PTICH Blog

The PTICH Blog gathers essays, reflections, and contextual notes emerging from our research projects. It offers additional background and references that complement our walking and bike tours. The blog expands on questions raised during tours, shares selected insights, and situates guided experiences within broader historical contexts.

In line with the critical perspective of our tours, posts touch on topics such as feminism, post-socialist transformation, alternative music scenes, street art, writers and artists, sustainability, and everyday urban life in Slovenia.

Jul

Southern Bitches Go Home! or How We Survived Independence and Even Laughed

July 11, 2025

If Goran Vojnović were a Serbian-Slovenian-Prekmurian feminist, I joked the first time I read this novel, it still wouldn’t have helped him. Because Ćrtice by Tina Perić, our former co-guide on the Ljubljana Feminist Tour, is such an astonishingly good book that it hurts. It is not “the next Southern Scum Go Home!”; it is...

Case Study Anhovo and Ljubljana green bike tour by Ptich

Mar

Prolonged Environmental Crisis as Crisis of Modernity: Jasmina Jerant’s Book ‘Case Study: Anhovo’

March 29, 2025

The book Case Study: Anhovo: Between Asbestos, Waste, Development, and Health Crisis by environmental activist and our long-standing guiding colleague Jasmina Jerant represents one of the most comprehensive analyses of an environmental conflict in the Slovenian context. The local story of an industrial plant in the Middle Soča Valley is unfolded as an analytical lens...

Sep

GRAFEM PRESENTS: VIXEN AKA PONY, THE FIRST SLOVENIAN GRAFFITI WOMAN TO TURN HER HAND TO TRAINS

September 28, 2021

We continue our series of stories on graffiti women for the GraFEM blog with a legendary writer! Vixen is known to anyone who has ever seen her plump green birds or rounded pink ponies on walls around the world. She came late to graffiti, doing her first ones at the age of twenty. Under the...

May

GRAFEM PRESENTS: STREET ART FOR RESISTANCE BY THE WOMEN OF THE LIBERATION FRONT (PART TWO)

May 14, 2021

This is Part Two of the piece by Helena Konda about the Slovenian rebel graffiti women in the second world war. (You can read Part One here.) Ljubljana experienced its first flourishing of what we would now call political graffiti and street art under the Italian fascist occupation of 1941 to 1943, when movement was...

Apr

GRAFEM PRESENTS: STREET ART FOR RESISTANCE BY THE WOMEN OF THE LIBERATION FRONT (PART ONE)

April 27, 2021

Ljubljana probably experienced its first flourishing of what we would now call political graffiti and street art under the Italian fascist occupation of 1941 to 1943, when movement was restricted, a curfew was in force and popular protest was suppressed. Acts of rebellion within the public space were largely carried out by women and included...

Apr

Price List & Possible Gift Cards, Gift Certificates, Vouchers, Birthday Presents, Business Gifts …

April 2, 2021

All our Ljubljana urban tours can function as a great birthday present, marriage anniversary present, business gift etc. If a private theme tour of Ljubljana is your present of choice for a person, or a group of persons, please fill in the form below and we will send you the invoice. Following the purchase you...

Mar

GRAFEM PRESENTS: DEE282, THE FIRST SLOVENIAN GRAFFITI WOMAN

March 8, 2021

We begin our series of stories for the GraFEM blog with writer DEE282, the first woman in Slovenia to spray paint subcultural graffiti. She painted her first graffiti on a non-authorised wall at the age of twenty-one and was a member of Ljubljana’s Guten Tag Crew for a number of years. In the mid-1990s, when...

Oct

Coronavirus, the sequel: a friend in need … reviews, vouchers, gift certificates etc.

October 22, 2020

At the moment, we are not running our tours and we don’t know when or whether we will be able to start again. The Coronavirus situation might force us to close shop. But we try to stay optimistic and behave like everything will go back to normal sooner or later. Before that happens, however, we...

Nez Pez Graffiti Women of GraFEM by Ptich

Sep

Reflex:ion:* Nez Pez and spray-paint sampling for imperfection | GraFEM

September 26, 2020

Near the Ljubljanica River there is a container facility. Its sliding external doors allow it to be turned into three or four squares which can be opened or closed as required on the sides facing the road and the river. Until recently it was as white as snow, except for a few graffiti. In art...

Nez Pez Graffiti Woman GraFEM Ljubljana by Ptich

Sep

GraFEM Presents: If It’s Not Deconstructed, It’s Boring – An Interview with Graffiti Artist Nez Pez

September 10, 2020

Neža Jurman, known by her artistic pseudonym Nez Pez, is a multimedia artist working across sculpture, light art, animation, drawing, illustration, and street art. Currently, she is particularly drawn to installations exploring sound and space, abstract drawing, and zines and prints. Her work and life alternates between Berlin and Ljubljana, including mural projects often inspired...

Sep

What is GraFEM? Or Why We Started a Female Graffiti and Street Art Program

September 2, 2020

Recently, Urbana Vrana Institute and RogLab have started a special programme to encourage the creation of graffiti and street art by women. Called GraFEM (the name combines the “gra” from “graffiti” and the “fem” from “female”), it aims to empower female graffiti and street artists and promote women’s graffiti and street art culture. Incidentally, linguistics...

