at the end of the rainbow, part 1

we traveled to ljubljana because it was raining.

our (ever evolving) plan was to go to pula, a beach town not far from rijeka where they were having an international forum theatre festival. we were going to catch a ride from the mystically called ˝gates of the adriatic˝ (which was really just a gas station near the highway but still). however the south winds joined us again for a raucous night of sheets of pouring rain and howling wind. when we awoke, or rather rolled our sleeping bags up, as little sleep was had, it was still beating down with monsoon-like force.

not a good day for traveling.

as exciting as spending a few days in a squat in a small beach town during the rain seemed, we decided we needed a change of plans. the workshops at the festival were the beginners ones anyway, and though we wanted to spend more time with the lovely tatjana and see her art and zine distro, we decided the winds were blowing us somewhere else.

we opened up our trusty map (well we pulled it up on google...) and decided that ljubljana was a place that was close that perhaps we could go. sighs of 'ohh ljubljana, i'm so jealous!' from our friends at the suggestion made us think this was a good idea.

so we hopped on a train at 8pm and arrived in ljubljana at 11:30pm.

alas, the train station was closed and locked, leaving us map-less and info-less. we had the name and address of one hostel but that was about it. we wandered until we found a hotel, grabbed an info guide from the lobby and found our bearings. we were only a few blocks from the hostel, perfect! our femme intution for direction has been uncanny.

what we hadn't bargained for, however, was the european international university handball tournament that was going on, leaving every. single. hostel. booked.

after debating sleeping in a park, going to the disco all night until tomorrow when we might have better luck, camping out by the train tracks, and other such brilliant ideas, we met a lovely couple who told us about some other places that might have room.

we walked in the direction of one, and we knew we must be on the track to our people when we saw this at the intersection of tabor and tabor:

we arrived around the corner at metelkova, sleepy and wondering if we had stumbled into our queer fantasyland, a combination of dulce, prison books, and la boca.

there was much blackclad cuteness, an assortment of angry and silly music spilling from graffittied buildings, something that appeared to be an orangutan habitat, and hundreds of cans of laško and cigarette butts.

metelkova is an autonomous cultural space, housed in a former yugoslav army base, squatted in 1993, which now holds an infoshop, art galleries, the town's only lesbian and gay clubs (metelkova has 7 clubs total), an lgbt cultural center, and a whole bunch of other things

we found the hostel, startlingly out of place with its steel and glass and red stucco. it was the fanciest hostel i have ever fucking seen. seriously, it was ridiculous. (later we would learn that metelkova had to build this hostel, had to put something commercial into the space so that the city wouldn't demolish it all). it opened three years ago and then lonely planet voted it best hostel in the world. now its crawling with tourists and they upped the prices, yippee.
of course, there was still no room at the inn.

however, at 4 in the morning, we eventually found shelter at a place that seemed to be a converted halfway house, and we slept happily for a few hours.