The mercury will dip to minus 17 today so the juju men tell us.  Brisk indeed. Just the day of a stroll up to the castle (or ‘Grad’  in local parlance – these are Slavic tribes after all.)

Ljubljana is a find. Admittedly 300000 residents and quite a number of others discovered it before our party of explorers,  but that doesn’t reduce the thrill.   Why has no one told me about this place? The old town sits between the Grad and the river.  There are a string of bridges across to the new town – by ‘new’, read 1500’s.

Much of Ljubljana was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1890’s,  so the entire rebuild was put in the hands of a single architect. This man had never been a student of the Clive Palmer Institute Good Taste, instead he belonged to the ‘beautiful city winding along both banks of a river,  with open spaces for pedestians’ school.  Not a dinosaur to be seen, no replicas of the Titanic anywhere – just parks,  promenades,  pubs and people.

Slovenia generally was untouched by the breakup of Yugoslavia. Their war with Belgrade lasted  just 10 days.  Slovenia was the first of the states to declare independence,  followed by Croatia and Bosnia the next day. The Yugoslav Army decided to attack Slovenia,  but to do so they had to cross Croatia.  Because the army consisted of troops from every state, including Slovenia and Croatia, there were massive defections along the way.  What was left of the Yugoslav army had a shocking time as soon as they crossed the Slovenian border. After 10 days they gave up and went home. The nation of Slovenia officially existed.

Our days have been spent wandering around this beautiful city and eating.  No Mr Ed sausages or foal fillets in green pepper sauce for us,  but there are game meat dishes and hearty stews aplenty,  along with everything Italian, Turkish and Slavic influenced. This is the part of the world where the Habsbergs,  the Ottomans and the Russian empires all collided for centuries.  The Austrians brought wine and wonderful pastries and the Turks brought coffee and seafood.  The Russians? They brought pickled cabbages to the Slovenian gastronomic table.

Can’t win ’em all.