Another Drava vista

This is a somewhat wider view of the town from across the river. I had a look at a new shopping mall a friend urged me to visit. A shopping mall? They're all the same except that the signs here are in Slovenian. At least I got a nice photo for my efforts. Walking through the streets of the old town a bit later I stopped to examine a map of the town and heard some music drifting into my consciousness. It was a bit too exotic to be European. My ears did not deceive me: it was Indian music. A little ways up the street sat a lone Hare Krishna guy, shaved head, saffron robes, the whole kit, singing gently and accompanying himself on a harmonium. It was so unexpected and incongruous I did a double take. Passersby on the busy shopping street looked at him as if he had just landed from another planet. As I passed him I made an effort to nod and smile, to thank him for his courage. He flashed me a huge smile. The guy was blissed out. Hare Krishna y'all!

Bridge over the River Drava

We all know someone who, from a certain angle, with the right lighting, etc. looks pretty darn good. So does Maribor from the bridge over the Drava. In a lovely coincidence, the Drava (Drau in German) is the very same river whose source I saw outside of Toblach in the South Tyrol. It's all grown up here, a big river, having made it's way through three Austrian provinces and flowing into Slovenia at Dravograd. It will join the Danube somewhere in Serbia. The lady walking on the left is now forever immortalized on my blog. The setting of the town is very pretty, with its hills and vineyards. I have seen a picture of the old, pre-war Marburg. It must have been a lovely town.

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.