Slovenia’s Quiet Beauty

Unless you’re from Cleveland, I’m prepared to bet that you’ve been overlooking Slovenia. That’s OK. I was once like you.

Slovenia, which lies 100 miles east of Venice, Italy, and 150 miles south of Vienna, is about the size of New Jersey, full of forests and mountains and lakes and about 2 million people. The language is Slovenian (also known as Slovene), although most young people speak enough English to make a foreigner feel comfortable. I spent five days there a few weeks ago, and it was gorgeous, peaceful and cheap. It was also full of underappreciated history involving World War I and Ernest Hemingway. I’m coming back the next chance I get.

But who will come with me? In all of last year, just 19,140 Americans visited, according to Slovenian government records. I think I’ve stood in post office lines longer than that. Outside of Cleveland, which received an estimated 330,000 Slovenian immigrants between 1880 and 1920 and remains the Slovenian capital of North America, Slovenia is nearly invisible in the North American consciousness. If anyone thinks of it at all, it’s most often--and inaccurately--as a zone of ongoing Balkan hostilities.

Forget that for a moment and consider my arrival. I reached the capital, Ljubljana (pronounced, roughly, loob-lyana), by train on a sunny Sunday afternoon. At the core of the city, a university town with about 25,000 students among its 300,000 residents, a medieval castle rose on a green hill. At the foot of the hill, pedestrians surged through a warren of narrow streets and prosperous shops of the Old Town. A block away, the Ljubljanica River meandered past and walkers paced across Triple Bridge.

On the other side of the river, a charming, quirky series of buildings from the early 20th century lined Miklosiceva Street like soldiers awaiting inspection by an eccentric general. A few steps away stood the monument to 19th century poet France Preseren, little known outside Slovenia but a hero here. I paid my respects to Preseren, one of whose verses serves as the Slovenian anthem, crossed the bridge and took a patio seat in an Old Town bar.

While I toyed with this equation, a waiter shouldered his way through a gaggle of chic and cheerful Slovenian twentysomethings--one in 12 residents of Ljubljana is a college student--and regarded me with a frown.

“Smile,” I said to the waiter.

The waiter nodded, kept frowning, and retreated. A moment later he was back with a beer bottle.

“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” I heard him say.

Fortunately, I had been briefed. A Smile is a golden lager produced by Union, the capital’s leading brewery. And what sounds like a dollar is a tolar, Slovenia’s currency. At the going exchange rate (about 225 tolars to the dollar), the Smile cost about $1.50.

Other prices were just as pleasing. That night, my recently renovated room at the Art Nouveau Grand Hotel Union, the fanciest, most architecturally interesting lodging in the city, cost about $95. The priciest dinner of my stay (two courses with a bottle of Slovenian white wine at an eatery named simply AS) was $29. And if I’d been smart enough to leave myself several days for lazing in a pension by a postcard-pretty lake, $20 per night would have been plenty.

Low prices, medieval alleys, post-Communist intrigue, a landmark bridge and a castle on the hill--such attributes brought thousands of Americans to Prague after the fall of communism. But so far, those hordes, and the T-shirt sellers who follow them, don’t seem to have found Ljubljana.

Now, about Balkan hostilities: Slovenia has been fought over. In the last century, it was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a part of Yugoslavia. During the 20 years between the world wars, Italy annexed a large chunk of the country.

But when the opportunity came, this was the first Yugoslavian republic to shrug off Slobodan Milosevic’s yoke. In their 1991 war for independence, the Slovenians prevailed with fewer than 100 fatalities on both sides. The fighting lasted just 10 days. Apparently the generals in Belgrade had also been underestimating Slovenia.

Since then it has been a peaceful independent nation whose economy is among the strongest in the former communist world. Kosovo is about 350 miles south of Ljubljana, farther than Venice or Vienna or Munich or Budapest. And because the adjacent former Yugoslavian republic of Croatia is now independent too, Slovenians are further insulated from Milosevic.

It’s easy to get confused about Slovenia. But it should not be mistaken for Slovakia, a nation neighboring the Czech Republic; or Slavonia, a region of Croatia; or Lower Slobbovia, the snowbound hinterland created by Al Capp in the comic strip “Li’l Abner.” In any event, neither “Li’l Abner” nor Balkan war footage gives much clue to today’s Slovenia. Instead, picture northern Italy on vowel rationing. (In Slovenian, “Is breakfast included?” comes out as “Ali je zajtrk vkljucen?”)

In the ancient alleys of Ljubljana’s city center, home-grown shops and restaurants hold their own against the occasional McDonald’s or Holiday Inn. My biggest disappointment was the interior of the medieval castle on the hill, which was mostly closed for renovation. But down below there is an abundance of architecture that was revolutionary 85 years ago, and there is the life’s work of a national treasure named Joze Plecnik.

