piran café

This is at the Zidani Most train station, one of a handful of personal favorites shot in April. You can check out a few more, all shot in or near Ljubljana (except the one above), here.

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Zidani Most station, originally uploaded by pirano.

Feeling reflective. Another pic of the day (15-Feb) on the popular travel blog, Gadling. This is a reflection of the clock tower of the Ljubljana train station. Entirely too many more photos of Ljubljana are here.

Ljubljana 0127, originally uploaded by pirano.

On an early summer morning in 2003, I spotted a copy of Jan Morris’s Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere in the bookshop of the Newcastle train station. I was heading to Trieste in a very roundabout sort of way, due to arrive at 2:05 am the next morning. I bought it and spent the rest of the day –on trains, in small airport lounges and uncomfortable budget carrier planes– reading her fascinating memoir of the once mighty northern Adriatic port city, one she had often characterized as her favorite. There was a strong sense of melancholy exuding from the pages; there was simply no other way for Morris to remember a city that history had since chosen to relegate to the sidelines, one that is now simply trying to live out its uselessness.

Just as I finished, two whistle stops from the Centrale station, I experienced part of what she was talking about. Without explanation or warning, the train came to a halt and we were told to step off and travel the remaining 28 kilometers by bus. By the time I arrived at the station she so vividly described, I was an hour-and-a-half behind schedule, missed my ride to Portoroz just across the border in Slovenia, and was forced spend the next four hours trying to explain –no, not justify– the George W. Bush doctrine to a stoned and hysterically giggling French-speaking spitting image of Bob Marley who was out walking his unkempt scrawny mutt. I had arrived in Nowhere.

The moral? Choose your travel reading carefully.

But much has changed in those ensuing five years. At least as far as the station is concerned. I used it regularly during the year I lived in Piran, and while hints of its past glory were evident, you had to look well beyond the grit to find them. It’s gotten a complete makeover since; the main entry looks terrific, there are a few new shops, a large airy cafe, and a very convenient grocery store. Morris would probably approve.

Related: The €100 million renovation at the massive Milano Centrale, my favorite Italian station, continues. The new moving sidewalks/escalators are finished and functioning, and new artworks –one-fifth of the total budget was earmarked to restore “areas of high artistic value”– appear during every lay over. No word on completion date.

Trieste Station, originally uploaded by pirano.

Earlier this year, a convenient, fairly popular and reasonably quick Ljubljana-Venice route was sliced from the timetables. It was Trenitalia that wielded the scalpel, choosing to use the tracks in the late AM hours for local traffic.

So now the only option with a reasonable departure time is routed north through Villach, Austria (where you change), and then back south via Udine. Aesthetically, it’s a much nicer ride; the downside is that the old 3 hr 20 min trip is extended to just under 5 1/2 hrs. Another upside is that you arrive about two hours earlier than with the old option, opening several more options if you’re connecting onwards from Venezia-Mestre.

Dep Ljubljana 08:05 – IC 310
Arr Villach Hbf 10:00
Dep Villach Hbf 10:37 – OEC 31 / EC 31
Arr Venezia Mestre – 13:18
Arr Venezia Santa Lucia – 13:30

With at least seven day advance purchase, price is as low as 15 EUR one-way. Much less than the cost of parking your car for an afternoon in Venice.

Ljubljana-bound from Venice:

Most practical is the same route with a mid-afternoon departure, travel time 5 hrs, 4 min.

Dep Venezia Santa Lucia 14:44 – EC 30
Dep Venezia Mestre 14:56
Arr Villach Hbf 17:40
Dep Villach Hbf 18:04 – IC 311
Arr Ljubljana 19:48

If you don’t mind a much later arrival, you can leave Venice in the evening, no change, and spend less time traveling (4 hr 24 min).

Dep Venezia Santa Lucia 21:27 – EN 241
Dep Venezia Mestre – 21:40
Arr Ljubljana 01:51

Some more info on the SLO Rail site. As always the first place to look for connections in all of Europe (EU and non-EU) is Bahn.de.

Speaking of trains…

Ground was broken last month on the Emonika project, a complex that will include among other things, a new railway station for Slovenia’s capital.

The two phase project, with a total price tag that ranges from 220 to 300 million euros, includes a new bus station, shopping and entertainment center set for completion by the end of 2009. The train station, a new high rise business center, luxury apartments and four-star hotel, is to be completed by the end of 2010.

