Reflections on Europe

I apologize for my absence. The three regular readers of this blog are most likely wondering where the hell I went after being so faithful for…a week or two.

Well, now I’m answering that question. I was on vacation. In fact, as I write this post, I’m on a trans-Atlantic flight back home. It’s an eight-hour haul with a little over six hours to go, and the Wi-Fi is out. But that’s okay. We human beings weren’t meant to be plugged into the algorithm 24/7.

The reason for my trip was to celebrate my graduation from college. I was allowed to select a destination within reason, and the country I had wanted to visit ever since seeing it on The Amazing Race in 2023 was…Slovenia. 

I traveled with both of my parents. Maybe I’m a little old for that, but whatever. It was and is my first trip abroad since Donald Trump was reelected President in 2024, so I felt rather wary of how I would be perceived. After all, it’s no secret that Americans are persona non grata all over the world, but particularly in Canada and Europe. In specific terms, I don’t know exactly what I should have been afraid of given that Europe has far fewer firearms than my own country.

Even so, I bought a backpack with the Canadian flag on it and used it on this trip. This is a practice known as “flag-jacking” that originated during the George W. Bush presidency after he invaded Iraq. Canadian tourists, after all, have much better reputations abroad than Americans. I did not exactly pretend to be Canadian; when pressed I told people the truth. I just wanted to send a message that I do not approve of my country’s administration.

As it turns out, I may have been overthinking this all along. Most people I met didn’t ask me about my country’s politics. It turns out that Reddit is not real life - who would have thought?

There was one exception. While I was touring the Postojna Caves (more on that later), one of the people beside me asked me if I liked Trump. Needless to say, I gave him a resounding no and asserted that Americans who support Trump generally don’t travel to Europe very much.

So I visited two countries on this trip, Italy and Slovenia. We flew into Venice, which is not worth it. It might be the closest major airport to our next destination, but the city itself is basically a floating souvenir shop. Except that it’s not floating at all, instead slowly sinking into the Adriatic Sea. 

It’s been said before, but very few people actually live in Venice these days. The detractors who refer to the city as “Veniceland” have a point. Once upon a time, it must have been amazing given how much history is in that place. Nowadays, it feels like a Disney version of Italy. In early spring it was already a zoo, and in midsummer it’s probably as crowded as a pandemic-inducing factory farm. The locals would be fed up if there were any locals to begin with. 

After two days in Venice, my parents and I rented a car and drove a few hours northward. The first thing I noticed was just how much less traffic there was. According to urbanist YouTuber Not Just Bikes, countries with robust public transit and walkable cities are (perhaps ironically) also ideal for drivers. The reason is because not as many people there need to drive, therefore those people who do drive want to drive. 

This stands in stark contrast to us Americans, who mostly get our licenses at age 16. In America driving is seen as a right and necessity rather than a privilege. But that’s a subject for another day.

I also noticed that the roads in Italy were in far better condition than those at home. Seriously - I live in one of the most affluent parts of the United States and potholes are common. Even when there aren’t potholes, major roads are still far from even much of the time. The Italian motorways were almost spotless. 

We stayed in the ski town of Cortina d’Ampezzo. I am in fact an avid skier, having partaken in the sport since I was six years old. And let me tell you, it was the polar opposite of Venice.

Despite Cortina’s reputation as a glitzy resort that attracts tons of visitors from all around the world, the town felt virtually free of tourists. There were some, yes, but I saw plenty of locals around too. I even bought a new pair of sneakers at a department store where the employees spoke lackluster English (though it was admittedly still far better than my Italian). There’s something immensely gratifying about going somewhere locals or domestic tourists visit.

The skiing was, in absolute terms, not ideal. At lower elevations of the resort, it was very much slush season. In late March, of course, this was hardly unexpected. In fact, relative to what time of year it was, the upper part of the mountain might as well have been Hakuba. All of this, with minimal crowds!

My favorite memory from this part of the trip will likely always be the cooking class my mother and I signed up for. One of the hotel’s chefs walked us through the process of making ravioli with beet filling. Even if we paid good money to take part in it, the activity still felt like an honor.

Think about it. All of us live in a world of vastly increased globalization relative to how it was thirty, even twenty years ago. It’s a lot more common for Americans to watch Indian movies or South Korean TV shows. Conversely, American retail chains can be found all over many European cities despite some Europeans’ best efforts to boycott them.

Italy is another example of a “cultural superpower.” There’s a reason Italian restaurants can be found all over the world. There’s a reason the peninsula received more visitors in 2023 than all but four other countries. Thanks in part to mass media, most people have at least a cursory understanding of why someone would want to visit Italy. 

