Living & Arts

Ignorance finally gets the better of our protagonist

In print | March 27, 2008

To say that I have visited Slovenia is, in the most charitable terms possible, a pretty big stretch. If one were being less forgiving, one might say that my 36-hour stint in the country represented the nadir of “intelligent traveling”: at the time, I did not know what the language was, what currency people used, how to say “yes” or “no,” whether it was part of the EU or even where to locate the country on a map. I am so embarrassed that my fingers are blushing as they type this.

Like most of my traveling last fall, this trip was impulsive, last-minute and not planned by me. I blame the accessibility and convenience of train travel.

Early Saturday morning I scraped myself out of bed at 8 or 9 a.m. and headed over to Keleti palyaudvar, Budapest’s East Station. Counter-intuitively, trains leaving the East station head west; the South station, east ;and the West station to destinations within the country, which are primarily located in the south. Ignorant as I was of geography, the irony was lost on me at the time.

We arrived in Ljubljana at 4:30 p.m. Thanks to the grim Eastern European winter that had sunk its claws into the continent on exactly Oct. 31, it was already impenetrably black (incidentally, I never managed to see the city in daylight). Nonetheless, with the speed and skill possessed only by savannah cats and hungry college students who have eaten nothing all day save bread and spread cheese, we zeroed in on the center of town and its delicious food and drink.

According to Wikipedia, that most reputable of sources (and nationalist propaganda organ!), Ljubljana is the “cultural, scientific, economic, political and administrative center of Slovenia!” The emphasis is my own. This illustrates one of the convenient aspects of small countries.

Apparently it is also known for its bus system, which we had the pleasure of exploring in depth on our second day. The plan was to go hiking in Bled, a picturesque town about an hour and a half away famous primarily for an unbelievably beautiful abbey perched on an island in the middle of a lake and the formidable castle overlooking it. Good idea, right? We purchased tickets, found our bus, attempted to board … and were thwarted by the bus driver. Self-assured and convinced that we had a better grasp on the situation than any transportation authority, we flashed our tickets and mimed, “Look, we have tickets already!”

“Tickets!” he mimed back.

“We have tickets!” We responded.

“You need tickets!” He mimed back.

He even went so far as to bring out a clipboard and write some prices on it, to which I responded by writing more prices. Like I said, we already had tickets. Convinced either by my stunning logic, by my pigheadedness or by the impending departure of the bus, he grudgingly let us aboard. This was tricky and lulled us into a false sense of security, for when we arrived at our destination, the driver disembarked with us.

Before we had fully mustered our collective miming talents to resolve the problem, one of the many foreigners also on the bus came to our aid by pointing out that in our infinite wisdom, we had in fact purchased train tickets. If this weren’t humiliating enough, though, every other foreigner who followed him off the bus glanced at our tickets, nodded and agreed that they were really for the train. Thank you Canadian brothers, Japanese tour group, Irish university students and random Italian couple.

We apologized profusely, salvaged as much of our dignity as was possible and made our way to the lake. Most of the day was spent exploring farmland behind the castle, admiring naked apple trees and making the acquaintance of a cow with particularly overzealous saliva glands.

Shortly after the sun had given up at around 4:06 p.m., we clambered onto the bus home, this time equipped with appropriate tickets and, surprisingly, the company of the same Canadian brothers who had shamelessly mocked us earlier in the day. Aided by my endless resources of charm and the fact that I was the only one on the bus who was feeling chatty, I made their acquaintances and got us invited to the Coolest Hostel in Slovenia: Hostel Celica, formerly a prison. You can actually pay a lot of money to sleep in a refurbished cell, which I think says a great deal about the predilections of the Euro-traveling hostel crowd. Illustrious characters we met there included a five-foot German woman with brilliantly purple wine-stained teeth and a bad sense of balance, a sober Kiwi globetrotter who smooched her and a thirty-five-year old Californian who still lived at home (only ocasionally taking breaks to spend his parents’ money traveling) and couldn’t understand why his parents were sick of him.

Instead, I opted for another highlight of budget Euro-traveling: the 2:30 a.m. train back to Budapest. I arrived home 36 hours after I had left, or exactly in time for math class.

Natalie is a senior. You can reach her at nbowlus1@swarthmore.edu.