Designers say the project will provide a bridge to connect two areas of Ljubljana that have been historically separated by the tracks, resulting in a more cohesive city center. I could do without the shopping mall, but overall I like the concept.

The project’s website, which includes a nice photo gallery, is here.

Screen cap from project website; view facing northwest

I just picked up some tickets and info at the train station, so thought I’d list it here as well.

Slovenia Rail offers quite a few cheap rides to a variety of destinations. BUT it’s important to note that the number of cheap fares listed is very limited, usually six to eight seats per route, so buy early.

- Ljubljana – Belgrade – Six trains/day, 8.5-10 hrs.  25 EUR/one way
- Ljubljana – Budapest – daily departure at 7:40, arrival 16:23.  29 EUR/one way
- Ljubljana – Prague – daily departure at 10:18, arrival 21:55.  29 EUR/one way
- Ljubljana – Zurich – daily departure at 20:35, arrival 8:20.  29 EUR/one way
- Ljubljana – Munich – three per day, about 6.5 hrs.  71.40 EUR/round trip
- Ljubljana – Vienna – three per day, about 5.5 hrs.  29 EUR/one way
- Ljubljana – Venice – twice daily, just under 4 hrs.  15 or 25 EUR/one way

At the moment, purchase/reservation is not available via the web; here’s a link to purchase points. Check here for couchette/sleeper surcharges.

slo_train, originally uploaded by pirano.

My fetish for train travel led me to this incredible gallery of photos by Mike Brodie aka “The Polaroid Kidd“, described as an “accidental” documentary photographer whose subject matter consists primarily of young hobos, punks and squatters who ride the rails across the U.S.A.

Like their fabled predecessors during the height of the Great Depression, when some quarter of a million teenaged hobos roamed around the US, these modern day tribes, in their shacks and boxcars and with their elegant rugged dining habits certainly expand the definition of budget travel.

Absolutely enthralling photos. I suggest you start with Boys & Girls of Modern Days Railways, and move on from there. Take your time. There’s absolutely no rush.

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If you have at least five minutes between trains at Koln’s main station, you’re the biggest of fools if you don’t step out, for just a moment, to breathe in the enormous Kölner Dom that towers over the area. It snapped me right out of my post-nap stupor. It always does. It took about 600 years to build, was once the tallest building in the world, and survived 14 aerial bombs during WWII.

For food, I strongly suggest the sushi joint in the center of the station’s sprawling food court. For about the same price as bag full of junk, you can enjoy this.

And since there’s about 10 seconds left in this advisory, I just have to add that there indeed was a woman in white glancing down from the clouds.

Kölner Dom (woman in white), originally uploaded by pirano.

If you’ve never been on a sleeper train, this is what they look like, or more specifically, what the 23:42 D 296 from Ljubljana to Munich looks like:

This one’s a Croatian Rail sleeper, quite new, relatively comfortable, very clean. Much nicer than some I’ve been on.

But if your plan is to get a decent night’s sleep during your 6 hour and 35 minute trip to Munich, it’s probably not worth the surcharge. Just as I finally dozed off, I was brutally awakened by an Austrian policeman pounding on my door as we crossed the border about an hour after departure. The scene was repeated less than an hour later, this time awakened by a passenger who boarded in Villach and took the bunk below mine.  Coffee wake-up was at 5:45, a big enough boost to greet the early morning chill in Munich at 6:17. In all, not particularly restful, despite the bleached sheets.

The 6:40 (EC 266) from Munich to Strasbourg was a pleasant, dreamy ride, much of it through flatlands and rolling hills, largely covered in early morning murkiness. The sun rose just beyond Augsburg, revealing even more misty rural fields without any signs of recent snow. Whiled the time away talking music with a student from Stuttgart as I recharged the battery on his MP3. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Purple Rain before 8 am. Also began reading Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow, where he writes, It snows only once in our dreams. I realized that I miss snow, and was hoping for a dream. Instead, I got a loud drunk who boarded in Baden Baden who continued the incessant theme of nap interruptus.

Spent about 40 minutes in Strasbourg –like many stations, under heavy renovation– just long enough to get thoroughly pissed off at the woman in Ljubljana who sold me my ticket. She didn’t add the reservation on the reservation obligatoire ticket for the 1604 to Paris Est, which meant forking over 52 euros for another ticket. (Anyone have any good experiences with getting refunds from Slovenia Rail?)

