Slovenia, her inhabitants are quick to acknowledge, has an image problem.
First of all, there’s the problem of recognition: The small country of just 2 million people gets lost in the sea of European countries, so most foreigners have never even heard of the place.
Then there’s the name: Slovenia is often confused with Slovakia, Slavonia or any of the score of Slavic peoples and nations scattered between Vienna and Vladivostock.
And finally, there’s Slovenia’s recent history: Of the few who know of Slovenia, many associate the country with the violence afflicting other members of the now-disintegrated Yugoslav federation.
“Even in Europe, not to mention other continents, people don’t know where Slovenia is,” admits Mile Setinc, a government spokesman. “If they’ve heard of it, it’s in the context of the former Yugoslavia. When we travel, we have to tell people that Ljubljana is not in ruins, that we’re not fighting in the streets.”
Any fighting in the streets of Ljubljana, Slovenia’s compact Baroque capital, is more likely caused by overindulgence in the country’s savory wines than by the nationalism fueling conflict farther south.
Indeed, both the city and the country are among Europe’s most beautiful and peaceful spots-although just two years ago, Slovenia narrowly escaped the kind of turmoil that now plagues much of the rest of the former Yugoslavia.
Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991. The next day, Yugoslav federal army units stationed in Slovenia left their barracks in a show of force. But the country’s Territorial Defense Force, an entirely Slovenian reserve unit, fought back.
Ten days and fewer than 70 deaths later, the federal troops retreated from Slovenia, moving on to engage in conflicts closer to home and leaving Slovenia to forge its own way in Europe.
“The people have burned their bridges behind them as far as Yugoslavia goes,” one Western diplomat said. “They’re looking toward Europe.”
Most of Europe, however, is not looking toward Slovenia; few people venture here, which works to the traveler’s advantage. At what should have been the height of tourist season, we had the place to ourselves.
Tucked into a small corner of the Alps and the Adriatic coast, Slovenia is tugged in opposing directions by three often clashing worlds-Slavic, Germanic and Latin.
The capital, Ljubljana-whose name evokes echoes of the Slovenian word for “love” (ljubism)-sits astride the Ljubljanica River in a verdant valley at the center of the country. Legend has it that the city was founded by Jason and his Argonauts as the mythic Greek explorer sought a route from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.
Today, Ljubljana’s old town is largely Italianate Baroque dating from the 17th and 18th Centuries. But the city is most remarkable for the imprint left by one man, the architect Joze Plecnik. Plecnik, who died in 1957, designed more than a score of Ljubljana’s proudest buildings, bridges and parks: The University Library, the Supreme Court, the stadium, Tivoli Gardens-all are fanciful creations of a master only now being discovered by the rest of Europe.
In the 1920s, Plecnik was commissioned to renovate the Ljubljanica’s banks as it runs through the city center. On the right bank, he built a colonnade, behind which lies the central market. These days, the market is one of Ljubljana’s liveliest spots, with flower vendors, fruit sellers, butchers and fishmongers all hawking their wares.
The centerpiece of Plecnik’s project on the river embankment, however, is the Triple Bridge linking the two banks of the river; To create it, Plecnik added a new footbridge on either side of the old Spital Bridge, and topped all three with marble neoclassical columns and gas lamps.
Crossing the Triple Bridge, one senses the river’s narrow breadth as it passes through the city. From bank to bank the Ljubljanica can’t measure more than 40 feet.
Like the river, the rest of Ljubljana is pleasingly compact. When someone tells you that a hotel or restaurant is five or 10 minutes away, that means walking time, not driving time. During five days of meetings in the city, I took a taxi only once; the rest of my appointments were within easy strolling distance of one another.
Nestled as they are between mountains and sea, few of Ljubljana’s 270,000 residents spend the weekend in the city. So following their lead, on a sunny Saturday morning we packed our car and headed south for the seaside town of Piran.
