Metelkova Mesto

And to think I had almost given up on finding the cool place in Ljubljana. I had seen all of the bars—indoors, outdoors, divey, classy, casual, fancy—and I knew there were clubs, but these are all standard issue things. They're great, of course, and I will return to the cafes and bars on a daily basis. I had also seen BTC City, the enormous shopping/entertainment complex a short bus ride out of town. And so I kind of figured teenagers and families hung out at BTC, and couples and college kids hung out at the bars, and most people probably spent a bunch of time at home, too. But clearly I was missing something: What about the people who will inevitably, in any city, in any town, gravitate toward something different? Bear with me.

Tomorrow is Ljubljana Pride, so I looked up the parade trajectory and found that it ended at Stari trg (no surprise, it's the south point of the old town), but started at this place called "Metelkova City." "What's 'Metelkova City?'" I asked myself. And then I asked Google.

First, a brief digression on cool places. In New York City, as far as I can tell, there are two ways to make a cool place: (1) You can find a more-or-less safe industrial area and carve out underground clubs, bars, restaurants, galleries, and music venues in its hidden corners until you get SoHo, or you get the Meatpacking district, or you get DUMBO; or (2) you can find an ethnic or cultural enclave, take advantage of its immigrant-low prices and safe streets, and slowly invade with post-college kids and artists until you have Williamsburg or the Lower East Side or Greenwich Village. In both of these circumstances you take something that was built to be functional and you exploit the natural beauty of that functionality. And that works for factories, and that works for middle class ethnic neighborhoods.

But factories and ethnic neighborhood can't hold a candle to 19th Century Austro-Hungarian military barracks.



Yes, Metelkova Mesto is an experiment in what happens when you let a pristine, medium-sized city's alternative community take over barracks just outside the city center and run free. And the result is, frankly, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.













Yes, it's ridiculous. It's a mix of gorgeous mosaics that glisten in the rain and violent graffiti. It's a complex that looks like it could withstand wars but wash away during the next thunderstorm. And its inhabitants are middle aged hobos and 40 year old black men with Che and Bob Marley posters and teenagers (oh, the teenagers!), goths, punks, skaters...anyone who's willing to wear the color of the hour.



I walked over to Metelkova Mesto tonight unsure of what I'd find. I grabbed a half-liter of the cheapest beer in town (only €1,50 for a Laško;!) and sat on a picnic bench and read my newest novel. This one's the result of walking into a bookstore and saying, "Hi, do you have any Slovenian books in English?" Thus far the book is entertaining enough; we'll see how it shapes up. So I read outside for a while, and moved under a roof when it started to rain. Then I wound up talking with Thomas, an extremely drunk and high Slovenian who told me that he used to work in a Duty Free shop on a cruise ship until he got off in Los Angeles with a joint in his pocket and was immediately sent back to Slovenia.

Speaking of joints, I was shocked that it took me over an hour to catch a whiff of pot in this place. For an open-air alterna-teen's paradise it was surprisingly low on drugs. I also realized that I really like the smell of marijuana. Not because it's an especially beautiful smell (although it's wholly inoffensive), but because I associate it entirely with good things. I'm in a dorm room and my friends are smoking up. I'm at a concert on a field and people are smoking up. I'm in some crazy alternative neighborhood on a summer night in a strange town and people are smoking up. The smell of people smoking pot a few feet away from me now gives me a visceral feeling of mellowness that has nothing to do with the actual mood-altering properties of the drug. Clearly this plant is going to be more wily in its plan for world domination via relaxation than we ever anticipated.

Tomorrow: I report on Pride.