More Than 2000 Years Ago

When I was a kid I was fascinated by ruins. The older, the better. I always tried to imagine people living there: who were they, what they were doing and how they looked like. When I was in fourth grade my teacher took us to see an exhibition on roman artefacts found in Ljubljana and I remember being mesmerised by thin glass object, lachrymatories, into which the mourners dropped their tears. I imagined people crying into these vessels and the image in my mind was otherworldly. After the exhibition, with my head full of stories concerning tears in various forms, we went to see the archaeological park Emona.

After too many years M and I decided to see the ruins again. On previous occasions we found the park closed, but last Sunday we were lucky. We were met by a young student, bored enough to eagerly explain how the system works.

"Do you guys know how this works?"

"Um, no ..." How what works? Where will we be transported to?

Apparently nowhere. He just explained what we can see with one ticket and where all the ponits of interest were. He even gave us the plan of ancient Emona superimposed on today's Ljubljana. A bit confusing, but taking into account that in my head the two coexist, perfectly plausible.

I won't bore you with historical details, other people wrote about them first (here). It's interesting and it's still fascinating, even though I'm not ten anymore.

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Ko sem bila majhna, sem se navduševala nad razvalinami. Starejše ko so bile, bolj so mi bile všeč. Vedno sem si skušala predstavljati ljudi, ki so tam živeli: kdo so bili, kaj so tam počeli in kakšni so bili videti. V četrtem razredu osnovne šole, nas je učiteljica peljala na razstavo o rimskih najdbah na področju Ljubljane. Najzanimivejše so se mi zdele solznice, stekleničke iz tankega stekla, v katere so žalujoči shranjevali solze. Predstavljala sem si ljudi kako jočejo v solznice, slika ki sem si jo napletla v glavi, je bila skoraj nadrealistična. S polno glavo solz v raznoraznih oblikah, smo si po razstavi ogledali še arheološki park Emona.

Po občutno preveč letih sva se z M-jem odločila, da si znova ogledava razvaline. Nekajkrat sva že poskušala v preteklosti, pa je bil park zaprt, zadnjo soboto pa sva imela srečo. Pozdravil naju je študent, ki nama je pojasnil kako sistem deluje.

"Vesta kako to deluje?"

"Um, ne …" Kako kaj deluje? Kam naju bodo transportirali?

Nikamor. Razložil nama je kaj vse lahko vidiva z eno vstopnico in kje se nahajajo vse točke, ki naj bi si jih ogledala. Dal nama je celo zemljevid Emone natisnjen preko zemljevida današnje Ljubljane. Na prvi pogled se mi je kombinacija zdela konfuzna, vendar glede na to, da v moji glavi obe mesti soobstajata, niti ni tako nemogoče.

Ne bom gnjavila z zgodovinskimi podrobnostmi, o tem so pisali že drugi ljudje (tukaj in na primer tukaj, da knjig niti ne omenjam). Zanimivo je in še vedno fascinantno, čeprav nimam več deset let.