And little. The size of New Jersey with a population of 2 million.
We have worked our way south through wine country to stay a week in their lovely pint-sized capital: Ljubljana. The city of the castle and the dragon.
This is a major tourist city, but it is geared up to handle them. The downtown has the largest pedestrian-only area of any city in Europe. The river that runs through the city is lined on both sides with endless bars and cafes and restaurants.
The whole area is lit up in the evening making it excellent for walking or sitting or dining along the river and enjoying life.
The old town is on a horseshoe bend of the river and so the castle on the hill looms over the city from almost any vantage point.
Some beautiful local buildings.
There are plenty of opportunities for walkers, through the pedestrian areas, along the river and in a large city park. There is even a trail circling the city through the suburbs.
This is a beautiful and lively city and I would recommend it to any visitor.
Beyond the ambiance, the quality of the food and wine is very high. The entire country seems bent on expressing themselves through their cuisine and viniculture using their local ingredients. They have their own breed of pig and the pork products, in particular the charcuterie, are superb.
How about this dish. Trout from the hills. Marinated in Beet Juice. Served over a local soft cheese with beet shavings and trout caviar.
Should you wish to visit Ljubljana, as I hope you will, here is a previous post of mine with much more information about the city.
We are leaving Slovenia tomorrow and travelling over to Florence for a break from hotel living. We have an apartment in the vicinity of two markets so we can cook and stay at home every night.
In the first few centuries that we call CE, Ptuj was a comparatively important Roman Military Stronghold. You could get across the river Drava here and two important roads converged on the crossing. So you could go from Northern Italy further East, or from the alps down to the Balkans or the Adratic coast. At that time the population of the city was maybe 40,000. It was never higher at any later time.
It would probably be easier to list the armies who did not sack the town than those that did.
But from the earliest times the wine produced in the surrounding areas has been exceptional. Plenty of sun, misty heavy condensation in the mornings, steep well drained slopes of Marl soil … combine to produce white wines of surprisingly high alcohol content (13 to 15 %) that retain their upfront fruitiness even when aged. They have white wines here bottled over a hundred years ago. We didn’t taste anything like that, but the aged ones we did try were wonderfully complex with a beautiful mouth feel.
Here we are tasting in a thousand-year-old cellar.
Again, the town is tiny, but with a few interesting buildings and a big castle on the hill. Here are some postcard photos:
We have found the Slovenian countryside to be quiet and very picturesque and we had some fine walks around Ptuj.
And that ends our foray into Slovenian wine country. It has been a nice introduction to some surprisingly good white wines. I would like to come back some time to taste the red wines they produce on the Adriatic south of Trieste.
But now we are going west to their big capital city: Ljubljana for some city living.
Maribor is the second largest city in Slovenia, but you would not believe it. It is small, sitting in a narrow valley on the Drava river and backing directly into the vineyards.
I was here pre- covid, found Slovenia to be a delightful country to visit and so I have returned this time with CAMarchand to take another look. There is a wonderful Unesco recognized train ride down from Vienna to Maribor that I suggest to you. I planned to take it but found that it had stopped for the season before we arrived.
The countryside around Maribor is beautiful.
We have had a fine visit. Nice restaurants. Nice old town. Walks along the river and in their beautiful city park and in the hills around town. A few days is enough though, the town is small. Some photos.
This is wine country. For a start they have the certified oldest vine in the world, somewhere over 400 years old.
The hills around Maribor mainly to the North toward the Austrian border are full of wineries. Mainly very small ones set in villages in the countryside. They are concentrated on making small quantities of excellent quality white wines.
We have been touring and tasting. One day 18 wines. Someone has to do this.
At one winery we sat with the vintner in his family dining room and talked about how he made the wines and tasted them. The amazingly low prices you see in the second picture are in Euros which at the moment is almost equal to dollars.
Tomorrow we are off to the oldest town in Slovenia to see some Roman ruins. It just happens to be in another important Slovenian wine region.
Vienna. On the Danube. Voted by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the most livable city in the world three out of the last five years based on stability, infrastructure, healthcare, culture and entertainments.
For 650 years home of the Habsburg dynasty and the Capital city of their various Empires.
Today a big city of about 3 million people covering a large area. But the Old Town is quite small and manageable.
The city is so rich in attractions because the Habsburgs were inclusive of other cultures, staunch supporters of the arts, and collectors.
There are about 100 museums here, many set up to display articles collected by the royal family over centuries.
We visited one of the “other” museums, the collection of artifacts (mainly statues) from Ephesus, which the Austrians have been excavating for 150 years.
The downtown is monumental. Here are some “postcard” photos to give you an idea.
