotiations to take place, demanding that troops be withdrawn first.  Road access to the capital was blocked by police and paramilitary and the government in Ljubljana said they had seized or destroyed fifteen tanks and shot down six helicopters.

The Federal Government threatened to re-establish the status quo by force if necessary but the crisis passed and after a short Ten-Day War a truce was called, Slovenia’s independence was agreed and in October 1991 the last soldiers of the Yugoslav Army left. Luckily for Slovenia it was a bloodless separation following a vote for independence in 1990.  The Slovenian secession did however lead to a violent break-up of the country with civil war and ethnic cleansing in neighbouring Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina that persisted throughout the 1990’s.

a-life-in-a-year-22nd-may-yugoslavia-and-the-balkans

ljubljana-slovenia

slovenia-skofja-loka

ljubljana-bus-ride-to-lake-bled

A Life in a Year – 23rd May, The Importance of good Bladder Control

On 23^rd May 2007 we were visiting Ljubljana in Slovenia and on this day took a bus trip to Lake Bled in the Julian Alps.  When it was time to go we went back to the bus station for the return journey to Ljubljana.  Although there was a worrying lack of activity at the bus stop there was some amusing entertainment.  There was a group of people who had clearly been drinking alcohol for most of the day and were a little the worst for it.  It was the end of their drinking session and it had reached that point when they were becoming irritated by each others company so they slurred goodbye to each other and set off home, each in different directions. 

One man had only managed about a hundred metres or so when the pressure of alcohol in his bladder required an unscheduled stop for emergency relief.  Unfortunately for him there were no facilities around and to be truthful he was in such a state that this was completely irrelevant anyway. 

Under normal circumstances taking a pee is a fairly straightforward process but to prevent little accidents it has to be carried out in the correct sequence of events and due to his inebriated condition he proceeded to demonstrate the absolute importance of getting things carried out in exactly the correct order.  He located a convenient spot, steadied himself with one hand against the wall and fumbled about with his trouser flies with the other but being unable to get his tackle out quickly enough and completely unable to coordinate his bodily functions he opened the piss release valve and proceeded to slowly slash down his leg in spectacular fashion so that his immaculately tailored jeans became slowly stained by a creeping patch of steaming urine that eventually stretched from his crotch to his socks. 

He was most perplexed by this and stood for a moment or two trying desperately to understand the sequence of events that had resulted in his waterlogged state but quite unable to comprehend his predicament eventually staggered off down the road stopping frequently to examine his unusually two-tone discoloured trousers and no doubt wondering how he was going to explain it when he finally got home.