Ljubjana, Slovenia

During my time here through the CIMBA program, we have been taught something called Decision Analysis (DA), and it's basically a chart that compares different options for a certain decision. During one of our workshops, we did a DA on what locations to travel to for a hypothetical situation, and one of those locations was Ljubjana, Slovenia. After reading a description of the capital of the country, my friends and I realized Ljubjana seemed like a pretty cool place to travel. So last week we just did that. We took a 4 hour bus ride to Ljubjana for the weekend.

Ljubjana is probably one of my more favorite cities I have visited during my times in Europe. And I was surprised by how much I liked it when we visited because of the common stereotypes you hear about Eastern Europe. But as a brief little history lesson, Slovenia entered the EU some time around 2004, and in order to join the EU, the country has to be economically stable which means little inflation, lower interest rates, and the like. All in all, we had an amazing time in Ljubjana. Our hostel was really nice and cozy and relatively cheap. We began our day by going to the city center and grabbing a bite to eat. Unfortunately, we didn't speak Slovenian, so we couldn't eat at a local restaurant. We resorted to eating a nearby vendor. We had what was known as "burek" which to me was kind of like a hotpocket. It was absolutely delicious, filled with sausage, and really greasy. Some friends in my group and I then bought a bag of grapes for dessert. These grapes were huge. I mean, they were about the size of a golf ball and they were amazing. So as we made our way up the mountain, we munched on grapes, spitting the seeds out as we went.

For dinner, we went to a famous Slovenian style restaurant called Sokal. We stayed there for about two hours ordering more and more drinks and causing a ruckus playing games and singing songs. I'm pretty sure the locals cleared out because of us. That night, we first went to a bar called The Skeleton Bar, and it looked like something from Tales from the Crypt. It was all haunted house style with skeletons hanging from the ceiling, bookshelves, and on the floor. The bathroom itself was hidden behind a fake bookcase. While we were there, we drank Slovenia's most alcoholic drink called "wikki wakki wu." It was a mix of various alcohols and a splash of cranberry juice. It was good, so good that it was dangerous. If you weren't careful you would end up drinking a lot of these and pass out way before midnight. Fortunately none of us made that mistake, and then we eventually made our way to the three-story club, Bokus. The top floor was a VIP section and of course we weren't allowed up there. The main floor was the bigger bar area where you just kicked back and relaxed, listening to oldies and rock. The basement was the main dancefloor and that's where the techno and rave music were playing. My group and I stayed on the dancefloor till around 4 in the morning, finally making our way back to our hostel. Gotta love Ljubjana :)