5 Handwriting

Parking again proved a challenge. The streets entering downtown Ljubljana were packed with both cars and people. We gravitated to the first parking sign we found, which turned out to be an underground garage with an automatic rollup door. I felt like Batman entering his cave. A hidden door rolled up as we approached then closed behind us. I shimmied Opel into a slender space next to a Beamer. “Let’s see, do I leave the parking ticket in the car to validate on the way out or do I take the ticket with me hoping I don’t lose it and validate on the way out?” The new challenge now was finding our way back to the hidden lot after wandering three miles in backstreet mazes and unpronounceable multi-syllable street names with too many consonants and too few vowels … if a street name was even posted. Dave, an experienced traveler, pulled out a ballpoint pen and wrote the name of the street on his hand so he could show it to a local in case we got lost. Taking pictures of landmarks also proved useful: an old church steeple, a tall brick smoke stack, the winding river, a condominium shaped like a ski-jump, a green goblin painted on a wall … Rick Steves calls it “street art.” I call it graffiti.