The journey from London to Liznjan took 26 hours. I left my friends in Brentwood around 9 pm, took a bus to the nearest tube station on the district line, got off at Victoria, then took a bus to Stansted airport. There were lots of people stretched out on the floor and I did too but I didn't sleep. As soon as the desk opened I dropped off my bag - which you have to do yourself now, in front of a machine - then went through security. After a long walk through the duty free, there was a much-needed coffee. A train to the gate and a few minutes later we were boarding.
The flight lasted two hours, but as soon as we were up in the air - that wondrous everyday miracle - I fell asleep and only woke up just before we landed at Ljubljana airport. Where the fields were covered with a thin layer of snow. Not freshly fallen snow but old snow, grubby and worn looking but like a well-used carpet, it had established a relationship with what it covered and had become tolerated, accepted perhaps even viewed with affection.
I certainly did.
For old snow is generous, it has made its statement, when it wiped out pathways to the outside world and to the roads connecting cities and people and workplaces and provisions. It has expressed itself and brought our transport systems and our lives to a grinding halt. And now, relaxed, like an ocean after storm, it accepts our admiration of its stained calligraphy, its extraordinary ice works, which change every day as snow shrinks or is cleared and piled up, as it darkens and gathers soot and mud and general dirt from cities and their modes of transport - cars, buses, trains and their sooty exhalations.
In the area beside the river in Ljubljana's old town, there are wooden cafe tables covered with awnings and there are heaters too, for the outside clientele. And between the cafe tables there are heaps of old snow mounds that have settled into artworks, each ripple of contour dotted or streaked with a darker decoration.
The entire landscape viewed from the window of the train from Ljubljana to Rijeka is old snow and black trees. Sometimes it seems the land falls away sharply from the train tracks into a deep valley but it's so mist-filled it's deceptive, depth is blurred, and I'm glad the train knows how to pick its way through the sliding land levels, glides through mountains and comes out the other side.
The River Train (which gave this blog its name) is what I called the train from Ljubljana to Zagreb which runs alongside the river Sava, faithfully following its curves and contours. This train cuts through mountains. The embankments it slides through are black chunks of rock topped with their blankets of snow, so this is clearly the Rock Train.
I didn't think I'd be posting any more photos of snow but I couldn't resist one or two. Taken from the train window, most are blurry and indistinct, but the one with the pylons captures the starkness of the landscape. By the time we reached the border with Croatia the snow had disappeared.
The train arrives in Rijeka at dusk. It's a short walk from train station to bus station. A flock of dark birds swoops across the sky and I feel I have truly arrived.
The final part of my journey is a bus to Pula where I'm met by my host and driven to the nearby village of Liznjan. I am in a wonderful apartment, full of books in Croatian, German and English.
I go to bed and sleep for ten hours.
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Rubyxx