Saint Patrick's Festival Comes to Ljubljana
On arrival in Ljubljana I waste no time getting to the important business - where to watch the six nations finale and where to find the greatest concentration of Irish people to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with. To do this I make my way to the Irish embassy and, as well as finding everything I need, I also manage to wangle an invitation to the Ambassador's house for a reception on Monday.
On St. Patrick's Day I head down to the Irish pub where I end up watching the matches with the Ambassador himself and Boris, a Slovenian rugby player who married an Irish woman. He was a huge guy, a near-film stereotype of his name, and the playful punches he gave me on the arm each time Ireland scored added up to quite a bruise.
Unfortunately the French robbed us again of victory but I was able to delay my grieving for a while as I got chatting to a group of NCAD (an art colleg
e in Dublin) Erasmus students who kindly offered me a place in their house. I went out for dinner with them followed by celebrations par excellence - including face-painting, céilidh dancing, an impromptu parade and dancing into the early hours at Metelkova, a lefty hangout based out of two abandoned parking lots.Waking late the next day, I repacked my bike and cycled to the guys' house, spending some pleasant days there. I tried my best to fix their Yugoslav-era bikes to mixed success and convinced them to come along to the Ambassador's party.
That day a blizzard hit Ljubljana, ruling out any chance of my leaving the next day and also of cycling to the Ambassador's house meaning that I had to forgo my purist principles and take a taxi to the house which was in the suburbs. The house itself was lovely, boasting
a great library and some beautiful Louis le Brocquy prints of Joyce, Beckett and Yeats. At one point during the reception the power cut out and the Ambassador promptly lit up a candle declaring "I bet you didn't know you were being to invited to a candlelit r
eception". This witticism was met by bellows of laughter from fellow diplomats and shouts of "Brava, Brava!".After some mingling, the Ambassador opened the floor to singing, explaining he wasn't a singer himself. After an awkward silence I volunteer to sing "Oró Sé do Beath Abhaile", the Ambassador declares that he will a
ccompany me and we pull off the old Irish ballad to the delight of the audience. The reception is capped off by some céilidh dancing led by Boris' wife, who runs an Irish dancing group for Slovenians, and then we make our way back to the capital to finish off the night, and indeed the morning, not getting to bed until 7.30am.
posted by Niall at
10:22 p.m.
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