Some notes on Vienna:
o This is an expensive city. Full of tourists, especially in the summer. Here in October the weather is still warm and the press of the tourists way down.
o The city has the most comprehensive public transport system of any city I know. Buses, trains, light rail, metro system.
o The roast pork in Austria is wonderful. Otherwise I am not a fan of German/Austrian food: pounded breaded and fried meat, sausages, goulash, noodles and dumplings and sauerkraut.
o The first (last) time we were here we toured around the city more. Here are some more comprehensive photos and comments about Vienna: Vienna | Lew’s Walkabout (lewswalkabout.com)
This time we stopped here for CAMarchand (who just joined me for some winter travels) to get over the jet lag. Our plan is to soon leave Vienna and go down through the alps and look around Slovenia.
Perhaps indicative of how the Venetians held this coast for so long against the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. They bought the coast from the Neapolitans around 1400 and held it until the early 1800s when the Hapsburgs, in an unholy alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte, teamed up and took the Venetian Republic out of the game.
All of the historic Venetian towns I have visited along the coast: Split, Trogir, Sibenik, Zadar .. are similar in their construction: local stone buildings and narrow medieval streets.
Of course there is more city here than the old town. But not much. Maybe 40,000 people in the area. The hills rise straight out of the sea and so the city is a narrow strip of houses stacked on top of one another.
Without any real data except looking I think that these coastal areas were de-forested centuries ago and the topsoil lost to erosion. Certainly, they are now just rocky coastal hills of fractured limestone with only scrubby vegetation. The trees do seem to be coming back, but that is of course a very slow process. There are not any fields of “crops” growing beyond some olives and grapes. But they do have the sea.
This city sits on a large river fed bay with a gap in the hills through to the sea.
Just off the coast in this area there are something like 150 islands. Sitting in a warm sunny California type climate this is a yachtie’s dream destination. The main industry of the town looks like repairing, outfitting, provisioning, cleaning, renting, buying and selling boats. And wining and dining the Yachties.
There are boats everywhere, parked and moving about. Little boats.
Big boats.
And ginormous boats. By the hundreds.
This is a nice lively little town right on the water and I have enjoyed my stay. 75 degrees and sunny every day.
There are top quality restaurants where I am living on my usual diet of grilled whole fish and occasional lamb chops. Which, with the weather, is why I travel so much around the Mediterranean. If you travel through Croatia I recommend to you their fine white wines that many producers make from a grape called Debit. I found it to be delicious.
And that ends my quiet holidays on the coast in Croatia. I will soon fly up to Vienna to meet up with CAMarchand who will be travelling with me for some weeks. We will be on roller skates because she likes her travel to be “event filled”.
Split is one of my favorite cities. Flowing with tourists to be sure. Chilly in the winter. But lively and “right sized” for visits in the shoulder seasons. Always seems to have plenty of sunshine.
I recommend passing through Split on your travels. You can fly directly there. But flights to Zagreb from the US are usually great value and from there it is easy to get down to the coast or hop off to some other European destination.
If you consider a visit you might want to check out these links to plenty of photos and comments about Split.
I did not stay in the city this trip, but a short distance south down the coast.
I was ready for a travel breather and so I booked myself a nice apartment out of the bustle of the city. But I missed. The distances on Google Maps proved to be much further than they looked, and I was too far out. I really needed a car to stay there comfortably.
The nice little neighborhood I wish I had found was a 40-minute walk around the bay. So it goes.
The walk was worth it because I found perhaps the best fresh fish market / grilled fish restaurant I have ever found. And I don’t say this lightly because I track them down all over the Mediterranean.
When I left they gave me this little keepsake to remember them by.
The weather stayed beautiful all week. 75 high. 60 low. Lots of sun. And (mainly just) hanging around gave me the chance to do some real hiking in the hills along the coast. Here are some photos.
Thanks for coming along. I will soon be moving up the coast to a city North of Split to have a look around. Will check in from there.
It is a comfortable and quite scenic train ride through the mountains south from Sarajevo. The stations are grotty but the coach is fine. Seven dollars. If you take it sit on the left side.
The town of Mostar strings along both sides of a little fast moving river just to the south of the high mountains. CAMarchand tells me that the word “Balkan” comes from the Ottoman word for mountain.
The old town is 100 percent of why someone would come here. It covers a surprisingly large pedestrian only area and it is clean and attractive. The closer you get to the famous old Ottoman bridge the more it is given over to tourist trinkets and venues.
There is not much charm outside of the old town. Plenty of dreary communist housing, crumble and grit. Everyone smokes cigarettes constantly and so the populace look old and weather beaten and tired.
Mostar, like Sarajevo was besieged and seriously damaged during the Bosnian war of the 1990’s. The old bridge dating from the early 1500’s was destroyed but has been rebuilt with international money. Unfortunately, after the war Mostar fell into a political/administrative limbo delaying their recovery. There are still plenty of war damaged buildings.
