Slovenia

I had Maribor, Slovenia on my list of places to visit this summer. It is only an hour away by train and, since it is in a country I have never visited, I thought it might be interesting. Maribor gets tepid reviews from my colleagues who have been there. I boarded an early train, the Vienna-Maribor Inter City Express and was on my way.
Until the debacle of the First World War the city was German-speaking and known as Marburg an der Drau (to distinguish it from the university town Marburg an der Lahn in Germany). Like so many other cities on the fringes of the German/Austrian Empires it was surrounded by a countryside populated by non-German speakers. After the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Slovenia was established as an entity and the Germans were kicked out. As a former city of the Hapsburg Empire one would expect the usual imperial architecture. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of it remains in Maribor and what is left is pretty shabby. Slovenia was quick to embrace the west when the former Yugoslavia collapsed. It joined the European Union and it is the only former east bloc nation to switch to the euro currency. It has a high standard of living. But twenty years cannot erase the legacy of half a century of communist economic mismanagement. I applaud the Slovenes for doing as well as they have. From what I have seen in photos, it is a beautiful country. It even has it's own mountain range, the Julian Alps, and 50 km of Adriatic seacoast. But all that doesn't change the impression one gets of Maribor: it's a dull and dingy place.

I strolled from the train station to the town center. The cathedral was so unimpressive I almost overlooked it. That's it?? It is one of those churches that went through stylistic renovations through the centuries, starting as a Romanesque building, becoming Gothisized later on and finally Baroque-isized. It's the all too common fate of European sacred buildings. I have seen a lot of churches so it takes a lot to impress me. This one, inside and out, is on the level of any small town parish church. It's in the Slovene ho-hum-ski Baroque style. The Franciscan Basilica, which looked promising from the photo in a travel brochure, turned out to be an early 20th century copy. Sorry, 'neo' doesn't do it for me. Puhleeeeze. The photo is of a pleasant square in the center of town. The building is called a castle. Can't imagine why.