Novo Mesto - Slovenia - #54HT

I planned to write about Novo Mesto 3 articles ago, but my brain didn't let me be simplistic and I just felt like to share part of my life.

Finally let's talk about the city that the First Lady of the United States was born, Melania Trump. No I'm gonna write anything about it. Focus! Here we were, walking in the street looking for a place to sleep. A girl from CS just wrote me saying that she maybe could host us, but we arrived there in the beginning of afternoon and she would be able to answer us just at night and with this uncertain it wouldn't be nice to walk around carrying our backpacks until get the answer. Then we just booked a cheap hostel in the city center that was completely empty. Basically we booked two beds, but we had the entire room for us. In fact for 10 euros it was a great hostel that our room was in the last floor entire made by wood, floor, walls, beds, door and a triangular roof. Also all of beds had an inclined window just above our heads. The best was that this huge room was just for us. In fact later our possible host just texted us saying that she wouldn't be able to host us. The hostel was the best option ;)

Novo Mesto was a magnificent city for me. It's a small version of Ljubljana with an old bridge crossing a green river having some old houses and bars in the riverside.

There were no so many things to see in this small city and we spent the day talking, having beers and chilling out.

What made my experience in Novo Mesto to be special was the fact that everywhere that we were going, we were having the chance to meet new people. In fact what I could feel was that people from there were really curious to know what two Brazilian were doing there, once this wasn't a really popular city in Slovenia and it was low season. 

I had the feeling to be really welcome from the locals. This experience doesn't happen often in tourist cities, places where the locals aren't enjoying the impact that the tourism is doing in their life.

When we are traveling we don't really realize it. However when a place became touristic, if you're a local that aren't connected with commercial sector, you won't make profit out of the tourism. Worse, you're going to have bad impacts in your daily life.

I could mention many aspects that the tourism is bad for a community, but the one that currently impact strongly is the cost of living. Normally when places become tourist, the cost of living tends to rise, like accommodation and food. These places that are full of tourists around, people in vacation tends to be opener to spend more many than usual. Also regions that live using tourism as main economic, even been poor than where most of the travelers are from, the prices increase crazily. For instance, I'm currently paying 150 euros for a room in the city center of Granada. The cheapest hostel that you could find to sleep during one mouth it would be more than 300 euros to share a room with other people. If would like to have the same room that I have in a similar location you would need to pay more than 600 euros per month. It's 4 times the normal price for tourists. I'm not even talking searching an apartment in booking for one month, it’s going to be hard to find something cheaper than 1K euros.  

This is a not sustainable tourism, where the local aren't interested to meet foreigns anymore, because their presence impact direct in the quality of living that they could have there. This is one the reasons that I don't like to visit tourist cities. Once they locals are closed, you'll have a hard time to have the opportunity to meet them and see how this place really is, in other words to live the local experience, to discover the world. Don't forget that the world is made by small pieces that you need to connect with each other, if you miss one of them that is being affected from the tourism, there are going to have some pieces missing in your puzzle.

Though Novo Mesto gave us a local experience, where locals were always opened to interact, give advices, hang out with and making us enjoy a lot this time there.

At the ending the girl that couldn't host us just invited us to join her in a salsa classes. It was a kind of unexpected moment that I was just seeing myself dancing Latin music in a small village in Slovenia.