Wow this place is sooo coooooool!! Maribor is the second largest city in Slovenia but with the total population being about 1.9 million, only 100,000 people live here. Maribor is built beside the River Lent, surrounded by bushes and hills. Currently there is a local two week long annual festival of food and music, and the Freediving World Championships is actually part of the festival. see http://lent.slovenija.net/index.php?L=3 for more info. Its a student town as well and so there's a lot of youth culture going on. I just absolutely love how grunge and original this place is and the chilled out atmosphere. Its very unpretentious compared to a lot of other European cities and countries. Many of the buildings are late 18th century big strong brick houses with little renovation done to them, you would find the coat peeling and worn. But unlike abondoned buildings or empty shops these houses looked alive, and simply aged gracefully, because people live there and you would find plants on the window sill and music spilling out of the windows and a dog sitting at the door. The locals are also the most friendliest I've met in Europe so far. In Kathryn's words "They haven't been cursed with tourism" - yet. And that is a huge plus in itself because we don't have to put up with huge ques and overinflated prices - such a breath of fresh air.
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