Sep

Ljubljana Feminist Bike Tour premiers at the City of Women festival

September 1, 2020

The Ljubljana Feminist Bike Tour is a new take on the popular Ljubljana Feminist Tour, an educational two-hour walk around the city centre that has been run by the Urbana Vrana Institute since July 2017. Offering a gender perspective on Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana Feminist Tour has become a Ljubljana mainstay. It is a popular way...

Jun

From Ljubljana via Laibach’s Trbovlje to Tito’s Kumrovec and Back. Want to Join?

June 15, 2020

Please note! This is merely hypothetical. Just some random thoughts. Just words on paper. Here I am, dreaming, doodling, thinking, looking at the map and all four corners of the sky. Where to go, what to do? I’m thinking about what’s worth seeing and I’m trying to think of interesting people with stories to tell...

Jun

Right By You Without Any Memorials: Rock in Opposition (RIO) in Slovenia

June 14, 2020

In November 2019, the P74 Gallery in Ljubljana hosted RIO: Begnagrad, Srp, D’Pravda, an exhibition that covered the work of three Slovenian bands from the late seventies and early eighties that were not part of the punk and new wave scene per se, but nevertheless belonged to a circle of alternative and independent music artists...

Jun

This World is Made of Blue, Green and All Shades in Between: An Ode to the Posočje region

June 14, 2020

The one thing I always notice braving the serpentine-like winding roads from Ljubljana towards North Primorska region is the dominance of green. And blue. All shades of green and blue. Lorca would appreciate it. There seems to be nothing but “verde te quiero verde” – green woods, green meadows, green pastures, green trees, green grass....

Jun

New Istria or How “Folk” is Made?

June 13, 2020

No, this is not about the birds and the bees, but about how folk music is made in a specific location. Who creates it, who discovers it, who transforms it? How and why? Folk music is something old, something that is transmitted from generation to generation by word of mouth, something authentic, primordial, something that...

Jun

Between the Earth and Sky: 10 artists from Slovenia exploring the spiritual nuances of music

June 12, 2020

mmOver thousands of years humankind developed many ways of expressing its inner self, its “soul”, its connection to the natural or supernatural worlds. Music has always played an integral part of the process, from indigenous and shamanic rituals to the religious ceremonies or new age celebrations. Spiritual elements in music – speaking as broadly and...

Jun

Gramatik, a Musical Freedom Fighter with his Own Cryptocurrency

June 9, 2020

Slovenian electronic music producer Gramatik is undoubtedly one of the most interesting global musicians of the last decade. Not only because of his unique type of dance music which has millions of views on YouTube, but also because he makes his work available for free. His winning recipe is a mixture of hip hop beats,...

Jun

Bosnian Psycho in Slovenia

June 8, 2020

One night several years ago, in Ljubljana’s then jazz-oriented Sax Pub, I faced a dilemma. Should I order another beer? Or should I make a beeline home, since my boisterous friends have left me to my own devices in order to achieve their higher purpose? If I’m not mistaken, the clock was nearing half past...

May

Boye, Oh Ye(s)! A Rough Guide to (post-)Yugoslav All-Female Bands

May 28, 2020

Solo female vocal artists aside, let’s check out the (post-)Yugoslav all-female bands rocking the stage since the 1960s. Beat We are kicking off with Belgrade’s Sanjalice (1965–1969), the only band from a bunch of 1960s Yugoslav all-women beat groups that back then managed to record some songs. Actually, they released several best-selling EP singles and...

May

All in One: the Witch and the First Lady

May 23, 2020

She is dressed in black, she is unmarried and childless, her poems and literature draw topics from Slovenian folk tales, and she is a behemothic lover of cats. For the mentioned reasons she is often referred to in general public as ‘the witch’. She is also outspoken, controversial, provocative, and rebellious. Certainly not something society...

May

Socialist Discotheque: the Electronic Music History of Yugoslavia (Part Two)

May 20, 2020

We bring you some of the most extraordinary Yugoslav electronic gems that found their way to various (re)releases in Europe and the US. Read part one here. Slovenian Electric Dreams Considering the early 1980s electronica in Slovenia, one has to acknowledge not only the underground heroes but also Miha Kralj’s pioneering role in bringing...

May

Socialist Discotheque: the Electronic Music History of Yugoslavia (Part One)

May 19, 2020

We bring you some of the most extraordinary Yugoslav electronic gems that found their way to various (re)releases in Europe and the US. Read part two here. In the last years, various collections of electronic music from former Yugoslavia popped up, ranging from numerous streamable and downloadable CDR mixtapes and bold releases by small labels...

May

Laibach, or an Attempt to Manipulate the Manipulators

May 18, 2020

Laibach is the German name for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It is however also the name of a controversial music group formed on 1 June 1980 in Trbovlje, Slovenia, which at the time was part of socialist Yugoslavia. Laibach were the predecessor, and the musical section, of the influential 1980s art movement Neue Slowenische...

May

Our boutique city tours of Ljubljana are back!

