Anne and I spent last weekend in Ljubljana, in advance of my return to work on Monday after six weeks off – a return to work which was actually two days at the Bled Strategic Forum up in the mountains. I know Ljubljana fairly well, and have been there maybe half a dozen times starting in 1980 when I was 13, and most recently in 2014; it was Anne’s first time exploring the city.

Basics
Ljubljana hotel: B&B Park, just east of city centre, very comfortable, ecological, beehives on the roof, decent continental breakfast.
Friday dinner: Gostilna Sokol, Ljubljana, yummy traditional Slovenian fare, interesting frescos.
Saturday lunch: Oštarija Peglez’n, Bled, fish specialists, charming waiter.
Saturday dinner: Vodnikov Hram, Ljubljana, more traditional fare, dining area has Roman-era walls.
Sunday lunch: Rikša curry & wok, basic Asian.
Sunday dinner: Tokyo Piknik, more fancy Asian.

(Pronunciation: [ljuˈbljàːna] – the letter combination ‘lj’ is pronounced like the middle consonant cluster in ‘William’ if you say it quickly; there are three syllables, not four, so it’s lyoob-lyAA-na, not looby-anna.)

It was an interesting contrast with Prague, which we visited in January. Prague is a major European city, which has been home to significant figures in science and culture. Ljubljana is the capital of a small country which more or less had independence thrust upon it, and where to be honest not a lot has ever happened. All the major currents of Central European culture paused briefly, left some tide marks and then moved on.

I find it very interesting that the city has a memorial to the Unknown French Soldier, “tombé pour notre liberté”, “who fell for our freedom” during the Napoleonic wars, when Ljubljana became the capital of the Illyrian Provinces and Slovenian became an official language. There are not a lot of monuments of gratitude to bigger countries. (Though the French have another one in Belgrade.) I am struggling to think of another country where Napoleon is unambiguously regarded as a Good Thing. (I think France itself is somewhat ambiguous.)

Weirdly, the last King of France is buried in Slovenia. (Yes, I know, the guy who ruled France after him was also a king, but he took the title “King of the French” not “King of France”.)

Enough about France. If you dig deeper, there is a tension between the more Slovenian nationalist Catholic political tradition and the edgy lefty tradition which is a little Yugo-stalgic (though also rooted in the more complex Neue Slowenische Kunst movement). We went to two different places which sat firmly in one or the other tradition. On the Christian side, we went to the national shrine of Mary, Help of Christians at Brezje near Kranj. The last two Popes came here, and there is a statue of St John Paul II outside. It was not crowded on a summer Saturday, but it was set up to receive large crowds.

On the other side politically, the Museum of Contemporary Art was very close to our hotel, and featured a lot of reflections on society and conflict; I detected a certain level of comfort with the old Yugoslavia, while acknowledging that it has gone. This is Konstantin Zvezdochiotov’s installation, “Clock Tower”, reflecting on the conflicts of the 1990s.

And this is a satirical take on the rationing coupons issued in Serbia during the era of hyperinflation:

We also were fascinated by a documentary about the “Sunshine railway”, the north-south connection across Bosnia built in 1947 by young volunteers, who I later discovered had included Pierre Trudeau, Olof Palme and the historian E.P. Thompson. I have got hold of a collection of essays about it by Thompson, which I’ll write up here in due course. Here’s a trailer for the documentary.

Going back a lot further, we really enjoyed the Roman Trail through the remains of Emona, the Roman town on whose ruins the southern part of Ljubljana’s city centre is built. (NB that in Elizabeth Kostova’s dull vampire novel The Historian, she uses the name Emona for the present-day city, presumably so as not to frighten readers less familiar with foreign names.) The main tourist office knew nothing about the Roman Trail, but the City Museum was able to sort us out.

As well as fragments of wall and so on, there are two open air exhibits, one a town house with the usual traces of foundations:

And the other seems to be an early Christian place of worship, with a font for adult baptism, surrounded by a mosaic in which the names of the sponsors are commemorated so that we are still talking about them 1600 years later.

A section of the southern town wall still stands, adorned with a pyramid designed by Slovenia’s master architect Jože Plečnik.

My friend V took us up to the Alpine resort of Bled on the Saturday – I was spending Monday and Tuesday at the annual security conference there but this was a chance to look around properly with Anne.

We took a boat out to the island in the middle of the lake where there is an ancient church of the Assumption; apparently if you succeed in ringing the bell, your wish will be granted. V was gleeful about her success.

And we had lunch in a restaurant that was so nice that I went back to it for dinner after the big Bled conference finished on Tuesday, accompanied by two Serbian ladies and two former foreign ministers.

Just a few more random bits of Ljubljana city art to finish with. First, two fountains, “Narcissus” by Francisco Robba in the old City Hall, and “Core” by France Rotar, in Tabor Park next to the hotel.

Frescoes in the Sokol restaurant.

Wildlife – the Tivoli Fish on the east bank of the river, and one of the dragons on the Dragon bridge.

Anne in the City Hall. I have a photo somewhere that I took standing in roughly the same spot in 1985, when I was 18.

Recommended.