Postcards, Postcards, Postcards

Europe
June 2nd 2009

Published: June 2nd 2009

Edit Blog Post

Slowfeet

Transit Austria

Isn't it a nice little car? Little pity about the gear box but it goes well and has lots of features.

I read a book recently set in Slovenia written by Paulo Coelho. The main character lamented that no one ever seems to know where Slovenia actually is other than that it is a place somewhere in Europe. I was much the same. This is unfair on the country and the people.

Slovenia is one of the components of the old Yugoslavia. It is small. 20,000 square kilometres and with just a little over 2 million people. Slovenia was one of the first parts of the former Yugoslavia to split off and set itself up as an independent country. The Slovenes have their own language and, those that we have met, seem strongly committed to their nation.

It was of considerable interest to move around a country in a part of the world that has undergone such incredible turmoil in the last 20 years. The process and then the fallout as the former Yugoslavia broke up was headline news for many years and some of the events had shocked us along with the rest of the world. We had all met people who had migrated from the countries that made up Yugoslavia, having gone to school with them and worked

Austrian Landscape

Very typical. Just mile after mile of this. Does it get boring? Not yet.

with them over the years. It seems impossible to meet someone from this area and not get some understanding of the passions of the people for their particular land and, perhaps, some knowledge of their feelings for their neighbours.

We are all of an age that can remember well that Yugoslavia represented the more benign face of communism, rarely being represented as being as hard and unforgiving as that form practised in the USSR or East Germany. In my politics classes Tito was held up as a very skilful politician who was able to hold a diverse set of countries together and develop a strong group that was able to make its own way in the world. It was some surprise then when Yugoslavia came to pieces so quickly and apparently so irrevocably when the Eastern bloc started to crumble. We all wanted to see the country but we also were interested in seeing how people actually felt about all that had happened.

It is our intention to swing through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia Hercegovina and then on into Hungary and up to Slovakia. We will finish this run by 24 June. We arrived in Slovenia by way

Motorway

we could have been on it but instead fiddled around underneath with the people and the little roads.

of a stop off on the way from Frankfurt in Berchtesgaden in Austria. The stop there was for no other reason than that we needed to pull up after having been driving since 3.00 am. We made it to Frankfurt by 9.00, dropped off the hire car and picked up our Renault lease vehicle. All arrangements worked as they were supposed to and we were on our way in a brand new Renault Grand Scenic by 11.00 am.

Berchtesgaden is in the Austrian Alps. It is a place in which Hitler apparently had some sort of summer meeting place. He also is said to have had a particular love for Prague. Seems that, with all of his other faults, he could see beauty in places. Berchtesgaden is a small village nestled among mountains that tower above the place. You could either feel very protected or very threatened - depending on your particular paranoia. We stayed at a pension called the Hotel Floriani which was friendly, welcoming and nicely set up. The local brewery produces a nice beer and we did a little quality testing.

Our introduction to 'vignettes' had occurred on our entry to the Czech Republic. We

Backyard

at Kamnicka Bistrica looking up the mountain from the Chalet

also needed an Austrian vignette just to travel through the country for a few hours. This cost 17 Euros. The Slovenian vignette cost 35 Euros for a minimum of 6 months road travel. I did read in the paper that this is to be changed and it will be possible to pick up a vignette for a shorter period and less cost. Our first tunnel cost 6.5 Euros to drive through. There are other tolls around as well but we tend to miss them by moving around on the small, more scenic routes favoured by the navigators who have an apparently insatiable appetite for skinny, winding roads that take us through village after village at 50 km/h.

The run into Slovenia could have been made by a motorway at an average of 130 km/h. Instead we took some other roads - little ones that wound around a lot following a river. Very scenic and a whole lot slower. The trip could have taken a couple of hours but we were able to spend a day. We had directions to the place we were staying and they turned out to be accurate if a little brief.

