Where To?

Chapter 6

"We won't be walking today, pal."

Clair took out my hand from my pocket and raised it above my head, steering me to the taxi driveway outside the Grand Hotel Union.

The taxi driver greeted us 'zdravo,' and then asked us where we were going today in English. I released my breath, thankful that this one citizen, giving his service to us today, can speak English. Clair bent forward to the driver's seat and spoke quietly. She shot me a suspecting look as she sat down. I cupped a hand to her ear and whispered

"Thank Jesus he speaks English." She slapped my chest with the back of her hand as she let out a howling laugh.

"How's your Slovene now, traveler extraordinaire Jillian?"

"La-lakho... ponovite? Uhh, Slovi-Slovensko, prooo-sim?" I stuttered but I tried. She started an 'OHHH' that I joined in on, even the driver chimed in. He said something in Slovene and told us it meant, 'one language is never enough.' He gave me a thumbs-up.

Clair eventually asked me what I said after her laughing faded away. I told her to study some Slovene and find out for herself. A pout, and then an eye roll. Good old Clair.

As we made our way along the city, my mind played a song from an album I'd been listening to. I popped on my earphones and scrolled through my library, and I tell you, good music makes everything better. I nudged Clair, who looked tamed with her hands on her lap, to scooch a little closer so we could share.

"Hey, hey, hey, listen to this. Good roadtrip music."

"Roadtrip? Jillian, it's a twenty minute ride –"

"Shhh, just listen."

For the duration of the ride to wherever – Clair wouldn't tell me where we were going, much like when I told her to learn Slovene and find out – we had a series of head bopping and hand drumming to The Jungle Giants. The 'Learn to Exist' album, to be specific. The one after that sounded too, I don't know, dark? Clair said the album sounds pretty upbeat, pretty good.

"Like me, pretty." Clair flipped her hair to one side.

"Your hair's all over the place, Clair."

"Oh shit." She tried to look for a reflective surface, which was when I ruffled it up, earning me another backhand slap to the chest.

The driver announced that we've arrived at the museum, to which I shot Clair a look for. He introduced the place by its Slovene name, then translated it as "The Museum of Architecture and Design." I asked her if she knew the difference between architecture and engineering, to which she tried to play off by ushering me inside this classic cement façade. An open space revealed numerous arch openings in front of the doors of the exhibits, a single tree with benches to its side, as well as a few minivans.

The museum's contents held the blueprint of Ljubljana, to sum it up. They had parts of what looked like a freight car, or a train compartment, I don't know. They had scale models of structures and the blueprints for them. A scale model with an inverted cone caught my attention, with its polished wood exteriors and the schematics plastered on the walls adjacent to the display. 'The City and Symbols,' it said beside its Slovenian counterpart.

I realized I had my eyes so wide only when Clair snapped a photo of me: my back to the camera, facing an enormous blue print on the wall. I squinted a bit on her phone screen, feeling a slight strain to my eyes. It seemed she's been taking photos of me from really good angles, much to my surprise because some would be from certain proximity, and yet, I didn't even notice. Clair said I was too busy ogling the feats around me to notice a tiny girl like her. But she wasn't a small girl, to be honest. She must've meant she felt small amidst rooms of buildings and structures larger than her.