05.02.10:

The train to the delightfully-named Ljubljana was a typically ramshackle affair (man I miss them Turkish buses) but it did the job and by the evening, I was sitting enjoying a solitary beer in the Death Bar on the banks of the Ljunljanica river. They say this place was founded by Jason of the Argonauts, which would be awesome if only it were true.

Ljubljana is quite possibly my favourite European city, I don’t know why, there’s just a feeling it gives me, it radiates from the architecture, the statues, the bridges… a feeling like I belong. Of course, for a journeyman such as myself anywhere I hang my hat is home for the night, but – oh I don’t know – Ljubljana is just the right size and the right shape and the right look for me… it’s a Goldilocks thing and I’m not explaining it too well, but scratch this place down alongside Liverpool, New York and Melbourne as a place I could quite happily hang up my backpack for a few years.

I could press on to Italy tonight, but I think I’m going to kick back for the next few days… I’ve just heard from my mum that Algeria won’t be giving me my passport back until WEDNESDAY at the earliest. This is not good news by any means. I’m stuck, I’m really stuck and the only thing I can think to do is just to head down to Tunisia anyway and hang about like a bad smell until I find a Lost-style loophole that will allow me to enter fortress Algeria or Libya for five minutes without the mountain of paperwork and months of waiting usually required….

I just want to step over the border, for heavens sake! The messing about getting back to Tunisia and all the visa malarky is going to cost me well in excess of 500 quid. Just to go to two countries out of two hundred. I’ve got a few buttons and a piece of string left in my bank account and (very) soon I’ll be breaking into my overdraft… and then my credit cards…

Overtime and overbudget, my only hope for having enough cash or exposure to finish this adventure is if the powers that be allow me to release my bulging sack of YouTube videos… something they don’t seem willing (or able) to do. Now I know how Terry Gilliam feels. I like New York in June, how about you…?