The first stop was Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia and a new sort of hip destination, for other people at other times of year. I arrived on two state holidays and saw a great number of closed stores. Also there wasn't anybody to eat with.

The Hostel Celica in Ljubljana was made by repurposing an old jail.

This is supposed to be have been a cell. It looks rather modern and doesn't really feel like a jail on the inside, but it does feel like an art space.

The Hostel Celica in Ljubljana is located in the middle of an art colony.

I suppose this makes reference to the plague masks of those years.

This building was entirely covered with mosaic

This guy has something at UCB by where the Pacific Film Archive used to be; or somebody else does, who was working to the same spec.

The Dragon Bridge.

Ljubljana turns out to be another town in the design tradition of Napier and Noto, in that it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1895 and rebuilt all in the same style. To a large extent, it was all redesigned by the same man, one Joze Plecnik, who is not particularly well featured by an afternoon walk in gathering fall gloom but who made his name in architecture for applying Art Nouveau to a city which previously was done up in the style of whatever you rebuilt cities with in 1511, when it was also destroyed by an earthquake. Plecnik probably wouldn't be so much admired in California as one of the works for which he is most respected is doing to the river here more or less what was done to the Los Angeles River, except with some willow trees and some cute bridges that they are very proud of. I think the way you make your name in art is just to be there when a disaster happens and rebuild the mess. Tintoretto had nothing special, the Palazzo Ducal just had a fire. Some day there will be a Kellogg Brown Root school of civil engineering based on the unity of concept with which they rebuilt Iraq and New Orleans.

This is a public market along the river. It was unoccupied, as was the rest of the city, because of two public holidays in a row, October 31 and November 1.

On the river side of the market.

This flower seller was one of two people engaged in commerce in the downtown area. The other was a chestnut roaster. I didn't take a picture of him, but I bought some chestnuts.

The deserted market in the evening.

These pictures have all been Photoshopped to make the colors discernable. Actually it was chill fall gloom the whole time I was there.

This decal is either self-explanatory or inexplicable.

The inhabitants of Ljubljana have a good memory of Napoleon, as he detached them from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

There are many different styles of mannequin in the world. You have to take the picture quickly because they spread rapidly. The new-wave mannequins we saw for the first time in Bangkok a few years ago now occupy every mall in America.

This gate latch advertises justice.

A view of Ljubljana from part way up the walk to the castle.

Another view, from more near the top.

These stairs, which Joze Plecnik also had a hand in, lead up the tower in the castle. There is a video presentation that you can sit through at the bottom describing the history of Ljubljana and Slovenia with such special effects as they could budget for. Those of you who were reading this website in 1984 will remember a similar show in Chicoutimi, called "Quebec Nature". Really all literature is meant to induce false memories, isn't it?

This proves it was a castle, you can shoot arrows out of it.

Note to the idiots who pasted together "Santana Row" so it looks like a postcard collage made by a Rhine Cruise passenger who fetishizes images of suburban stores: The way you really know you are in Europe is that there are statues of naked boys. Europe, or Huntington Beach, if some Intelligent Design fanatic hasn't welded breeches upon the little surfer there on the grounds that it wouldn't be intelligent to give children body parts it was illegal for them to use.

Naked adults are also a feature. These ones are wearing clothes but underneath they're naked.

On to Belgrade