There is something almost spiritual about this globalization, and yet it has its downsides as well. Indigenous languages are declining, as are some languages that have official status in one or more nations as many people turn to English as a “default” lingua Franca. Some people say that cultures are all becoming the same…

…which is one reason why the cooking class felt incredibly special. At a time when some restaurants are chastised for mass-producing their food, at a time when much of the produce at my local grocery store was sourced from other countries, the people in and around Cortina have been using fresh ingredients to make their ravioli for hundreds of years. The chef aims to keep this practice alive even in an age when that might become more difficult. 

While many of us rely on AI to do simple tasks, the chef who taught the cooking class did not. My mother and I tried to revel in the manual task of rolling out the dough and painting the edges of each dough circle with water. (That is one reason my mother took up ceramics). What dough could not be used was put in a bowl, where it would be used to make pasta in the near future. No ingredients would go to waste. 

My biggest takeaway from the cooking class was this: Just because something is a tradition doesn’t always mean it’s bad. 

At the end of the class, we got to keep our aprons and were given the recipe to make the dumplings at home. We’ve promised my father that we will make them in the near future. 

We drove to Bled, Slovenia the next day. Now, believe it or not, you can’t drive directly from Italy to Slovenia. Or at least, it takes a lot longer to. The reason for this, I presume, is the mountain range along the border. Unlike the Americans who built I-70 in Colorado, Europeans were unwilling to “pave paradise and put up a parking lot”. But whatever - three countries for the price of two.

Bled is best known for sitting on the shore of the lake of the same name. The lake is probably Slovenia’s best-known tourist attraction; acccording to photos, it’s bright blue whenever it’s sunny out. Of course, the keywords are when it’s sunny out - we hardly got any sun when we were there.

Our hotel, the Rikki Balance, at least had a wonderful view of the lake even without the sun. Supposedly the hotel was named after a Swiss doctor who helped discover the health benefits of the area’s mineral resorts. Lake Bled was a pleasant place to walk around, and we even took a pletna boat to the island in the lake’s center because that’s what you do when you’re a tourist there.

That’s the other thing: Sometimes a tourist activity is popular for a reason. It doesn’t have to be undiscovered to be worthwhile. The place reminded me of Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire, except that the mountains surrounding Lake Bled are much higher.

While Bled isn’t suffering from overtourism nearly to the degree of Venice, I couldn’t help but observe that it wasn’t a place where many people actually lived. Most residents were probably employed in hospitality. 

The other minor gripe I have with Bled is that for a place with as many tourists as it gets, there weren’t too many restaurants. Yes, I understand that might make me sound like an Ugly American™ - and in fact, most US towns of this size have mostly fast food joints. But we had only two days there and ate at the same restaurant twice. Indeed, if you count the hotel’s buffet as a restaurant, there were two such cases in Bled.

Bled does, however, have that famous cream cake. I’m not normally one for whipped cream, but when it was on the menu, my diet went out the window. And it was on the menu everywhere in Bled. (Why shouldn’t it be? It’s a local culinary specialty.) Even if food in Europe is generally healthier than it is in America, I still won’t be surprised if I’ve put on weight this trip.

We spent two days in Bled before driving to the capital city of Ljubljana. Now, in case you didn’t know, there’s a well-known town called Postojna that’s home to some caves. One of the longest cave systems in Europe, in fact! It’s no wonder that plenty of people were there, such an international crowd that the tour guides don’t bother speaking to the guests - instead, we were given audio guides programmed to the language of our choice.

Let me tell you: The caves are well worth visiting. The karst limestone caverns formed over a period of millions of years. When people say they travel to Europe for history, that’s not generally the type of history they think of. And yet it’s somehow even more spectacular than the cathedrals. In the time it took to build the Sagrada Familia, each stalactite and stalagmite grew about a centimeter at most. It really brings to mind how minuscule our existence on this planet is by comparison.

In the grand scheme of things, it was not that long ago that spelunkers risked life and limb to dig some of these tunnels through pitch-blackness. Nowadays, tourists from all over the world can pay to take a train down and safely explore this underrated natural wonder. There was a gift shop at the end, which had a selection of children’s books like The Dragon In Postojna Caves. I bought a sweater that I intend to wear decently frequently.

Finally we reached Ljubljana, our final stop on the trip. As European capitals go, it’s relatively small, with only about 300,000 people living there. The old town, where we stayed, is centered around the Ljubljanica River. And let me tell you: It’s hard to overstate how excellent the location of the hotel was. Thanks, Dad.

Ljubljana is known as the City of Dragons - one of the most notable bridges over the river is called the Dragon Bridge due to the green statues on all four corners of it. Legend has it that the hero Jason of Greek mythology slayed a dragon there. 

Although I’d imagine very few present-day Slovenes actually believe in dragons, the mythical fire-breathing creature still holds significant sway over the capital city’s history and culture. Dragons feature prominently on Ljubljana’s capital and coat of arms. Most of the souvenir shops dotting the old town sell dragon plushies, dragon sweaters, dragon pendants, or even dragon-themed chocolate. I’m not kidding about that last one.

