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Slovenia: Beauty and the Balkans
(16 June 2005)
(16 June 2005)
| Predjama Castle |
A landlocked country roughly the size of Wales, Slovenia offers a veritable Dolly Mixture of European favourites. The country shares borders with Hungary, Austria, Croatia and Italy, with Venice a short hydrofoil ride away. The Austrian capital Vienna can be reached within three hours’ drive.
In Slovenia itself nothing is too far away. From the capital Ljubljana you can be in the heart of the western Slovenian Alps, and in winter on the ski slopes, in an hour. The underground caves and sinkholes of the Karst region can be reached in 30 minutes, and the coastal resorts of the Adriatic are a couple of hours’ drive south.
Slovenia’s mountains aren’t on the scale of the Austrian or Swiss Alps but there’s skiing in Bohinj and Lake Bled. The Alpine countryside is peppered with picturesque chalets reminiscent of Switzerland, and no-one could deny Lake Bled, with its fairytale island, medieval castle and balletic boatmen, or Lake Bohinj at the foot of the Julian Alps, their place in Europe’s league of picture-postcard lakes.
Slovenia claims only a tiny slice of coast but Piran, with its Venetian balconies and bustling harbour, is its undisputed jewel. Jutting out on a peninsula into the Adriatic, the town might have been plucked from a Tuscan hilltop.
Flying into Ljubljana and pausing at a pavement café in the old town for a cappuccino and some people watching, you could be in Madrid – except its baroque and art nouveau-style influences make it resemble a pocket-sized Prague – without the tourist hordes.
Home to museums, theatres, galleries and markets, Ljubljana manages to retain a large-town feel with all the benefits of a capital city. We must like it – British guests made more overnight stays in the Slovenian capital last year than any other inbound market.
The climate, too, resembles Europe in miniature. When it’s raining and blowing a mountain gale in Lake Bled, it’s quite likely to be 20C and baking just 90 minutes away on the coast. In case you’re wondering what makes Slovenia different, its unique attractions include the magnificent underground Postojna caves. With a ‘concert hall’ holding up to 10,000 people during live performances, this is the destination’s most visited attraction. Allow a minimum 90 minutes to do it any kind of justice. Postojna is a mere appetiser for the castle around the corner. Built into a cave, the gravity-defying Predjama Castle literally clings to a rock face, and is a masterpiece of medieval planning.
Driving through the countryside past fields of sunflowers and washboard hayracks, clients can catch a glimpse of a rural Europe that in many other countries has been lost forever.
The Istrian hinterland is home to charming villages with tourist farms where you can charge your batteries while sampling the local vino, cheeses, hams and organically grown vegetables, and watch olives being processed in traditional presses.
Hearty three-course meals for under a fiver are the norm, while on the coast a main course fish dish costs around £5 and a carafe of wine £3.50.
Cuisine is surprisingly good, in fact it’s almost worth visiting Lake Bled just to sample one of its extraordinary three-storey cream cake ‘towers’.
The resort of Portoroz, with its long promenade, has a French Riviera air about it, and it makes an excellent base for coastal excursions.
The typical Mediterranean town of Izola features a fishermen’s harbour in a natural bay sheltered among old houses and palaces, and tucked around the coast from its larger resort neighbour is Piran, a labyrinth of winding narrow streets and higgeldy-piggeldy terracotta rooftops.
Here the legacy of 500 years of Venetian rule is laid bare in its picturesque squares, monasteries and no fewer than 10 churches. In Tartini square, named after the Italian composer, even the bell tower is a replica of the one on Piazza San Marco. The ‘Musical Evenings’ in Piran in July and August are a must.
Often confused with Slovakia, Slovenia gained independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991. Although only on the international tourist market around 15 years, its tradition as a tourist destination stretches way back – the stirrings of spa tourism in Bled, for example, began in 1855 when the Swiss hydropath Arnold Rikli launched the bathing season there. In 1905, Bled was chosen as the healthiest spot in Europe.
It’s taken a while but, 100 years later, it seems we’ve finally caught on.
