Maribor, Slovenia
9/01/2025
We took the Flixbus bus to get to Maribor Slovenia (about an hour away). But to get to the Flixbus stop, we had to first take 2 city buses from the apartment (about 35 minutes). We got up bright and early and headed out the door at about 8am to make sure we were easily on time for the 9:15 Flixbus departure. When the bus arrived and we tried to get on, the driver insisted that we needed our passports (which we didn’t bring with us)… and he was kind of a dick about it! So we stood there stupidly watching as our bus drove away.
Then we quickly regrouped to decide what to do. We determined that if we hauled ass, we could get back to the apartment, get our passports, and return to the Flixbus stop in time to make the 10:45 bus. So we quickly re-scheduled our bus reservation and the tour we had scheduled in Maribor; then re-traced our journey to the apartment to get our passports and raced back to the Flixbus stop.
When the Flixbus arrived and we queued to get on, this driver never even mentioned passports. We were pretty miffed! We had a great day in Malibor Slovenia, and at the end of the day we headed to the bus station to catch our Flixbus back to Austria. Again, we got on with no mention of passports. We were grumbling like a couple of spoiled adolescents about that first driver being such a jerk and sending us on a wild goose chase for absolutely no reason until the bus came to a complete stop at the Slovenia – Austria border.
Everyone had to get off the bus, show their passport to border control and walk across the border. Once border control checked to ensure the bus was empty, the bus drove across the border where we could all get back on. I can assure you, we were no longer complaining about that morning bus driver!! In fact, we were thanking him!! Imagine if he hadn’t stopped us from getting on that bus… we would literally have been standing on the side of the highway at the Slovenia – Austria border with no bus, no passport, and no way back into Austria!! We love a good adventure! 😊
Maribor has been around since the 13th century - initially as part of the Hapsburg empire, and later part of Yugoslavia. Then during WWII, they were occupied by Germany (like just about everyone in Europe - but they were willing participants with the third Reich). Slovenia finally became an independent country in 1991. So they are a really young country!
They have basically three “claims to fame”: 1) Luca Doncic – NBA player for the Lakers… they LOVE him!, 2) Melania Trump – They could care less about her and think she’s a gold digger, and 3) The oldest wine vine in the world. They are VERY PROUD of this vine! It is over 400 years old and is still producing grapes. For an absurd amount of money, you can get a bottle of wine from the grapes produced from this vine. We saw the vine, but did not buy the wine from it, nor did we see Luca or Melania.
We did a private walking tour and learned a bit about the city. Our guide was wearing a tux (complete with top hat!)… we should have gotten a photo of him, but we never think of these things until later! Maribor was a really pretty town.
After the walking tour we hit a really cool wine bar that has 2.2 km of wine caves/tunnels under the city dating back to 1847. It is one of the oldest classical wine cellars in Europe. There was one tank that holds 167,000 liters of wine!!!
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