Most of my March was taken up with a long and rather complicated series of travels around Europe, mostly due to 'business' but partly also for pleasure. Some of the places I went I even got time to wander around with a camera... Today's blog will show off my hasty photos of the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, in which I had the privelige to spend 5 days.
I say hasty photos becuase I didn't really do much traditional tourism at all during my trip, as I was actually there for a Swing Dance festival, the 10th Ljubljana Sweet Swing Festival (to be exact). This was my first ever international swing dance festival, and I really had very little idea of what to expect. Oh, of course I had the schedule, but I wasn't quite sure what it would actually be like.
The swing dance festival experience was a weird one, because I ended up feeling like I was living in some completely parallel world. Several things contributed to this. One is the jetlag-like effect of going dancing at 10pm, getting home and showering at 3am and getting up again as late as you can (usually not as late as you want as there are classes to be attended!). The other is the way that I basically spent the whole time not dancing preparing for going dancing again. My thought processes reduced to: 'must rest before dancing to dance better, then get food to fuel dancing, then go dancing'. Or: 'hmm, what food can I get before dancing to fuel the dancing that will fit in the time I have before dancing' etc... As we were staying in a hotel literally 2 minutes walk from the amazingly large Grand Union Hotel venue in the city centre, there was the added effect of shrinking the world down to a very small (but picturesque!) area.
What pays for all this weird parallel-universe stuff is, of course, the dancing. When it works, it really really works, and the positive effect of 4 days dancing and courses involving 5 sets of international teachers and four different live bands really can't be overstated. At the end of the 4 days I was dancing better than ever before, and even though I can't stay at that level right now, knowing I could get there for a little bit is pretty good too!
After the whole festival was over we had one sunny morning to explore the centre of Ljubljana for more things than just restaurants. It seems a very nice place, feels very spacious, there are somegreat old buildings, and there is definitely a strong focus on outdoor street life that marks it out as a city where the summers are long. One really cool thing I didn't realise till going to the city is that there are amazing views north to the (Slovenian) Alps. In March these were still covered in snow and therefore perfectly visible in the clear air. As Ljubljana lies on a plain, almost the whole height of the mountains can be taken in in one go. The train journey back via Villach travels towards, parallel to, and then under these imposing peaks, and it was really a top railway journey, with peaceful half-empty carriages and great views!
As picasa will be discontinued (my old photos will still be accessible but I can't add more), I have moved over to a Flickr account, which seems to be a comparable site with some quite nice features. Thus,
you can see my pictures from my last morning in sunny Slovenia at this flickr link!
Bis bald,
Der Tom