It began to rain as the train pulled out of Strasbourg, and the steady rain gently scratching at the windows didn’t end until we pulled into Gare de L’Est a few minutes after 4. Climbing out the metro at the Bastille stop and onto the busy Rue St. Antoine was invigorating enough to forget about how sleepy I was. The rain had stopped, the sun appeared briefly, and the sounds of a west African drum group lured me towards a delightfully frenzied café for a quick coffee, the best one I’d had in over 17 hours.

When I moved to Slovenia, I promised friends that if they would ever stop foot on the continent, I’d come and meet them –wherever. Colette called my bluff, and gave me about ten days notice. So if they’ll have me — a big if– she and her friend Marianne will be my Valentine dinner dates tomorrow evening somewhere in Paris.

I didn’t fully decide to make the trip until yesterday afternoon, thus severely limiting the possibility of finding any “low budget” options, such as they exist here, and was left with these:

• The 1296 km drive from Ljubljana can take anywhere from 12-16 hours; I haven’t had a car for nearly four years so that’s clearly out.
• Adria’s last minute offering was a 300 euro flight, but no return was available until late Sunday, and I’m trying to cut back on short haul flights this year anyway, so that’s out too.
• So too is a combo train-to-Venice, bus-to-Treviso, RyanAir Treviso-to-Beauvais flight, Beauvais bus-to-Paris option. I’ve done several versions of that, and it’s fairly nightmarish only to be treated like a worm by RyanAir, and won’t ever do it again. (By the way, when all is taken into consideration, RyanAir is hardly the deal it pretends to be, but more on that another time.)

So rail, my favorite, it is: a leisurely 16 hour and 22 minute trip to Paris Est via Munich, with a sleeper so I can doze in relative comfort for at least a few hours tonight. For the return, I chose the route from Gare de Lyon via Lausanne and Zurich; I’ve never been through Switzerland during the winter months and am hoping to catch at least a brief glimpse of a Swiss Alpine glacier before they all disappear. (I’m apparently not alone, BTW. Plenty of people are deciding to rush about in an effort to see things before they become extinct or melt away.)

Happy Valentine’s Day y’all!

Pic – Paris 9-July-06 (sorry, forgot where)

Taken this afternoon at the Ljubljana station, the 15:40 train to the port city of Koper.

Through 8-Dec-07:

Ljubljana to the coast (Koper station):
Departure 09:30 (IC503), arrive 11:50
Departure 15:40 (LP2752), arrive 18:10 
Departure 18:10 (IC509), arrive 20:32

More rail schedules on the Slovenia Rail website.

Less than eight months after it opened, Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof, Europe’s largest –and at a cost of €750 million (USD 900 million) certainly the continent’s most expensive– rail station, hit the headlines today after Storm Kyrill apparently knocked a two-ton steel girder from the building’s facade.

Only opened since May, officials wondered, wind storm notwithstanding, how something so new could begin falling apart so quickly. From Spiegel:

“In truth, something like that should never have happened,” said Berlin’s Interior Secretary Ehrhart Körting, in something of an understatement.

The station was closed and evacuated because of the storm at the time, so no injuries were reported.
 
While the merits of spending that kind of money on the station have been and continue to be argued, it’s not debateable that it’s an absolutely stunning metal and glass architectural gem spawning yet another example of impeccable German efficiency. When I passed through on an early September day –along with about 320,000 others on that Monday– I was struck by its immensity, and it’s locale: the Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz, the Federal Chancellery and the Holocaust Memorial are just a short stroll away, making it a destination in itself.

A few more pics:

Some construction pics here and more about the station here. 

If you find yourself with some time to kill at Koper’s train/bus station, don’t waste your time on a nap at the sleepy station when you can take a little stroll over to a winery instead. 

There are plenty of good wines in Slovenia, and Vinakoper, the local coop, produces some good ones. The winery and adjacent gift shop/tasting area is just about a ten minute walk from the train/bus station. (Head straight south and take the pedestrian walkway that underpasses the highway.) While it’s one of SLO’s biggest producers, the quality is quite high for a mass (relative term in Slovenia) market winery; they have four primary brands, a late harvest selection, and several cellar selections which for the price, will knock your socks off.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to grab a bottle or two for the train ride.