Traveling down the four-lane highway linking the capital with Slovenia’s brief 25-mile Adriatic coast, the vegetation passed in stages from the dense forests of fir and linden that surround Ljubljana, to the junipers and drier grasslands of the coastal range, to the scrub forests, cedars and cypress of the seaside.
As we approached the coast, the towns and buildings became progressively more Mediterranean. Vineyards and ancient stone houses topped with red tile roofs cling to sun-drenched hillsides. Piran, called Pirano by the ubiquitous Italians who invade on weekends, could be Venice without the canals-it has the same winding streets, narrow alleyways and tiny squares filled with fish-crazed stray cats.
There’s good reason for the similarity. Much of the coast was settled by Venetian traders, and today a sizable Italian minority lives along Slovenia’s coastline.
Along the seawall flanking Piran’s old town, we sampled the local catch-shrimp and calamari-and Slovenian wines. While most of Slovenia has a more Central European diet (“The Slovenes made two unfortunate decisions,” one diplomat told me. “They copied Italian business habits and Austrian cooking habits.”), the coast is awash in seafood. Most of Piran’s restaurants offer rich and spicy Italian pasta and fish dishes, but at a substantial discount off prices to be found 30 miles away in Trieste.
The only thing Piran is missing, in fact, is a beach. The town has a concrete and stone seawall from which many people swim, but in my mind the experience was a little too urban to qualify as a beach. For a real beach, I was told, one needs to take a 10-minute drive down the coast to Portoroz.
No luck.
The “beach” at Portoroz consists mostly of trucked-in sand protected by concrete retaining walls, flanked by several swimming pools and water slides, and backed by dozens of high-rise hotels. The town is, however, an interesting study in what state-socialist tourism was all about. The enormous hotels and guest houses were built to serve the masses but with little charm as one would imagine in a vacation spot developed with a central plan in mind.
On our way back from the coast, we passed through a narrow corner of Italy to the Slovenian town of Lipica, the original home of the breed of Lipizzaner stallions that perform in Vienna’s Spanish Riding School.
Although the horses from Lipica can no longer look forward to a star career in Vienna-the Austrians have maintained their own stud farm since the disintegration of their empire after the First World War-they offer a spectacle similar to what one might see in Vienna, at a fraction of the price.
Farther up the road toward Ljubljana we stopped in the over-touristed town of Postojna, home to a system of caves some 15 miles long. At the cave’s entrance sits a gargantuan hotel built to accommodate hordes of travelers who just aren’t coming these days.
We were a bit skeptical when we boarded an electric train that was built to carry at least 200 people, but which had only two other passengers. As we descended more than a mile into the earth to the heart of the cave, though, all skepticism vanished and wonderment took over.
We wandered through grand rooms with vaulted ceilings, columns and arches as magnificent as those in any European cathedral; we passed through caverns with stalactites and stalagmites as thin and plentiful as spaghetti; we negotiated narrow passageways, and crossed a subterranean river that is home to an ancient species of blind lizard, called the Proteus.
We then headed for the mountains that loom over the capital. The drive took us up into dense Alpine forests, scattered with Auslovenia’s Riviera. If the coast is lacking in any real beaches, these two gems in the crown of the Julian Alps offer some of the most perfect beachgoing and swimming I have ever experienced.
We passed through Bled, which has a handful of pleasant spots but an overabundance of socialist-looking hotels, to the Hotel Vila Bled at the far side of the lake. The hotel was originally built for Marshal Tito, Yugoslavia’s leader from the end of World War II until his death in 1980.
Turning in to the hotel’s cobbled drive, I could already sense the grandeur of the place. While still Tito’s summer home, Vila Bled was host to guests as diverse as Willy Brandt, Emperor Akihito of Japan and North Korean President Kim Il-Sung.
The layout and design of the hotel are what might be called “early dictator,” with heavy, overstuffed furniture, too many monument-sized pillars and columns, and a mosaic depicting the history of Yugoslav socialism. Oddly enough, however, the Vila Bled still manages to be both homey and comfortable.
