Slovenia

The first thing you need to know about Slovenia is that it is a different country from Slovakia. This wasn't entirely clear to me before I started planning this whole trip. Slovenia is a small country, about the size of New Jersey, at the top of the Adriatic Sea that borders Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. It was part of the former Yugoslavia and was the first country to gain independence in 1989 after only ten days of minimal fighting. It has a small coastline and lots of Alps. We spent seven days in Slovenia and rented an apartment in the capital city of Ljubljana.

The first morning was Saturday, and as we headed into the central city it was almost comically idyllic, like some stereotype of life in Europe. There were fit, good looking people and families everywhere, there were groups dressed in traditional clothes doing folk dances in the street, there was an abundance of accordion players, there were big pots of delicious smelling stew cooking over open fires, and there was a big polka band playing in the main square with lots of people dancing.

Of course we bought some stew, and also some langos with garlic, which is essentially fry bread that they slather delicious things on like sour cream. It was popular in Hungary, too. 

The best thing about the morning was the amazing market. It actually happens every morning but is extra big on Saturdays. I didn't get a picture, but the second week in June seemed to be the height of cherry season; there were amazing mountains of cherries everywhere, and cheap! About $3 for a kilo! We ate a lot of cherries.

Ljubljana had really interesting street art, most of it a bit bizarre and jarring.

The center of Ljubljana is dominated by a castle on a hill. The castle is actually a reconstruction and not that interesting, but it was a nice walk up the hill and there were good views of the city.

The central old town in Ljubljana is very lovely, and it was about a ten minute walk from our apartment. I was a little surprised by the rest of the city, though, which was fairly industrial and ugly. 

One Ljubljana specialty is horse burgers. Look at the size of the burgers! Ben's is as big as his head. (Chewy but good, if you're wondering.)

Another specialty: gelato!!

One day Nephi climbed Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia. He had a great day and it looks gorgeous. They say you aren't a true Slovene until you climb Triglav. 

While he climbed the mountain, I took the boys to a water park called Atlantis. The boys had a great time, and it was a funny contrast to what a water park is like in the US. There were essentially no lifeguards anywhere blowing whistles to tell people not to run or to regulate the water slides at all. There were no height restrictions on the slides, and you could go down headfirst or with other people or however and whenever you wanted. No serious injuries resulted (although there was an element of luck involved), and everyone had a lot of fun. In fact, Ben was able to go down slides that he would never be allowed to here, and I think it is the happiest I have ever seen him in his whole life. He went down on slide repeatedly for at least 30 minutes straight and never stopped loving it. It was great!

We spent one day driving through the Julian Alps, which were extremely beautiful, as well as containing some interesting WWI history. I didn't really know that there was an eastern front in WWI, but there was and it happened in the very tops of these mountains. A million people died in the war in one year in this area, which is a one followed by six zeroes and is a huge number of people. This was where Hemingway drove ambulances and got injured.

This was a memorial chapel to the many thousands Russian prisoners of war who died in avalanches while working on the amazing road we were driving on. It was in a lovely spot in the woods and was a good spot for Caleb to get the better of his car sickness. (It was a very windy road).

There were tunnels cut into a mountain that had been used for fighting and were just kind of sitting there, no signage or anything. Pretty cool to walk through.

At another spot, you could walk a ways into the woods and there was an open-air museum, meaning there were a few signs but no other people anywhere, of a real WWI bunker. There were tunnels you could walk through and rickety ladders and old generals' chambers. It was really cool. Also, there were lots of delicious wild strawberries growing everywhere, and it made me happy to think about the soldiers living here a hundred years ago finding strawberries, too, and having at least one happy thing in their lives.

There was this huge waterfall along the road. There was a hike up to it but we didn't have the time.

We also stopped that day at Predjama Castle, which is built in front of and back into a cave.

The next day went back to the market in Ljubljana to restock on cherries, and found the awesome fish market in the basement of a building, and I bought an octopus that I cooked for dinner that night. It still had the beak in it, you guys!! High adventure! I made Nephi take it out. Also the eyes. Anyway, moving right along, that afternoon we went to Bled, a little resort town with a picturesque lake and lovely island with a church on it.

The thing to do in Bled is to take a boat over to the island. OR you can just swim over, like my awesome boys did. It was a long swim!

It feels apocryphal to say this, because Bled is on everyone's Most Amazing list, but we were a little underwhelmed. We just didn't set up the experience very well; we were rushed, and arrived at a busy time of day, and had to spend a long time just figuring out where to park, and it seemed really crowded. So your experience might be as magical as everyone else's, but we were a tiny bit grumpy.

On the way back home we made up a story about having to stop at the airport to fill out some paperwork about the rental car, and "bumped into" Nephi's sister ellen. She traveled with us for about two weeks. It was so fun keeping the surprise from the boys until we picked her up, and there were many times that it was so wonderful to have her along. The next day we took another trip to the mountains, to a valley called Logarska Dolina. It was absolutely stunning and if I had to choose only one Slovenian mountain excursion, this was my favorite. And who do you suppose was it that had the Sound of Music on her phone to play as we drove around? ellen! She's awesome for things like that.

It really is a shame the mountains got so washed out in our photos. They were so amazing!

We hiked an hour or two up to a big cave high in the mountains where they have found significant human remains and lots of bear skulls; they think it was an ancient site for rituals. And par for the course for Europe, it was just sitting there wide open for us to explore. The view from up there was unreal.

We were above the birds!

On the way down we hiked into Austria. Only about five feet in, but still, the boys were pretty excited.

This was the boundary marker.

Slovenia is famous for its caves, and we toured one called Skocjan Cave. It was enormous and very cool inside, but we weren't allowed to take pictures. (Lots of people sneakily took pictures anyway and the boys were scandalized.) The term "karst topography" actually takes its name from this region. 

That night we wandered around Ljubljana a bit more and got some gelato (of course). Slovenia, you were wonderful and beautiful!