To Vienna

Travelling from Ljubljana to Vienna, Austria. It was good to spend a relaxing day in this small college town of Ljubljana. The Peruvian-American from the hostel complained that it was boring, was glad that he was leaving, and thinks I'm a loser for staying an entire day but while I feel that I am ready to move on to my next destination, I don't share his views at all. First, Ljubljana is not boring and I'm not a loser.

The train ride from Ljubjana to Vienna is picturesque. It is late fall, early winter here and the landscape is filled with mountains and rivers and chimneyed homes smoking away the cold. The Slovenes still live close to the land. The houses by the tracks follow a pattern of low to the ground homes with a grapevine and vegetable patch, providing their steady supply of wine and cabbage. Both passions of the Slovenes affirmed by what I saw from my walks yesterday. Wine tasting at 11AM, remember. By 2pm a drunk Slovenian man was licking the bridge from which those wine barrels rested. It's a little sad, but every town has a madman. In a strange way, it adds to the charm.

The train makes a short stop at a station named Celje. The letter j is a y in these parts. This much I gathered. Lost of cest-, -ova, -och- combinations here. Looking forward to a stop named Spielfeld-Straß. I don't know how to pronounce that last letter, looks like a math symbol to me but I'm sure it requires an acrobatic tongue and throat formation that when I try always sounds like I'm halfway between a hacking cough and a sneeze. I guess this is par for the course. My Tagalog language has those ng and mga sounds that confounds many. The trains are accurate here and at exactly 13:00 we arrive at the train station with the mystical ß and I realize that it's not as complicated as it sounds. Quite simply a sharper s sound that is combined with a z. I also note that this is the border in which my passport gets checked and the from the controller I hear the slow transition in language cuing me for my arrival to -gasse and -strasse land.