Ljubljana, in my mind, isn’t “becoming” the next big thing in Europe. It’s already there. While it wasn’t nearly the zoo that Venice may have been, early spring is not peak tourist season in the Slovenian capital. According to a waiter at one of the restaurants we ate at twice (which my father claims made the best hamburger he’s ever eaten), in the summer Ljubljana is like Venice. Given that he spends orders of magnitude more time there than I do, I’m inclined to trust his word on that.

In my experience, Ljubljana was somewhat touristy. There’s a dedicated Tourist Information Center near the Dragon Bridge, and many people were taking selfies in front of a cathedral. I even saw some graffiti telling tourists to go home. 

While I’m not trying to minimize the very real negative impacts that mass tourism can have, I will say that I felt welcome. Even when people found out I was American, they treated me well. 

Now that I have a little over an hour before I land at Boston Logan, I want to gather my final thoughts about Europe and Slovenia in particular.

First of all, the café/restaurant culture is very different from what I’m used to. In the United States, many people get coffee at a drive-thru. It’s physically, environmentally, and emotionally unhealthy - that’s no secret. Everyone is in a hurry at restaurants in America. This isn’t the case in Europe, where cafés are a very common “third place” for people to hang out and linger over drinks.

Part of this is because most American cities are not remotely walkable. And even in the more walkable ones like my beloved Boston, restaurants seldom have much outdoor seating. When my local “Irish pub” reopened during the initial deployment of COVID vaccines in the spring of 2021, all the seating was outside. Yes, it was in a former and future parking lot, but I miss outdoor dining in the States. I wish that feature had continued. 

Another thing I noticed was just how green everything was. At the end of March, some buds were poking out, and I can only imagine how colorful Ljubljana must be in May or June. And it’s not just green in terms of vegetation, but also in terms of infrastructure.

You see, every year a city in the European Union is awarded the title of “European Green Capital” for their efforts against the climate crisis. Ljubljana won this award in 2016, and the locals are quite proud of it, as they should be. In the absence of an Internet connection, I can’t tell you precisely how the winner is determined, but I saw very little trash on the streets. And of course, it’s very easy to walk around the compact city - the only vehicles allowed in most of the old town seemed to be the police, presumably other emergency vehicles, and the electric tourist train. 

This extends to the country’s natural heritage. Slovenia’s coat of arms contains the country’s highest mountain, Triglav, and waves to represent its short coastline. Every sane person on this Earth understands that we must protect the environment, but this need feels especially prescient in a country with such natural beauty in such a small expanse. I mean, the place is smaller than the Netherlands, yet it has mountains that were once glaciated, evergreen forests, bright green fields as far as the eye can see, and an Instagram-worthy coastline on the Adriatic. 

As much acclaim as the nature in the United States gets, it’s a lot less accessible to the average resident. America  is massive, and internal transportation is in a sorry state indeed. It’s only likely to get worse under the Trump administration, but it wasn’t great to begin with. Slovenia is far more friendly to people with a limited amount of time - I was only there for four days and feel like I did the country right.

My last observation is that the flag of Slovenia, (which is roughly the same colors as the Russian flag except for the coat of arms in the upper left part of it) was seen frequently. Of the fifteen countries I’ve visited besides my own, Slovenes probably flew their flag more than anywhere but the USA. 

In the US, flying the flag on your property is coded as right-wing. The patriotism, nationalism, or whatever you want to call it is constantly in your face. It’s like people think you’ll otherwise forget what country you’re in. 

By contrast, Slovenia has a lot more things to be proud of. It’s a much smaller country (population only 2.1 million) that’s often overshadowed by its neighbors. They don’t bully people around like America does. Their patriotism is a lot gentler and honestly simpler. I’d even say it’s better. They’re not saying they’re better than anyone else, after all.

I’m sure that Slovenia isn’t a perfect place. If you live in Ljubljana or Bled, I have to imagine that tourism has driven your cost of living skyward. Inflation is probably higher than in the US (for now) thanks to the major war a mere two countries away. 

And yet, as I take myself back to the very pedestrian-friendly streets of Ljubljana, which have been there under several empires prior to the modern-day Republic of Slovenia, I’m convinced that you could do a lot worse.

Overall, I’m very glad I made the trip. As convinced as I am that the contestants on The Amazing Race 35 were paid to remark on how beautiful Slovenia is, that really wasn’t necessary. The scenery speaks for itself, as do the 2.1 million people who are lucky enough to call the country home. As long as you are willing to be a respectful visitor and don’t mind a connecting flight if you’re not from Europe or Dubai, I can’t recommend Slovenia enough. I might describe it as a more budget-friendly version of Switzerland.

All the photos below were taken by yours truly.