The Most Beautiful City in the World
Hello and welcome to Green-Eyed English, a podcast for intermediate English speakers. Interesting topics, with real, understandable spoken English. I'm Dan Green and today I want to talk with you about the most beautiful city in the world.
Of course, this podcast is my biased opinion, and many people will disagree with me. But today I am going to try and make you agree that the most beautiful city in the world is Ljubljana in Slovenia.
Ljubljana might be a surprising choice… perhaps you haven't even heard of it. I mean, it is a small city in a very small European country. Not many people know where Slovenia is, and even less people have visited Slovenia. To be honest, I probably would not have visited it too, until I read a novel called Veronkia Decides to Die.
Veronkia Decides to Die is by Paulo Coelho, who is a pretty famous author. He is most well-known for a book called The Alchemist. I first read him in my early twenties. I started with The Alchemist and then I read Veronika Decides to Die. It is a really interesting novel about a young woman who tries to kill herself. She takes lots of sleeping pills then wakes up in a mental institution. This is a hospital for people who are mentally ill. One of the doctors tells her that her heart is weak and that she will die in one week. When Veronika hears this, she starts to change… she starts really living her life. Now, spoiler alter, it turns out that she is not actually dying and that the doctor lied to her.
This novel really struck me, which means that I found it really powerful. In fact, I read it again several times afterwards. As well as Veronika's story, I was really struck by the descriptions of Ljubljana, which is where the story happens. The city sounded very beautiful and so I read about it online and started looking at photos. Soon, I was looking at flights too. At the time, flying to Europe from the UK was quite cheap because we had lots of low-cost airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair. Now, I say ‘we had' because, although these airlines still exist, they are not cheap anymore because of the COVID pandemic.
Anyway, I found some cheap flights to Ljubljana and talked my friend Chris into going there. We went there for about a week and also visited some other places in Slovenia and Croatia, but I will always remember how beautiful Ljubljana was. At the time, we were in our early twenties so spent a lot of time in bars. But even though we were usually drunk or hungover, I can still remember being struck by Ljubljana's beauty.
I think the reason the city is so beautiful is because most of it was designed by one man: Jože Plečnik – and I apologise if I am not saying his name correctly…! In the time between World War 1 and World War 2, most of the buildings in the city centre were built from his designs. So, everything you see works together. Now, I currently live in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and Kuala Lumpur is the opposite of Ljubljana. Buildings here are built without any planning or thinking about what is nearby and, so, KL is a mess (sorry to any Malaysians listening, but it's true!). But as you walk through Ljubljana, it is like walking through a dream. The shapes, styles, and colours all seem to connect together.
The main city square was an important place in the book Veronika Decides to Die. It is named after the poet France Prešeren, and there is a large statue of him there. So, that was where I went first. I remember being impressed by the square, but I actually thought that the beautiful bridges, churches, and other buildings around it were more impressive. They felt like they had come out of a fantasy novel like the Lord of the Rings. As a kid, I used to love the Lord of the Rings, and Ljubljana felt like it could have come out of the book.
To be honest, it is hard to put into words, so I recommend you go online and look at some photographs so that you can see what I mean.
When I went to Ljubljana, I wasn't very well travelled, which means that I hadn't visited lots of places. I had been to a few places in the UK and travelled a bit in France but hadn't really seen the world. Since then, I have been all over the place – Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, even parts of the Middle East – and I have seen some beautiful places. But I still think that Ljubljana tops the list.
I hope to be able to go back one day to see the city again. And, if I do go back, there is something I must do. You see, in Veronika Decides to Die, it says that the statue of the poet in the city square is actually looking at something. It says that he is looking at the face of a woman he loved that is on another building. I can remember looking for the face when I was there but, to be honest, I cannot remember if I found it. So, I want to go back to look again (of course, I know I could just ask Google, but that would take the fun out of life!)
So, how about you? Have you been to Ljubljana? Or do you want to argue for another city as the most beautiful in the world? If so, send me a message or leave me a comment. I am always keen to hear about places I have never been to, so look forward to hearing from you.
Finally, if you are a language learner, you should visit my website at greeneyedenglish.com where you can download a learning pack for this episode. It has a transcript, a glossary of interesting language, and notes on useful phrases and grammar.
Nice talking to you. Bye bye!