Plecnik, a Slovenian who studied in Austria, was an architect and city planner. After a decade spent renovating Prague Castle while Art Nouveau designs were transforming that city, he returned to Ljubljana in 1921, at age 49. From then on, for more than 30 years, Plecnik (pronounced plech-nik) somehow managed to curry favor with otherwise repressive authorities while designing handsome, forward-looking buildings that are nothing like the brutal boxes found throughout the Soviet bloc. So while visitors to other former Communist capitals lament the 20th century proliferation of ugly buildings, visitors to Ljubljana see a string of designs drawn from both classical and folk elements that knit together the river, the old quarter, the park and the castle.

The Triple Bridge, which combines two pedestrian passages with two lanes of vehicle traffic, was a 1931 Plecnik reworking of a 19th century span. The central market’s stately colonnade: Plecnik again. Tivoli Park, the city’s main greenbelt, is dominated by a Plecnik-designed promenade. The Krizanke, an open-air theater that houses most events of the city’s summer music festival (July and August), is Plecnik yet again, this time incorporating recycled stones in a neighborhood known for its Roman ruins. (Plecnik died in 1957. His Ljubljana home now houses the city architectural museum’s Plecnik collection. It’s open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays only.)

Ljubljana makes for a fine couple of days. But it is only the beginning. Three distinct geographies converge in Slovenia: Adriatic Europe, alpine Europe and the central European plains. The countryside’s caves are renowned among spelunkers: The Skocjan Caves are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and the Postojna Cave is large enough to hold a full orchestra. Both are an easy day trip from the capital. In winter, mountain lodges in the north fill with skiers.

Slovenia’s toehold on the Adriatic consists of perhaps 30 miles of coastline south of Trieste and north of Croatia. But apart from the tiny old town of Piran--which was run by the Venetians for about five centuries and where I passed a pleasant afternoon strolling and eating seafood--the Slovenian coast looked too crowded, commercialized and industrial to be of much interest to tourists. A few Slovenians told me that for beach holidays they prefer the Croatian coast, which begins just a few miles south of Piran.

My first foray to the countryside was to Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj, both of which mirror tall mountains and thick forests, provoking thoughts of Montana postcards. Bled is about an hour’s drive northwest of Ljubljana; Bohinj is a half-hour more, southwest of Bled.

At Bled, which has been Slovenia’s most-visited attraction for more than a century, a big blue lake lined with half a dozen affordable hotels reclines beneath a fine old castle. A tiny island in the lake is just large enough to hold a scenic church. For $3, you can pass 20 minutes rowing out to it. For nothing, you can stroll the lake’s 3.5-mile perimeter and perhaps peek in at the Vila Bled, a boxy mansion that once served as a getaway for former Yugoslav strongman Marshal Tito and now houses a luxurious (but unremarkable) hotel.

Farther on, Bohinj is the country’s largest lake and far more rustic, with scattered lodges and guest houses whose rates tend to run less than the lodgings around Bled. At one end of Bohinj stands the 15th century Church of St. John the Baptist. At the other end, there’s a patio restaurant and a short trail to the 200-foot Savica Falls. The 15-minute walk to the falls reminded me of the Mist Trail to Vernal Fall in Yosemite--as did the roaring, soaking payoff view.

Bled and Bohinj, good for boating and swimming, are selling points enough. But the Soca Valley--part of the battleground that World War I historians know as the Isonzo Front--is something else.

In 1915, when Italy entered the war, its troops came up against the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s forces, including many Slovenians, in the Julian Alps near Trieste. The result was perhaps the bloodiest series of mountain battles in history--12 of them--and a crucial chunk of that killing ground lies in what is now northern Slovenia.

For 29 months in this territory along the Soca River, troops subsisted in trenches and caves, fought with bombs, rifles and even spiked clubs, one of which is on display in a museum in the town of Kobarid. By some estimates, as many as 1 million lives were lost along the front from 1915 to 1917.

The greatest bloodshed--and the taking of at least 250,000 Italian soldiers as prisoners--came in the last three weeks, when German forces joined the Austro-Hungarians in a lightning assault that came to be known as the first blitzkrieg. One of the combatants was a young German officer named Rommel. And some of the Isonzo Front’s casualties were removed by an 18-year-old ambulance driver named Hemingway, who later drew from the experience for his novel “A Farewell to Arms.”

When the book came out in 1929, all of this now-Slovenian territory was part of Italy, and in the text, the Soca River and the town of Kobarid were called by their Italian names, Isonzo and Caporetto. Now they’re Soca and Kobarid again.