Besides the damaged buildings still sitting around there is something else wrong with this city. There are many sites where the construction of some building has been started and then abandoned. Including a very large Marriott hotel, half-finished and derelict.
If for some reason you would ever come here, like me you might be surprised to find that there are some (very few) high-quality hotels and restaurants that are amazingly cheap.
One of the hardest things I have to do travelling around as I do is to stay beyond arm’s length of things like this.
Well, this and my last few posts concludes my look into the war and the recovery in Bosinia. Overall, this is still a poor, fragmented country. And the deep divisions and the ongoing animosities look like they may take decades more to fade away.
My next destination is for a real vacation down on the Adriatic coast just south of Split. I’ll check in from there.
Sarajevo is compressed into a narrow river valley in the Dinaric Alps in the south of Bosnia. It creeps up into the steep hills with a maze of lanes through old and nice new houses. But the city itself stretches along the banks of the river.
This is a major tourist destination, because of the old town, which is quite extraordinary. It is a very large, completely pedestrian district. There are churches and numerous mosques, but it is mainly comprised of low wood and stone buildings along narrow alleyways. I presume these are old Ottoman structures. The entire area is given over to shops and so many restaurants and cafes that they can seat thousands. And it is swarming with tourists.
This is not like any city I could name. Probably because the old town is so unusual, but also the blending of Muslim and Christian, modern western and old time Balkan. There is almost no Cyrillic used here, and although Mosques are everywhere, head coverings are far less than I expected, and I saw one burka all week.
I have had a very nice visit. Sarajevo is a fine, lively, bustling city. The food is good.
Mr. Marriott treated me handsomely which made it even nicer. A funny thing: by the vagaries of happenstance, the conversion rate of the dollar to the Bosnian NK at the moment is very close to two to one …. so every time I look at a price I think: Hey, I get a 50% discount. Fun.
Here are some random photos from around the city.
Sarajevo was subjected to a lengthy siege during the Bosnian war of the 1990’s, and severely damaged. You can still see renovation and damage side by side. But it is remarkable how much rebuilding and new construction they have accomplished.
I am going to conclude this post briefly talking about the war, and if you exit now I will certainly not be offended.
Yugoslavia was always difficult to govern because of the extreme diversity of cultures within the state. And entering the 1990’s this heavily Muslim area declared their secession from the country. They were promptly attacked by the Yugoslavian army, but with the state collapsing elsewhere they could not continue the fight.
As Yugoslavia dissolved, the Serbians took the opportunity to try to build a Yugoslavia II, which they intended to dominate. They set up a proxy state, the Republic of Srpska, in the north or Bosnia, raised an army there and attacked the Muslim south under the guise of a civil war.
Sarajevo was besieged by this army for roughly 1500 days. An extraordinary length of time. The Serbs occupied the hills and bombarded the city with artillery much like the Russians are doing today in the Ukraine. Indiscriminate bombardment of whatever they could. But they were not strong enough to enter the city. And the Bosnics were not strong enough to take the hills.
Eventually the Serbian actions in Bosnia were so repugnant that NATO entered and ended the war. Up to 70,000 Serbs migrated out of Serajevo and into the Republic of Srpska. And the tensions between these two areas are still very much alive.
This is a very simple summary that I thought might be interesting. There is of course a much bigger story, but I leave it to you to satisfy any further interest you might have.
I will soon head down to Mostar and probably conclude my own interest in these affairs.
Most of my time taking the short bus trip south from Zagreb to Banja Luka was spent at the border. I did not dare to take any pictures. Close scrutiny both leaving Croatia and a few hundred yards further entering Bosnia.
There was no border here for most of the 20th century as that band-aid of a made up country, Yugoslavia held the Balkans together. Established after WWI, Yugoslavia lasted until the 1990s. But with its disintegration the old divisions and rivalries reemerged.
Historically this is a very important border, for this was the northern extent of the Turkish Ottoman occupation of Europe. Here I am visiting the remains of the Ottoman fortress on the Vrbas river in Banja Luka.
The Ottomans never made it north to Zagreb, so Croatia was part of Christendom. They use the western alphabet, and they are predominately Christians. South of this border the Ottoman empire held this area and the lands to the east for 500 years.
Today the north of Bosnia is occupied by Serbs, who use the Cyrillic alphabet and practice the Eastern Orthodox religion. Why not Muslims? Well, the Balkans are complicated.
Banja Luka is in Bosinia, but that is a nonfunctional country which has actually dissolved into three separate entities. This is now the Srpska Republic. They have their own stock exchange, and international airport (but the planes only go to Serbia).
