With lists, it goes like this: You have to surrender to their rhythm. Believe in their potential.
Expensive coffee. High above. History. River. Map. Street. Beginning. Or end. Crossroads. Church. The dead part of the line. 91. Medico. 82. Hospital parish. Hollowed-out park. Bus 5. Finally, I breathe in. 76. Rog bike service. My first bike is blue. A taste of prestige. Black is the colour. A friend’s parents lived here. 79a. RTV. IMOS. Lottery. Anti-art. Cry me a river. Viktorija with K. Hair accessories. 77. Disability association. Open space. Spread-out space. Broken-apart space. Erased space. Reassembled space. Sun. 75. Vinko Kristan. Red star. Bakery. White bread. Enormous croissants. Miško classic. Ilirska Street. Retreat. Unexpected villa. Graffiti. Illegible inscription. Food odor. For the first time. Low houses. Leather Street. Image of a splayed animal skin. 69. Freud is always somewhere. Cohesion funds. Renovation. Innovation. Change. Development. Zaika. Taste of India. Separate dining room. Empty room. Will as volja. Vinyls. Pants. Shirts. Optics. Dumpling shop. Plush cats. Warriors. Small pink note on the iron gate. Driver, call me when you get here. I am inside the restaurant. A heart under an exclamation mark. Hostel. Where is Max? Hostel Smile. Art gallery. Vidovdanska Street. Baščaršija. Toward the river. Smell of summer. Yum yum. Back to the street. 53. Trubar Bar. Burek. Neighbour’s Day. Ice cream. Three scoops, please. Hello, my best neighbour! Sticker Trubarjeva at your fingertips. Travoteka. Chamber of Trades. Small Business. Summer dresses. LUD. Literature. INFO point. Environmental centre. Almacen. Closed. Dust. Soma design. Poosh. No dust. 48. Studio. Green shop. 46. Mediterranean. Oil. Slavic words. Holm. Brewery. Closed. Down the stairs. Raw pasta. Chill. Passage. Burger and wine. Time. Room. Apartments. Curse. Spa. Red Cat. Tattoo. Meridian. Fit Room. Venus. Siam Bamboo Massage. Pinja Rustica. Closed. Mačkon. Black & Red. Stevo. Project. Beershop & Bar. Skate shop. Closed. Kastelčeva Street. Čompa. Pad Thai Osha. House of Spices. House of Experiments. Falafel. Female students. Tourists. Explorers. Mothers. Draft. Super Tahini. Super Chicken. Foto Pauli. Smokeless devices. Kiosk. Parking. BG. Riviera. Grilled food. Ice cream. 36. Kajfež Watchmaker. KSF. 34. Korean Street Food. Pink bike. Graffiti and posters. Oppose. Attack. Enable. Stop.
I sit with Martina at the café of the renovated Rog Center on Trubarjeva Street, in the heart of Ljubljana, high above the river, in a building I know from multiple angles. As the former factory of the legendary Rog bikes, as a silent, abandoned structure with large windows I used to pass as a child on my blue Rog Pony bike on the way to a friend’s house, and as a space of creativity and activism that lived in the factory’s abandoned halls for nearly twenty years—until a recent conflict with the city. The dispute ended in favour of the municipality, and the centre was renovated, reopened with a new look and new contents less than two years ago. The center opens its doors to the river, linking the riverside to Trubarjeva Street. It’s pleasant and expensive. Pleasantly expensive.
The Pony Classic is a bike riding from the recent past into the future.
https://rogbikes.com/trgovina/kolesa/classic-1/
The coffee is excellent. Served in sleek, handle-less cups placed on a wooden tray. If I were braver, I’d steal them. We talk about plans for fieldwork on the project “Migrants’ emplacement at the micro-level: Restaurants as the contact zones”, which will focus on Trubarjeva Street. In front of me lies an open map, which I find hard to navigate. I dislike maps—they flatten life into a sheet mischievously lifted by wind, making it even harder to tell where I am. When I want to mark something, to get oriented, to plan, to gather myself, to locate when, where, and how I am—I prefer to make a list.
Finally, my gaze traces the line of Trubarjeva. The wind still teases, but my eyes are now locked on the letters. T r u b a r j e v a S t r e e t. As if in an arch, maybe a sickle or the curve of a helmet, the street follows the blue line of the Ljubljanica River and then gets lost in the city. From the helmet, a few strands stick out—Vidovdanska Street, Resljeva, Prečna, Mala Street. The beginning feels empty, the end noisy. Or vice versa, since the street numbers always run outward from the center. The end feels empty, the beginning noisy.
I browse through bits of history online and listen to Martina, my finger anchoring the line on the map so the curve doesn’t slip away. The history of Trubarjeva embeds itself in me far more easily than its cartographic outline.
Trubarjeva is the oldest street in Ljubljana, first mentioned in 1802. In 1952, the former Saint Peter’s Road, Šempeter Road, was renamed Trubarjeva Street – named after Primož Trubar, a Protestant priest, author of the first printed books in Slovene, a migrant forced to leave Ljubljana in 1548 due to his religious beliefs. What did Trubarjeva look like in his time—or before? Martina’s voice carries the smell of medieval leather workers and butchers—long-time residents once banished to the city’s periphery— into the summer morning. The fresh chill of the river washes it away.