Kamnicka Bistrica Chalet

Ljubljana

Peseren Square. Was smaller than I thought but lovely

was selected by a search of holiday places in Slovenia on one of the search sites, Homeholidays I think. The price was reasonable at about 50 Euros for the 4 of us per night. The plan was to use the place as a base and move around the relatively small country from there in a series of daily visits. We had to wind about somewhat to find the place due to the excellent navigational skills of the other three members of the team. There were a few glitches on the first night. The weather was cold and it took a long time for the heating to fire up. The stove needed a gas bottle and we weren't able to cook for a time. We were able to take up the slack though by consuming some of the raki that had made the trip and a bottle or two of wine. It all came out OK in the end although the hot water has never been too flash for those later in the showering queue. The plumbing leaves a little to be desired.

Ljubljana, the capital, is a relatively small city of about 300 000 people. We were able to drive

Peseren

the poet himself. The churches didn't like that he had a naked muse hanging over his head. If you are going to have a muse it may as well be one that is good to have around

into the city without too much difficulty with traffic and find a place to park with a lot more difficulty. We followed a practice that is becoming a habit and organised ourselves on to a walking tour of the city. Our guide took us around the centre of the city and provided a good understanding of the city. She used as a central theme the contribution to the architecture of the city a Ljubljana native - I think - Plecnik (you will have to imagine a little mark on the top of the 'c' which then will cause you to pronounce it ch). Anja, our guide, explained that Slovenians are very conservative people and are not normally prepared to try anything new. Plecnik went along with the conservative nature of his fellow Slovenes but played havoc with the details. Columns that are nice classical columns but that don't hold anything up and are in fact light poles, a national library that has windows that look like open books, balustrades on bridges that look consistent and nicely symmetrical - until you look just a little closer. He succeeded in giving a level of interest to the city that is not immediately

View of Street

apparent and is all the more interesting as, after just a few hours, you are able to see things that fit - but not quite.

The next day we made a short run up to Bled. An ugly sounding name for a place. The guide book says that it is almost impossibly beautiful. It would be very hard to disagree. A lake surrounded by forests and mountains with just a few houses here and there. A castle on the top of cliff looks to have built there just to ensure that you have some perspective for your photos. A church or two with one sitting on an island in the lake. I think that you really need to see it to appreciate it.

We walked around the lake. Our estimate was about 40 minutes. Took a couple of hours, not just because the estimate of the distance was wrong. We spent a fair bit of time watching fish in the very clear waters of the lake, marvelling at the views of the lake and mountains and generally enjoying a walk in the clear, fresh air. There were a few artists painting water colours around the shores. Eventually, one

Looby Street

of them caused us to stop and we ended up buying a small painting each off him. He was an entertaining and intelligent man and we had a nice interlude talking about the way things had been and how they were now.

We aren't the first to see this place as beautiful. Tito had a house here and is said to have visited on a number of occasions. One local story holds that he used to regularly visit the local pub before working hours to have a beer with the workers before they started for the day. We were told that in the Communist days work started at 6.00 am. Workers used to drop in for a beer at 5.00 am and then knock off at 2.00 pm.

Not sure how true the story is about Tito but there is no question that there is still a powerful culture of beer consumption. Through Slovenia, Austria and the Czech Republic so far we have noted a different attitude to beer drinking from that in Australia. For a start it is not unusual for a group to sit down for a feed and have the women order their standard 500mls

Looby Uni

50,000 students in a city of 300,000

of beer each with the men drinking something soft. Not many tables of people out for lunch wouldn't have a couple of people having a beer. Even for breakfast it is quite acceptable to start the day with a nice cold beer. Haven't really had the opportunity to observe late night behaviour so I really can't comment on whether they drink a lot or just a little often - so to speak.