In other words, Americans know more Slovenian geography than they realize. Millions of us had it in American lit.

To cover this territory, I spent $75 to hire a guide with a car for a long day’s exploration. His name was Dragan, and he had a soft spot for animals. Along the way, while I was snapping panoramas, he rescued a squirrel and carefully deposited it in a box with air holes, intending to feed it and later release it near his home. So for most of the day, there were three of us in the car.

It was about an hour northwest of Ljubljana when the landscape jumped up and nearly knocked me over: The river widened and reclined before us, a dead-still pool of turquoise under a cotton-candy cover of lifting mist. As the mist receded, snow-topped mountains loomed into view. I made Dragan pull off the road so I could watch.

It was beautiful, and soon it was haunting too. On a hill overlooking Kobarid stands a Catholic church dedicated to St. Anthony, and just beneath the church is a shrine that holds the bones of 7,014 Italian soldiers killed here between 1915 and 1917.

At the bottom of the hill stood Kobarid itself, a town with one hotel, a pleasant square and not much more--except for its excellent museum. The Kobarid Museum, which has gathered many honors since its opening in 1990, lays out the story of the fighting here with graphic photos and multilingual explanations. Checking the last 40 pages of the guest book, I found no Americans.

But the Soca (pronounced socha) Valley isn’t only about ghosts. The Soca River holds its striking blue-green hue for about 60 miles, widening and narrowing as it runs through chasms and broad valleys. In some stretches near Kobarid it’s less than 30 feet wide, racing between steep slopes. Farther south, at Most na Soci, it dawdles and widens into a lake.

Much of the area has been set aside as part of Triglav National Park. For the same people who were fighting here 85 years ago--Italians, Austrians, Germans, Slovenians--the valley has become a hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, canoeing and fly-fishing haven. At Most na Soci, in fact, a diving board has been placed on a river bridge so that swimmers can plunge 35 feet into the water.

Not far beyond 5,285-foot-high Vrsic Pass lie the Italian and Austrian borders. Dragan doubled back down to Ljubljana, where I did a bit more exploring. But by now I had experienced the most memorable moment of this trip.

We’d just left the river behind and begun to climb toward the snowy peaks. The stereo was blasting one of Dragan’s favorites, and a surreal sense of larger context descended upon me.

I am a mile high on a Slovenian mountain, I thought, with Led Zeppelin on the tape deck, a ridiculously glorious landscape in the rearview mirror and a squirrel in the trunk. Life is good.

Slovenia. Who knew?

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GUIDEBOOK

An Eastern European Surprise

Getting there: Only Swissair flies to Ljubljana from LAX (connecting in Zurich); round-trip fares begin at $1,295. The other option is flying to London, Paris or Frankfurt, then connecting via Slovenia’s main carrier, Adria. Using that strategy, the best fare this summer appears to be an Air France-Adria connection via Paris, beginning at $1,236 from June 17 to Aug. 31. Ljubljana also has daily train service from Italy and Austria.

Where to stay: In Ljubljana: Grand Hotel Union is the city’s snazziest, a block from Presernov Square on Miklosiceva Street. Specify that you want a room in the original building, not the 1960s wing. Summer rates start at $109 per double; telephone 011-386-61-308-1270, fax 011-386-61-308-1015, Internet https://www.gh-union.si.

In Bled: The 120-room Grand Hotel Toplice, dating to the 1930s, stands next to Lake Bled, surrounded by mountains. Doubles start at about $75 in peak season, May through October, including breakfast. At the neighboring but less ritzy Jadran and Trst hotels, under the same management, summer rates begin at $55 per double. For all three, tel. 011-386-64-7910, fax 011-386-64-741-841, Internet https://www.hotel-toplice.si.

Where to eat: In Ljubljana: Rotovz, local tel. 212-839, is next to the town hall at 2 Mestni Square and offers Slovenian and Italian cuisine, in a formal dining room and at sidewalk tables. I had good prosciutto, Istrian olives and roast kid. Main courses $13 or less. Gostilna AS, at 5 Knafljev Prehod, on a pedestrian street next to the Rose & Crown Pub, tel. 125-8822, emphasizes fresh ingredients in its Slovenian and continental dishes. Despite slow service, my dinner (the chef’s special sea bass) was excellent. Main courses under $15. Cajna Hisa, 3 Stari trg, tel. 121-2444, is great for breakfast, tea, snacks. Homey yet worldly atmosphere; ham and cheese sandwich, $1.25.

For more information: Slovenian Tourist Office, 345 E. 12th St., New York, NY 10003; tel. (212) 358-9686, fax (212) 358-9025, Internet https://www.slovenia-tourism.si.