May 17, 2020

[English version below] Z veseljem vas obveščamo, da smo spet začeli izvajati naše ture. Čeprav je koronavirus močno prizadel našo dejavnost in kulturno-turistični sektor na splošno, ostajamo nepopravljivi optimisti. Zavedamo se, da so časi še vedno kritični, zato pozivamo vse, da ostanete previdni, odgovorni in prijazni do sočloveka. Vsi naši sprehodi in kolesarske ture so...

Apr

In the Man’s World: Slovenian Female Composers

April 22, 2020

Only a few months ago the global media got flabbergasted by the fact that Vienna opera house for the first time in its entire 150-year history staged an opera created by a woman. Austrian composer’s name is Olga Neuwirth. Event itself was even more significant for its symbolic power as the opera was based on...

Apr

Elza Budau: an Architect who wrote 300 Slovenian Evergreens

April 20, 2020

Slovenia’s capital boasts a venue that the so called Prince of Darkness wanted for his musical residence. Truly, the Križanke Outdoor Theatre set up inside the courtyard of the former Monastery of the Holy Cross in Ljubljana’s city centre, impressed Nick Cave so much that many years ago he fell in love with it and...

Apr

Coronavirus: a friend in need … reviews, vouchers, gift certificates etc.

April 8, 2020

[English version below] Trenutno naših tur ne izvajamo in ne vemo, kdaj jih bomo spet lahko, če sploh. Kajti situacija s koronavirusom nas lahko porine čez rob. Kljub temu ostajamo optimisti in upamo, da se bodo stvari prej kot slej uredile. Do takrat pa nam bo prav prišla tudi kakšna pomoč. Pravzaprav nam lahko pomagate...

Feb

[SLO] Ljubljanska feministična tura je tu, da ostane!

February 27, 2020

Ja, nikamor ne gremo. Zato se lahko že prijavite na prvo Ljubljansko feministično turo “za izven” v letu 2020! Zimskega spanja je konec in kot nekatere_i že veste, smo že v polnem pogonu. Če niste zasledili, si lahko med novicami na naši spletni strani preberete, da je Urbana Vrana soustanoviteljica Globalne mreže feminističnih tur in...

Feb

[SLO] Kolesarska punk tura z Esadom Babačićem je spet nazaj!

February 24, 2020

Ljubljanska pankerska tura se prebuja iz zimskega spanca. Kmalu boste spet lahko užili Esadov poetični duh, vključno z njegovim žongliranjem z besedami. Kdaj? V soboto 21. marca ob 14. uri. Zborno mesto je zdaj že klasično stičišče vseh poti v nekdanjem Leninovem parku (danes Argentinski). Zaključek pa bo tri ure kasneje, torej ob 17. uri...

Feb

On International Women’s Day, we reveal the Mystery of Women’s Literary Ljubljana

February 11, 2020

On International Women’s Day, the team of the Urbana Vrana Institute is preparing its first tour dedicated to women in literature, entitled The Mystery of Women’s Literary Ljubljana. The title, of course, alludes to and references the well-known work by Zofka Kveder The Mystery of a Woman, making it clear that the tour does not...

Feb

We’ve co-founded a global network of feminist tours that stretches from Chile to Thailand

February 10, 2020

[Slovenian version below.] Connecting the feminist guides The Urbana Vrana association has become a co-founder of the Global Network of Feminist Tours that stretches from Chile to Thailand. How did this happen? In recent months, organisations Paseos por la ciudad from New York, FemiTours from Buenos Aires and Tours with Meaning from Santiago de Chile...

May

Charity Feminist Tour for the City of Women Festival’s Feminist Library

May 31, 2019

We warmly invite you to join a special charity edition of the Ljubljana Feminist Tour. All donations collected during this feminist exploration of Ljubljana will go directly to the newly established Feminist Library.Places are limited, so please make sure to fill out the registration form at the bottom of the page. The Feminist Tour is...

Aug

Eleanor Roosevelt’s granddaughter goes on the feminist tour of Ljubljana

August 9, 2018

Last week we were delighted by an unexpected invitation. The Amnesty International Slovenia team, led by director Nataša Posel, who joined our feminist tours a few months ago, invited us to a festive event at the Ljubljana City Hall. There was also a discussion there about a topic that is very close to us: Ljubljana’s...

Jul

Lonely Planet is Inviting You to the Ljubljana Feminist Tour

July 20, 2018

The prestigious travel publisher and online platform Lonely Planet has invited its multi-million audience to join the Ljubljana Feminist Tour, which is regularly organised by the Urbana Vrana / Ptich team in both Slovenian and English. “If you’re travelling to Slovenia, you might be interested in a new feminist tour taking place in the country’s...

Sep

Grafitarnice Workshop for 7th-, 8th-, and 9th-grade pupils of Ljubljana primary schools

September 14, 2017

In September and October, free graffiti workshops will take place at the Summer Garden of the Gala Hala club for 7th, 8th, and 9th grade pupils from primary schools in the City Municipality of Ljubljana, as part of the Grafitarnice project, produced by the Culturemaker Institute. Short presentation of the Grafitarnice project In Ljubljana, graffiti...