Today, anyone who is willing to shell out a minimum of $350 per night can stay in the four-room presidential suite where many of the Vila Bled’s more notable guests slept. And anyone with a spare $150 in his pocket can stay in the old guards’ quarters-the only rooms with balconies, because of fears that the building’s other occupants might be targeted by an assassin’s bullet.
Despite such considerations, I have rarely been in a more peaceful spot. Standing alone on the terrace with a cup of coffee in the morning or a glass of wine in the late afternoon, I could almost feel Tito’s ghost standing at my shoulder, and could easily understand what it was that drew him there.
For those who seek more activity than just curling up with a good book on the terrace or in one of a dozen public rooms, the Vila also offers tennis, swimming from its private dock or rowing in a half-dozen hand-built wooden launches.
One afternoon, we rowed out to the church of Saint Mary, which sits on an islet in the middle of the lake. The first traces of human civilization on the islet date to the 8th Century B.C., and the first chapel was built on the site in the 9th Century A.D. We climbed the 98 steps to the church, made a wish and rang the “wishing bell” that we had heard ringing every few minutes since our arrival.
Just 16 miles north of Bled toward Slovenia’s highest peak, 9,400-foot Mount Triglav (the name means “Three Heads” and is the symbol that graces the new country’s flag) lies Bohinj Lake. Where the Savica River flows into the lake, the water runs so clear that I could see the fish swimming at the bottom.
We took a walk along the lake shores, then biked the seven miles around, with Triglav and the rest of the Julian Alps looming over us.
The next day, as we left Bled and Slovenia and headed toward neighboring Austria, we passed through the gritty industrial town of Jesenice. On my left, I saw a mammoth smoke-belching steel mill, which blighted the otherwise nearly perfect Alpine valley.
This centrally-planned dinosaur draws its raw materials not from the surrounding mountains, but from as far away as Ukraine and Africa; there is no logical reason why it should be located here.
That, I thought, was Slovenia’s real image problem: the legacy of four decades of an ill-conceived notion of progress that stressed size over quality of life.
With any luck, Slovenia’s new democratic leaders will bring their country out of the age of the bigger-is-better school of industry and tourism, and into an era of quality and personal service, such as that exhibited at the Vila Bled. The rest of Slovenia’s image problem would then take care of itself.
BARGAIN RATES, GOOD FOOD
Getting there: There are no direct flights from the United States to Slovenia. Lufthansa, Swiss Air and Austrian Airlines all provide connecting service to Ljubljana. The country also has good rail connections to Munich, Trieste, Venice and Vienna.
Getting around: Slovenia’s roads are generally good, although not quite of the caliber of Western Europe. Traffic is relatively light, except on the main highway linking Ljubljana and Maribor.
Food and drink: Compared to its West European neighbors, Slovenia is a bargain. Excellent meals with wine cost as little as $15-$20 for two people in many restaurants. In Piran, try the Tri Vdove, on the waterfront, for stuffed or grilled calamari. In Ljubljana, try Romansa (Trg Republike 1) for excellent Italian pasta or Gostilna Pod Velbom (Stari Trg 3) for traditional grilled meat dishes and potica, an exquisite multilayered walnut cake for dessert. Good dry Slovenian red wines are Vipava Kabernet and Merlot; for whites, try any Beli Pinot or the Vipava Zelen.
Lodging: Although Ljubljana has hundreds of beautiful buildings, the city’s hotels are uniformly dreary. The best bets are the Grand Hotel Union (Miklosiceva 1; phone 38-61-126-133) or the Hotel Slon (Slovenska 34; 38-61-151-232). Both start at about $80 per night for doubles.
In Piran, pretty much the only place to stay is the Hotel Piran (38-66-73651); doubles start at about $50-ask for a seaside room. In Bled, try the unique Vila Bled, probably the best hotel in Slovenia (38-64-77409); doubles start at about $120-ask for a lake view.
Visas: Three-month tourist visas for Slovenia are available free of charge at any border crossing.
For more information: Contact Slovenia’s embassy in Washington (202-828-1650) or the consulate in New York (212-702-4884).
