My general heading for the next few weeks was west. I wanted to see a little of eastern Slovenia and Ljubljana is very central; this made it ideal to use as a hub for visiting neighbouring areas.
Pro tip: have you ever heard of Blablacar? I imagine so, but if not it's a car sharing app across much of western and some of eastern Europe. Now here's the twist, it's not that popular in Slovenia but they have their own equivalent called Prevoz. Prevoz can get you to those hard to reach places and at a much cheaper cost than a bus; Ljubljana to Maribor is around €5.
Nik and Urška kindly hosted me in Maribor. They are both very interesting people and Nik is the Vice President with Mestni Mladinski Svet Maribor, the City Youth Council; recently they invited a group from Russia for a youth exchange.
My first evening with them proved to be an eventful one. We began by walking up to the top of Za Kalvarijo, a hill nearby - sometimes called the pyramid, which overlooks the city.
After, we waited to meet their friend Alex on a main street outside of an apartment complex. An elderly 155cm man wearing a black overcoat and an Ushanka walked past us. I love people watching and was very curious. As he turned and walked under the building's archway he said "Good evening" in Slovenian, as I watched his right hand reach inside his overcoat and pull out a pistol. He cocked the gun and fired one shot off into the arch above. It felt like it was time to leave. It's odd, I didn't feel afraid but had a heightened sense of things - I guess it was the adrenaline.