Escaping the mystery room – an unusual tourist attraction
I love to travel and discover unknown places. Unfortunately museums, historical buildings and other things that should attract tourists doesn’t seem interesting to me. And most other high schoolers don’t either! It’s a fact, check out any school trip! I love street life and unusual restaurants… a nice shop or maybe a somewhat out of the ordinary museum.
As was the case in the gingerbread show in Prague, it can be a museum connected to a curious shop. But it was in Prague that I’ve seen the first Room Escape! This is becoming an ever more popular attraction, where they lock a small group of people in a room that should find a way to get out based on various hints. They should solve puzzles to find the key and leave the room. To make it more attractive, there’s a time limit. It’s a mixture of a computer adventure and detective work and the idea started in Japan and spread around the globe in the past few years!
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There were not enough other enthusiasts in Prague, so I was even happier to find out, that Ljubljana also offers something similar. Since fall you can join the adventure at
Trubarjeva ulica 24, and it’s called
Mindmaze (
http://mindmaze.si). The entrance of the house squeezed between the shops and restaurants is nothing special. Actually you’d miss it were there not for the sign for Mindmaze. Entring through tall gates already smelled like an adventure! It was even more interesting, while reading about groups who, before us, tackled the mystery of Alchemist’s room. The room got the name by the famous 16th century alchemist living in Ljubljana, who found the golden dragon’s egg, which allowed him – so the story goes – to turn any metal into gold!
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Luka, the game master, makes sure things run smoothly. He wished us good luck! And we needed it. Entering the room fulfilled all my expectations. The room was nice and full of old and strange things and furniture. It soon turned out each thing is there for a reason! We needed a lot of time to find and unlock the first obstacle, followed by many other keys and things at highly unusual places, and got more or less obvious hints. It turned out that without cooperation nothing can be done. Each of the five solvers contributed to solving the mystery. The riddles surely but slowly lead us to the final conclusion and we found the golden egg. I admit, we could not unlock it without a slight hint of the game master. Still, with the help of the egg we were able to escape the house in the nick of very accurately kept time and regain our freedom.
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The adventure is something special and you really should experience it! It’s a great thing to do, on a cold or rainy day. The challenge is not there only for computer game fans, but for everybody who loves the challenge! You can tackle the challenges to mind and skills that will make it interesting and exciting to try and escape. It’s a great mixture of mystery, investigating thrills and time pressure. And you don’t have to be a genius to solve the puzzles. You just need to observe really well, deduct and should make simple calculation or two along the way – but it’s really more or less elementary. In the end there’s also a little gift you get, but that’s yet another mystery, only for those who will visit and escape the Alchemist’s Room in Ljubljana!
I can’t wait for them to expand and make new rooms, or for me to go to some other city to try it out!
Where to stay in old Ljubljana?
Trubarjeva ulica is in the old town centre of Ljubljana. But even if it’s downtown of the national capital, you can still find a good and not pricy accommodation – visit a
hostel. This one wasn’t made to keep you in, but to prevent people from breaking in. It’s the
hostel Tresor, which used to be an old bank. You can still feel that today, when you enter the vault (that’s what the name means). The renovation kept the sense of it and the thematic interior is really up to the point. The rooms are named after currencies and you can even pay with bitcoins! There’s also another hostel nearby, but it’s only open as a hostel in summer months (July and August) as it’s a high school dormitory during the rest of the year -
Dijaški dom Tabor.
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