This is really just a big country town in a very green, forested area. The city is pretty green too with lots of trees.
There is not much to see here.
But there are a number of photogenic churches.
The best way to make sense of the Balkans is to consider the major historical protagonists, the Ottomans, the Austrian Hungarian Empire (the Hapsburgs), and the Italians out of the Republic of Venice who occupied the coast and some inland areas such what is today Albania. Most local histories throughout the Balkans have these groups surging and retreating throughout the centuries.
The Serbs are a wild card. As the Ottoman empire began to decline and weaken large numbers of Serbs were able to migrate out of the Empire and into the region of Belgrade where they had dispensation from the Hapsburgs. Hence Serbia.
A serious source of animosity was the occupation of Yugoslavia during WWII by the Ustase regime, one of the nastiest groups in modern times. Originating in northern Italy they were fascists, severe racists .. and hated the Serbs. Their infamous extermination camp, Jasenovac, just over the border here in what is now Croatia murdered maybe a hundred thousand persons. Jews and Romas, but mainly Serbs, many from Banja Luka. There were no niceties like gas chambers. Taken from the work camps the victims were dispatched one on one with hatchets and knives.
The echo of the Ottoman Turks are the Bosniks, Muslim peoples who now live in the south of Bosinia. After Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s and the Sepska Republic was established, the people of this area, supported by Serbia began to expel the Bosniks. (And the Croats). Here in Banja Luka they used explosives to destroy 16 mosques. They ran their own concentration camp for Bosniks, not really for extermination, but hundreds died. And they kept it up until NATO bombed Belgrade and Clinton partitioned Bosinia with the Dayton agreement.
Back to happier thoughts.
Since I would never suggest anyone come here except some history buff, here are some interesting (to me) peculiarities of Banja Luka.
There are a few classy and good restaurants, but the everyday food is not so good. Some kind of grilled sausages seems to be the main diet. I went to great lengths to find roasted lamb and pork and was very disappointed. If the Lecon roast pork in the Philippines is a 10 (and it is, the best in the world) this was a 1.5
There is a lot of old Communist housing, but also nice new investment.
They like fountains, throughout the city and even on roundabouts.
There are mounted police patrols.
Taxis are extremely clean. And cheap. Why can’t we have clean taxis? And as you see from these taxi drivers these people are strikingly big. Many many look six feet two and 240 pounds. With plenty of tall large women too.
If you buy firewood it is delivered on a pallet. What a good idea.
I have never seen residential electrical service where they run the wires over the rooftops.
There are Casinos and betting shops everywhere. I do not know what that means in a society but there are so many it is exceptional. Here are three on the same street corner.
American NATO troops are staying in my hotel. I did not take their pictures. Apparently, the military do not stay in tents in muddy fields these days but in the Marriott. But I am glad they are around.
If you were to think of Slovenia as the 40 years behind mirror country to Austria, then Zagreb, Capital City of Croatia, would be the Northern gateway to the Balkans, that compelling and fascinating hodgepodge of countries and cultures.
Zagreb is not big. Not sprawling over square miles like Paris or Budapest. But it has flavors of both of those cities. And since most visitors to Croatia only visit the fabulous cities on the Adriatic coast .. like Split and Dubrovnik, the city is comparatively unknown.
There is a small tourist area/restaurant/bar district around the old city center. But even here the central produce market just off the cathedral square tells me that this is still a simple, “real” city, not relying on tourists.
Today downtown Zagreb is under restoration everywhere. Beyond the normal Eastern European recovery from decades of Communist neglect there was a sharp earthquake about two years ago that damaged many of the old downtown buildings. It was bad. One of the towers of the thousand year old Cathedral came down.
The downtown has plenty of fine old buildings. Some now beautifully restored. Many still partially crumbling.
And there are a number of nice parks and lavish city squares.
Endless cafes. And restaurants, with world class food and wine offerings.
And being Europe , lots of fine to excellent groceries, delicatessens, bakeries, sweet shops, wine stores …
The best Lamb Shank I have ever eaten. (And the Chef shared his secrets)
Overall this is a fine city. Still too much graffiti and grit, but with great potential for the future. And there are many things to appreciate for the traveler, such as: There is an amazing, modern public transport system, cars and trolleys stop for you when you are in a crosswalk, everyone speaks English and there is no dog poop. None.
So, as you can see from these pictures I did not “do” a lot this week. Get over jet lag, eat and sleep too much. Poke aroung town. Last time I was here I was more energetic and so if you want to know some more about Zagreb you might open this previous post:
I am leaving here soon to travel south into a country I have never visited, Bosnia. And I intend to scout both the Slavic north and the Muslim south. Perhaps you will check out my report.
