My bus to Venice left at 11, so I didn't have a whole lot of time to waste in the morning. On the bus I got talking to this Austrian girl who's studying in Venice at the moment. She's doing a master's in American and English studies (no idea why you'd do that in Venice) and it showed in that she had the most perfect English I've ever heard from someone who isn't a native speaker. She apparently spent a year as a TA at Williams so was very familiar with Massachusetts. Anyway, she was extolling the virtues of her hometown, Graz, which is right between here and Vienna. I'm considering making a stop there, probably just for a night, since it sounds cool and I'd like to have a local's perspective. It would be less efficient for my eurail pass though, so I'm not sold on anything yet.

We made one stop along the way in Trieste, which looks cool although not very large. If I had unlimited time I'd probably have stopped there, but I don't think I can justify it in this trip. There are so many more places in Italy that I'd like to visit, too - I'll have to come back some day. Despite my many criticisms of it, as a whole I think Italy may be my favorite country so far. The diversity, beauty, and rich culture of its many cities is like nothing I've seen before. That said, I am looking forward to moving on and seeing other countries again. Right after leaving Trieste, we crossed the border into Slovenia and my first ex-Yugoslav nation.

Ljubljana is a city that I knew absolutely nothing about before today. It's the largest city in Slovenia by quite a wide margin, though that's not really saying much since the country seems to be quite rural. Getting to the hostel with my bags was a bit of a chore since there's no public transit system here outside of the bus routes that all seemed to be perpetually running very late. After checking into the hostel, I started to explore the area and was amazed by how much I liked it. The old part of the city is centered around the river and actually very beautiful. There's a castle and park on top of a steep hill right above all this which can be seen from almost anywhere, and the whole area is full of cute churches and bridges. I'd been imagining something more like Szczecin where the Soviet era still weighed heavily on the city, and while I won't claim that there's no trace of the classic Soviet apartment buildings here, it's impressively full of character.

After walking up to the castle and admiring the view of the city against its mountainous backdrop, I went out to meet a group from hostelworld. We were meeting at 7 and I got there at roughly 7:03 - I quickly found a Finnish girl I recognized from the chat but nobody else. After walking around the square for 20 minutes or so, someone finally informed us that apparently they'd left immediately at 7:00 and hadn't bothered to tell anyone who wasn't there where they were going. So we caught up and found them at a nearby burger place. I guess one of the downsides of Ljubljana being very nice is that it's also not as cheap as I'd hoped - my chicken sandwich ran me almost €15 and didn't even come with any sides. Anyway, the people were mostly cool and we went out to buy some more appropriately priced beer afterward.

Tomorrow a bunch of people are visiting the popular resort town of Bled - it looks cool and frankly I don't get the impression that there's a whole lot to do in Ljubljana (nice as it is), so I think I'll join them. The bus up there isn't expensive and it's not too long either.