Author: lauren

More craziness: one of my co-workers came across the Different Honeymoon ad in a magazine while waiting at his doctor’s office. He thinks the magazine was something like “American Express Travel,” and the issue was from March or April. If you find it (or see the ad in any other magazine), I’d be much obliged if you sent it along.

In the introduction to the Ljubljana section of Rick Steves’ Croatia and Slovenia, Rick says:

Batted around by history, Ljubljana has seen cultural influences from all sides — most notably Prague, Vienna, and Venice. This has left the city a happy hodgepodge of cultures. Being the midpoint between the Slavic, Germanic, and Italian worlds gives Ljubljana a special spice. And now Ljubljana is proud to be a trendsetter in the “New Europe” — most notably as Slovenia holds the rotating EU presidency for the first six months of 2008.

People often ask me: What’s the “next Prague”? And I have to answer Krakow. But Ljubljana is the next “next Prague.” 

Of all the cities we’ve visited on this trip, Ljubljana would be my first candidate for a repeat visit. And not because we missed many of the major attractions here — in fact there aren’t many — but just because the ambiance and overall mood in this city are wonderful. It struck me as we were walking around today that Ljubljana feels a bit like Amsterdam (but of course without the canals, Red Light District, pancakes, and coffeeshops). It’s often dubbed a mini-Vienna. I haven’t been so can’t weigh in on that, but the architecture certainly has that Baroque Viennese flair. The couple of museums we visited were great, but I’d love to come back here just to spend more time walking around, sitting in cafes, and enjoying the amazing food. And as an added bonus, it would be great to see the city when it’s not pouring rain.

And another thing Ljubljana has going for it is, with notable the exception of a very brusque reception desk employee at the Hotel Park (we ended up staying elsewhere), all the Slovenes we’ve met have been extremely friendly and have bent over backwards to help us.

I wonder if I really just love any city with cobblestone streets and a river running through it (see Paris, Florence, Budapest, etc.).

We’ve had glorious weather since arriving in Budapest a couple of days ago, but this morning the heavens opened up and it’s been stormy and gloomy all day. We debated scrapping our plan of venturing out to Statue Park, but it was one of the places we had been eagerly looking forward to seeing ever since we rented the Rick Steves Eastern Europe video. Fortunately it wasn’t cold, just a bit wet, so we grabbed our jackets and boarded the metro. As it turns out, the overcast skies made a perfect backdrop for Statue Park.

The park is actually outside the city, and it takes about an hour to get there from central Pest by public transit (metro + bus). Our bus driver neglected to stop there, even though we’d told him we were headed to Statue Park, but fortunately Kenny noticed the statues out the bus window and we were able to alert the bus driver before we’d gone too far.

Statue Park, or Szoborpark in Magyar, is like a Soviet kitsch wonderland. After the fall of Communism in 1989, the Hungarians had a lot of extra Communist art lying around. Obviously they didn’t want to keep it in the city, but rather than disposing of it, they decided to collect it all and deposit it in a park just outside town. They held a design competition, and the winner, Ákos Eleod, said the following about the concept he developed:

This Park is about dictatorship. And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described and built up, this Park is about democracy. After all, only democracy can provide an opportunity to think freely about dictatorship. Or about democracy, come to that! Or about anything!

 

 

 

 

Kenny fends off the warriors!

 

These soldiers had the buffest thighs I’d ever seen.

 

The interplay of the various statues in the park made for some interesting views.

I went crazy with the camera at Statue Park. More photos in our Budapest set.

Kenny and I are headed to a friend’s wedding in Long Island this weekend, and then off for a two-week jaunt to Pannonia: Budapest and Croatia, possibly taking day trips to Bosnia and Montenegro. We’re planning on taking a laptop with us for this one, so I may post some photos and he may post some restaurant reviews from the road… unless the weather is too nice and we can’t tear ourselves away from the beach.