JOHN AND JANE'S TRAVELS: INTO SLOVENIA

Leaving Zagreb, we travelled east to a National Park and Čigoč – a village where every house was reputed to have a stork’s nest on the roof. Unfortunately, there were not many to be seen this year. Many of the traditional wooden houses were built without chimneys, the smoke exiting via the attic where meat and fish were being smoked. The restaurant/camp site where we stayed did have a stork’s nest where eggs were being incubated by devoted parents-to-be.

The near-by bird sanctuary had very little to see, the main wild-life being very hungry mosquitoes!!

The next few days were spent criss-crossing the Croatia/Slovenia border. We spent a couple of nights at a spa in Lendava, Slovenia where we were able to swim in the Olympic-size pool and relax in the thermal pools of warm water containing naturally occurring paraffin!! (apparently very good for the skin). Back in Croatia we visited an old village at Kumrovec, which is now a museum showing how people lived and worked until recent times and where General Tito, first post-war President of Yugoslavia was born.

As at Čigoč the houses were built of wood, often with attached barns…

…but people would have had only a bedroom of their own, the cooking being done in communal kitchens.

The necessary trades were carried out in a variety of workshops.

Slovenia is a land about the size of Wales, mostly covered in dense mixed forest, gentle hills, sparkling clear green rivers, castles, pretty villages and pastureland with small traditional farms. The towns often have pleasant but unremarkable old centres and spreading residential and commercial areas – almost all spotlessly clean. A number of towns were bombed heavily during World War 2 destroying much of their history. Among them was Novo Mesto where little remains of the old town…

…but it is where the Adria Factory is situated.

We had arranged to visit the factory and were treated like VIPs being greeted and showed round by the Director in charge of Adria UK. We had a very interesting tour and were given several replacement parts, free of charge, as well as “goody bags” containing hold-alls, tee shirts, head tubes and baseball caps!

Near Novo Mesto is “Base 20” – the headquarters of the local resistance group during WW2. High on a hillside, in dense forest, in natural depressions formed by the surface collapsing into some of the many caves in the limestone, were built wooden huts for dormitories, kitchen, storage, a printing press, hospital, meeting rooms and much more. The base was never discovered by the Germans.

Passing through several other villages and small towns we arrived at Ljubljana, Capital of Slovenia.

What remains of the Old Town straddles the river and has been nicely preserved and restored. We had a delicious fish lunch in a little restaurant below the colonnades alongside the river.