The start—or end—of the street is empty, sunny yet cold, as if the muffled cry from the hospital stretches across the intersection. The church has its back on the hospital across the road and gazes, with golden images, toward Trubarjeva, toward the hospital parish—tidy, secluded, locked —at No. 91. A long yellow building 91 seems inaccessible and detached from Trubarjeva, monumental even if only one-story high. Opposite the parish and its parking lot is a bus shelter—Ljubljana’s line 5, which merely grazes Trubarjeva before veering onto Rozmanova. On its roof, newly planted greenery struggles to survive resembling the first or last fluff of human hair.
In 2020, the City of Ljubljana began greening bus shelters to increase green areas and biodiversity.
https://www.ljubljana.si/sl/moja-ljubljana/varstvo-okolja/najvecje-pridobitve/ozelenjevanje-nadstresnic/
Crossing Rozmanova, I breathe more freely. I tread the magical fields of my memories of Trubarjeva. Rog bike service. My first Pony. 1983. My tenth birthday. An entirely different LP melody.
To my right, the dark IMOS block complex—once home to Yugoslav officials. To my left, the open space, the new Rog center hosting mothers and toddlers. In front, a black sports car is parked. I only recognize cars by colour, but this one reeks of money. Its owner walks across to Gallery Y, formerly Slovenia’s Lottery office, where the river “cries,” an employee tells me. Something ecological, he says. Explaining about the exhibition. I ask how long they’ve been there. Why do you want to know? he replies with a question.
The first eatery in our path is Miško’s Bakery. The name resembles Miš-Maš, a famous Slovene story written by Svetlana Makarovič, but it also links to a specific nickname, reminiscent of the Yugoslav era. Donuts, cream cakes, pastries, bread, fluffy white loaves, strudels, croissants—enormous ones—yogurt, iced tea, flavoured water, beer, radler, burek, pizza. A bakery well-known to every Yugoslav. I know the scent, the taste of the bread, the texture of the croissants. The product lineup makes perfect sense to me.
A few steps ahead, food aromas appear again. Zaika—an Indian restaurant. Across the street, its empty dining room. No objects, no guests, only tables and chairs. Strange, Martina says. I agree.
A bit farther, on the left, there is a Dumpling Lady, offering Asian food. Currently closed. On the iron gate hangs a charming note in English:
Driver, call me when you get here. I am inside the restaurant. A heart beneath the exclamation mark.
Food venues cluster. I search for the former African eatery Skuhna, for Max and Teja, but they’re gone. Where are they? In Skuhna’s place stands a hostel called Sleeping Beauty.
We reach what feels like the heart of the street: the corner where Bar Trubar is nestled. Opposite: Bosnian food at Baščaršija. A bit down, towards the river: Chinese restaurant Njam Njam. Scents mingle. Trubar’s own smell is the most indistinct, although it also offers food. Burek, sandwiches, strudels, croissants. At lunch, a Baščaršija waiter retrieves a sandwich from Trubar.
I can’t decide whether Green Shop is a food place, but we linger in the Mediterranean oil shop, where a Russian speaking man explains everything. About his life, oil, politics, and linguistics. Mostly about the oils he sells. He’s lived in Slovenia since 2014. His friend, also Russian, runs the record store across the street. The oil man also knows the steakhouse Čompa owner, a bit further down the road.
To the right, we descend into the Italian restaurant Raw Pasta. We loop through a passageway leading to an inner courtyard. There: Burger Time, two wine shops, and an Italian dining place. Back on the street’s main artery, Café Mačkon brushes past us on the left—a black-and-red hard rock-style place. Nearly opposite is Beershop & Bar Project, once an eatery, a Lebanese mezze. It seems that change is normal here.
The staircase on the right leads to the House of Spices, which brings to mind stories of Middle Eastern newcomers to Ljubljana who found culinary remedy here. A woman from Aleppo once told me Trubarjeva was the first place she claimed as her own after moving to Ljubljana. She said her husband, a writer, wrote some stories about Trubarjeva. He came before me, she added. We don’t enter the House of Spices – it’s an orientational walk.
On the left: small food places—Čompa, Pad Thai Osha, Super Chicken, Korean Street Food, ABI Falafel—where we lunch. The crowd is perfectly mixed, it seems—different ages, languages, attires, all mixed.
Finally, at the end of the first stretch of Trubarjeva, there is Rivier, a larger venue offering grilled fare and ice cream. I wonder if their white bread comes from Miš-Maš. Riviera resembles the sunny side of Yugoslavia. Grilled meat place by the Adriatic Riviera.
The final number on today’s walk: 34. Here, Trubarjeva crosses Resljeva Street. This is where I feel at home again—on my old route from home to music school. This is the place where I once saw a bird fall from its nest and lie on the street’s edge. Was there a tree? Did it fall from a roof? Did I help it fly again?
Between 91 and 34: a 1000 meters, 23 food spots (13 restaurants), and 3 childhood memories.
Published Sept 2025. 2025/15
