Three nights in prison

We arrived at the Celica hostel and promptly checked into our dorms before reconvening with Nicky down stairs in the cafe, hungry from the trip we decided to order a bit to eat and ended up with the biggest burgers ever, not quite the snack we were expecting, but none the less very nice. Having already had our feel of Ljubljana we decided we would spend a few hours in the Internet cafe and meet up with Nicky later that even by the central statue and the triple bridge. A few hours later Nicky came and found us in the Internet cafe and had Jo in tow. Jo was a girl she had met in Mostar and she had literally bumped into her in the street whilst wondering.

Thirty minutes later we all met up and went for a quick drink by the river, quite close to where our original hostel, the Alibi, was. Getting served was a bit of an event. In Europe it is the norm for everywhere to be table service, so when you go to the bar to get served usually get greeted with a puzzled smile. So we sat down for a good ten minutes without getting served at all, we could see the waiters and they could see us, we tried waving but simply got no response. In the end I decided to go to the bar, only to be stopped at the door to the bar by a puzzled looking waiter wondering what I wanted, I gave the order and showed the Waiter where I was sitting, finally we got our drinks. But then paying was much the same situation, we had no bill, we tried waving, we even tried the international sigh for asking for the bill, you know the one imaginary pen and paper, but again no response, this time Nina went and asked for the bill again getting stopped by the puzzled looking waiters, she explained we wanted to pay and eventually a smirking waiter came over with the bill, so really as far as whether the place was table service or not we couldn't really tell you, we decided we prefer England where there is no doubting the system, you want a drink you get of your backside and come and get it!!!

Nina had been given the job of choosing somewhere to eat and from nowhere plucked a Mexican restaurant, we were all suitable impressed with the decision although I was still stuffed from my massive burger only 4 hours earlier. The restaurant we went to "Cantina Mexicana" was great food price and service wise and the atmosphere was as authentic as you can expect to get from Slovenians serving Mexican food to 3 Brits and an aussie. After struggling through some buffalo wings and a bottle of Corona it was time to move on to a bar for a few drinks. To be honest we were all flagging a bit from the previous night so nothing major was expected. Nina had done her research and told us about a Skeleton Bar nearby which sounded cool, so off we headed in the rough direction of the bar.

After a little hunt we found it, really it should not have taken that long as there a Skeleton in a cage highlighted by a green light hanging over the door and in Ljubljana there are not that many of those. We all shuffled each other to the front of the group none of us wanting to be first in eventually all taking the plunge en mass. Inside the steps is an eerie cavernous hall way which is down a flight of stone steps, either side of you are book cases with books and bones on them, I later discovered these were hidden toilets, above you are skeletons of all types of animal, once at the bottom of the stairs the room open out slightly, the place is gloomy, poorly lit and there are evil looking skeletons everywhere, the place was awesome. The only thing that lit the room where the odd candle and the brightly coloured cocktails which were all on a two for one deal.

After the first cocktail the effects of the previous night had pretty much disappeared for me and the pains of over consumption of alcohol were all but forgotten, sadly for Nicky her evening went the other direction, and she sloped off back to the hostel after saying her cheerios and wishing us well on the rest of the trip, we also made tentative plans to try and meet at breakfast but with no guarantees hences the good byes. That left me Nina and Jo deciding each cocktail would be the last, however we were soon joined by two guys one form Stockholm and another from Scotland who now lived in Camden, these two happened to be in a band that were playing a local bar in two days time, we chatted with them for some time and apologised for not being able to stick around for the gig, however as the night went on we continued having a really good time chatting about London, music bands we likes and band members they knew, all the time the cocktails continued to flow, by the end of the night I had convinced Nina that we should stay on and watch the gig, I had also managed to spill a whole cocktail, lose all co-ordination and decided that I had had way to much to drink, the walk home was a bit of a blur.

The following morning I woke feeling rough rough rough and rolled over to ask Nina what time we had to check out, the answer I got was very familiar, at the time seeming more like a dream.

"We are not checking out dear, you made me change the reservation to an extra 2 nights, we are in this room tonight and a different one tomorrow. I now need to try and move our Munich booking"

"Oh, that actually happened"...

With that Nina set about reorganizing everything, luckily the hostel in Germany move our booking free of charge, whilst Nina was being an absolute legend sorting this all out I just slept trying to figure out why something that tasted so good could do so much harm. The funniest thing that morning was the aussie guy we were sharing with waking up in the morning and whistling jolly tunes as he got ready for his day. It appears that whilst I was relatively quiet and considerate in my own mind I was still pretty noisy in everyone else's, not to the scale of the people in Belgrade though thankfully. That evening after heading out for pizza me and Nina sat in the cafe at the hostel drinking Tea and vowing against all forms of alcohol only to be joined by our aussie room mate, we ended up having a real good laugh about everything the rugby, my efforts at being quiet, the fact I was now sipping tea and best of all he had a kiwi in tow and she turned into the butt of every joke.

As it turned out staying for the extra two nights ended up being a really good idea, on the day of the gig we bumped into a shocked Nicky again and explained our story, we all went to the gig together and had a really great time and had another chat with the band who were sincerely appreciative of the fact we had stayed on. The following day we did actually manage to meet up with Nicky for Breakfast and exchanged emails and such and went to the Internet cafe together before seeing her off on her way to catch a plane to London before catching her flight home to Sydney, Jo and the Aussie guy were also coming to the end of there trips and for the first time it hit us how close we were to the end of our trip, still we were still having an awesome time so it didn't get us down too much, after a quick bite to each we got to the bus station and caught the 6.20pm bus to Munich, this was due to arrive around 0030.

Ljubljana although small turned out to be a really great place, I guess this was maybe because we hit the right combination of company and atmosphere, we liked it when we had originally planned to leave because it was beautiful, quaint and friendly and we loved it when we eventually did leave because it was all those things and a lot lot more.


Oh I guess I should talk about how we ended up spending 3 nights in prison







Celica means Cell in Slovenian, the hostel we stayed in was in fact a renovated prison, you can even book a cell to sleep in if you want, they are a bit more expensive but are private and are each decorated by a different artist, at 2pm each day you can take a tour of the hostel and see a few of the cells, we did decide to do this and it was really cool to see how they had made such gorgeous rooms from something that used to be so dull.