Slovenia/Croatia Road Trip - Part One: Car Abuse in Slovenia

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Mine and James's foolproof plan: rent a car and drive around 10 hours from Prague to Slovenia and then on to Croatia, all with the aim of soaking up the sun on the beaches and around the lakes we’d heard so much about.

We set off at 11 in a lovely shiny, new Seat Ibiza and after a couple of hours of hazard free driving things were going well. Especially well as my British handicap of being used to driving on the right (that is to say, correct) side of the road, had only led me to one near-fatal roundabout accident so far. Until Austria that is. At some point in the mammoth stretch between Vienna and Klagenfurt (a random dot on the map in the south of Austria that represented hope and achievement) we were funnelled into a corridor of doom – a narrow lane buffeted by concrete barriers with a six inch clearance on either side and poles and reflective signs sticking out at random intervals. Without warning and with a small thud, my right wing mirror suddenly lost a jousting match with one of these threatening poles and the mirror and plastic covering were obliterated and lost for ever.

I was very annoyed at myself (and the Austrian Ministry of Transport) but we carried with on regardless just wanting to get to Bled and put off seeing a mechanic until the next day. The views soon made up for the frustration as we wound along the motorway through miles of beautiful forests with the impressive Julian Alps surrounding us and hundreds of tunnels to break up the journey.

We arrived in Bled at around 8pm to be greeted by a positively-lovely possible-transsexual owner who revelled in our stories of misfortune throughout. We lost no time in making the most of the rest of the evening as we went for a run around the lake and a refreshing swim in the calming dusk light. Lake Bled is fairly touristy but beautiful nonetheless – it’s overlooked by a castle and snow-capped mountains on either side and in the middle of the water is an island housing a monastery. It’s also surrounded by places to walk, kayak, bike and visit.

The next day we drove to Vintgar Gorge which we’d been told was well worth a visit but a series of events stopped us from seeing it that day and ended up emasculating us completely. We arrived but, finding out we needed to pay for entry and having no money, James (his turn) had to drive back to the town of Bled and then come back. By this time he was in a slightly agitated mood which got worse when pulling into a parking spot by the side of a river he inadvertently drove the car into a hidden ditch. The car was balancing precariously over the river below with the front right wheel in the hole, the back wheels a couple of feet off the ground and us two still in the car - it was like the final scene from the Italian Job but without the gold and a cockney with an idea. The Slovenes are good in an emergency though as one guy helped us both out the car and within moments another had pulled the car out of the ditch with a rope attached to his. A few seconds of relief followed before realising that the car was haemorrhaging water.

This is when we realised that we are not men. Needing help to even open the bonnet and formulate a plan we proceeded to drive around Bled in an abused car filling it up with water every few minutes. Of course, one garage happened to be closed and the other one was tucked away in the middle of a housing estate which we eventually found with the help of the hostel owner's simple but lifesaving son. As we waited for these real men to look at the car and patch it up we both sat looking on in admiration and developing a bit of a man crush. We started entertaining the delusional dream of running off and becoming something useful like a car mechanic before sacking that idea off as we don’t know so much as what a spark plug is.

The car was patched up with a rubber band, plasticine and the hair of an Albanian virgin by these grease-covered Adonis’s and although the car was proclaimed thoroughly damaged, it would be okay to get us away to our destinations and home. We were meant to move on to Croatia at this point but out of sheer depression we commenced getting very drunk and put the journey off for another to stay in Bled.

The next day we decided to use our extra day by driving to Lake Bohinj – a lake that is meant to be more beautiful and unspoiled than Lake Bled. This is something we will never be able to prove however as the whole day was subjected to the kind of rain reserved for the tropics and although we did go to Lake Bohinj, we didn’t really see it as it was clouded in mist. We did stop off for a nice look at the raging torrent that the river had become but I managed to make a tit out of myself whilst trying to make it back up a slippery bank which proved to be much harder to climb up than it was to get down. Three-quarters of the way up, whilst traversing a stream, I lost my grip, slipped and slid down the bank a couple of feet before I got my grip back and hung on for dear life (okay, it wouldn’t have killed me but I would have been even more annoyingly muddy). All the while James was highly and amused and just stood there taking plenty of photos. I made it up covered in mud and was glad when we found a restaurant in the middle of the woods to escape the rain. The apocalyptic downfall was getting even worse by this point and we were happy to be out of the rain especially at the point when a crack of lightning was followed by the electricity in the restaurant going down. All quite amusing until the restaurant gave me the wrong dish - some kind of vegetarian effort - an insult which is beyond a joke.

The nighttimes in Bled were very pleasant though as we were there for the Bled Festival which I’m sure you’ve all heard of. Lots of festivities were going on, including hundreds of candles on the lake, fireworks, pretty naff light shows accompanied by disproportionately epic music, swing bands playing every Beatles song known to man and bars and streets full of very young looking drunk 16 year olds. All this created a really nice atmosphere around the lake and livened it up a bit.

The next day we left Bled in the company of two Americans we’d met in the hostel – Tom and Leah – and after a swim in Lake Bled from the West bank to the island and back we made towards the coast. Unfortunately, the car was still not cooperating fully and the warning lights came on after about 80 kilometres. The engine was audibly in pain but a bit of water and a more gentle driving approach stopped her whining and saw us get to the Skocjan Caves in the South West of Slovenia.

The cave system was pretty impressive in its scale and the variety of stalagmites and stalactites but the prescribed manner in which we were allowed to see them and had to listen to a fairly uninteresting, long-winded commentary in two languages took away from the experience a little. Definitely worth experiencing though.

Impressively, it was here that James became the first person since the cavemen to get into an argument in a cave. Ignoring the admittedly sour tour guide’s repeated attempts to keep order and not allow any photos in the cave with or without a flash (presumably to make people visit the caves if they actually want to see them) he continued to unsubtly take poor-quality photos complete with a give-away flash. First the tour guide shouted at him to make him feel like a naughty schoolchild and then a guy from the tour group confronted him. All I heard very loudly was “You are annoying me!” and James’s expert comeback of “Well.... you’re annoying me” before I cringed and slunk off. En-ger-land.

Eventually we made it to Piran – a recommended town on the short Slovenian coast. On the drive in and from our excellent hill-top hostel we could see some amazing views of the surrounding coast which got us excited. But unfortunately we arrived during a period of ‘Bora’ - a violent bout of wind (natural not human) that kicks up on this coast after a long period without rain and lasts for a couple of days. Guess when we arrived? Yep, right at the beginning of Bora season. So, although Piran is probably a lovely town, it just wasn’t that pleasurable being there as we got battered by the constant wind. Also, by this point we were looking for beaches and we just didn’t have enough time to get to them before we had to leave.

Despite everything that had gone wrong on the trip so far, Slovenia has to rank up there as one of my favourite countries. So much is packed into such a little area as, in a couple of hours, you can visit the seaside, spectacular natural scenery like caves, lakes, mountains and forests and pleasant towns and villages, all of which are presented in a much more subtle, endearing manner than the big-hitting tourist destinations. I’ll definitely be going back.

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