Bohinj is a lake a bit further into the Julian Alps between Bled and the Italian border. Another beautiful place and would be as perfect a place to camp in summer as it would be in winter, provided you could keep warm. There weren't too many people there on the day we visited. I suspect that it could get busy but there really is plenty of room and not masses of facilities that would attract a lot of tourists so it could be OK for most of the year.

At Bohinj there was another occasion where someone wanted to take my photo or take a photo with me. This has happened a bit. This time it was a group of cyclists who were all very happy

Light pole

- or maybe they were just cracking up. It is either the hat, the beard, the late developing good looks, or perhaps I just look really weird but in Vietnam, a number of times in India and in Turkey people have wanted to take a photo with me or of me. The most surprising was a young woman in Turkey outside the Blue Mosque. She, and her mother, both all properly veiled, stopped me and asked if I would mind. They then took a series of photos of each of them with me. I suspect that it is that I look really weird, but quite harmless. Not sure whether to be pleased, embarrassed of mildly pissed off.

Politics in this part of the world is extremely interesting. We were intrigued to find that the Kamnicka Bistrica Chalet operates a sort of shrine to the late President Tito. They have many, many photos of the man, most of them interesting from his preferred side. There are photos of Tito as a partisan during the war, photos of him at various ages during his time leading the former Yugoslavia and photos of him hunting and relaxing. There is also an Australian

Library

Note that it is designed to look like it has a wooly sweater on and that the windows at the top look like open books,

rainbow lorikeet in a cage whose name is Tito. A gun or two, water bottle and a range of other items are on display. There is absolutley no question where these people stand on the question of Tito or, for that matter, on what should have happened to the country.

We had a day off being tourists at the Chalet and just hung around. On that night before there was a party held where they played a lot of music of our vintage. The participants weren't but they seemed to enjoy the music. Next day there was the 35th birthday of an institute orclub having something to do with the mountains. They were all very happy and had a great time. Tito was clearly a favourite with most of them.

Even with people who are being careful, and professional, with tourists there is a clear liking for some of the things that used to occur in the Communist days. You could, for instance, easily obtain housing finance and everyone had some sort of job. It didn't sound too much like nostalgia either. Part of the attitude comes from a level of nervousness that is possibly there as a

Looby River

disappears after 26 km and goes into the limestond karst area. Keeps coming back though

result of the size of Slovenia in relation to its neighbours and the general pattern of conflict in the area.

Our last night in Slovenia was to be somewhere near Piran in the south in Istria. We visited the Postojna Caves on the way. This really does need to be seen to be believed. I had some experience with caving but I have to say that this place blows the Wee Jasper caves between Canberra and Yass a long way out of the water. We joined a queue of perhaps 500 people, were loaded onto a train and taken on rails no less than 2 km into the cave. We then walked another 2km and were trucked back out. Took about 2hours. Sounds a lot like something you wouldn't necessarily do again and, to be completely honest, I wouldn't. But I am very glad that we did it once. Postojna is the best cave that I have ever seen - and I actually have seen more than Wee Jasper.

There are many other caves in the area. We had some ideas of heading for Skocjan Cave but we didn't really have the time to do another one justice.

Back of market

Plecgic again

We also visited Lipica which is a stud farm where the Lippizaner horses, famous for the last 400 years for presentations at the Spanish Riding School now in Vienna, come from. Was a bit of a dud really. They wanted a substantial fee to walk around and see horses doing what horses do. No real display of talent - just eating and moving around. We moved on.

Piran has a big reputation, probably well deserved. For us the place was full. Chock a block. There were no rooms that we could find, people everywhere and it was very difficult to get around. We eventually moved on to a few other towns and then headed for Croatia where we were able to find rooms for the night. We would like to get back but it is unlikely that we will have the time.

So it is on to Croatia and, for us, that is to Dubrovnik where we have an apartment booked for a few days. The plan is to look around Dubrovnik, possibly slip up into Bosnia Hercegovina and over into Montenegro. Then we will head back up the coast to Split, up to Zagreb and on.