Glorious Slovenia in Autumn - Part I

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." George Eliot

A number of years ago a Polish friend of ours told us that we really should one day visit the Slovakian alps, both a wonderful destination and wonderfully cheap. And so last year when planning our trip I pulled out this memory and somehow confused Slovakia and Slovenia. After much reading and planning by the time I realised my mistake I was very keen to visit Slovenia anyway.

One of the original plans had been to visit Austria and Slovenia on the way to Croatia but the thought of too many weeks on the road without rest was not attractive. And so we put off Austria until Christmas time and we saved Slovenia for autumn. I am so glad that we did as our week in Slovenia turned out to be one of those special highlights from our grand adventure that we will never forget.

I have been very excited about the idea of seeing a real autumn, and as one of our holiday mission statements was “to see the seasons change on the other side of the world”. You may wonder why we are so interested in autumn colour. Coming from Western Australia, where there are very few deciduous tree, we have never seen this dramatic seasonal change, with masses of leaves changing from green to yellow, orange or various shades of red.

Rather than book in advance we decided to let the weather decide when we made our visit. We were extremely lucky to find ourselves in Zagreb in the second week in October dropping Rob’s Mum at the airport for her flight home. The weather report for the next week was perfect, sunny and around twenty degrees and we were off.

Finding a Croatian hire car that can go over the border into Slovenia and back was a challenge but for convenience sake we hired a car through Thrifty, paying in one week what we have been paying per month for the car we have hired locally in Makarska. That said, in off season in Croatia car hire has been incredibly cheap for the rest of our time. And so we decided on two bases, one in Pivka in the south west and one in Mojstrana in the Julian Alps and apart from wishing for more time our choice was perfect. And so here are our highlights from a delightful week in Slovenia in autumn.

The Slovenian People

The people we met in Slovenia seemed to be, for the most part, a friendly and happy bunch. When we questioned people on this they said that they felt it wasn’t true as Slovenia has the same economic woes as many countries however it didn’t stop us noticing that most people seem to be in a very good mood.

The two tourist farms we choose as our base are two extremely good examples of this. At the first, Tourist Farm Na Meji in Pivka, we were well looked after by Marko. His wife had gone to Beograd for a well deserved break after looking after 3000 people over the season.

Marko’s father was a bee keeper, a very common pastime in Slovenia, and it was fabulous for Rob to see, as he looks after his grandfather’s bee hives at home and really enjoys it. The farm also has apple orchards, though it has been a very bad year. Back in January Slovenia was hit by a freak cold snap that left huge icicles hanging from power lines, fences and trees, and a great number of them broke. Na Meji was left without power for some time and sadly all the trees show signs of damage.

Beautiful Forests Walks

Na Meji was the perfect base to visit a number of special places. I had a few plans in mind but decided to follow Marko’s advice. On our first outing we went in search of autumn and found it in spectacular fashion. Our first stop was a lookout at Silentabor, from which we could see the valleys on each side.

According to Marko the area around Pivka valley basin used to be the training ground of the army for a very long time and had we visited thirty years earlier we would not have been given access to this beautiful area.

Our next stop was Masun, which was reached via a perfect drive through our first autumn forest. Luckily for me the children were just as excited at the sight of autumnal leaves, otherwise I’m sure they would have teased me mercilessly for all my ooing and aahing.

Arriving at Masun we had a choice between a walk first and then lunch or vis versa and settled for a play on a lovely playground first and lunch after.

Lunch was quite an experience. The gostalina at Masun specialises in wild game and displays the catch on the walls of the restaurant. After discovering the bear skin on the wall, seeing the light fittings made of antlers and making friends with a stuffed squirrel the kids choose vegetarian rolls for lunch. Rob and I had wild boar, but it was the accompaniments that made the meal special.

After lunch we set out on a walk through the forest. Marko had suggested this walk, telling us the signs are also in English, but unfortunately they were only in Slovenian. You could get a general idea what they were talking about which became interesting when the boards were talking about bears and wolves.

The walk trail we choose was the shortest option and with kids it took us about an hour and a half. In the car park however we saw the serious hikers, with their hiking clothes and poles getting ready to set off on marathon hiking adventures.

Meanwhile we collected leaves and threw them at each other, searched for the best walking sticks, tentatively explored bear caves and enjoyed the amazing views. Travel with kids is certainly different, but so much fun as the kids help increase our sense of wonder, fun and just plain silliness.

Škocjanske Jame

During the planning process when I began researching Slovenia’s attractions a few years ago I came across Škocjan Caves. Less well known than neighbouring Postojna Cave, perhaps due to it far less commercial nature, we decided to visit Škocjan first and Postojna if we had time.

When we arrived on our first visit we had failed to check the tour times and we found that if we took the next tour of the cave, in a couple of hours, we would be risking missing the performance at the Lipica Horse Stud we had planned for the afternoon.

And so with the help of the incredibly nice lady in the ticket office we decided that we would enjoy the two kilometre educational walk today and return the next day for the cave tour. She even gave us tickets to the museums which were open today but apparently wouldn’t be tomorrow. This detour on our way to our next stop replaced Postojna in our plans but we left it to fate as to whether we would totally miss it or not.

Typical Slovenian Beehives

The educational trail circles the Big and Little Collapse Dolines, which are huge sink holes in the earth. The walk, while lacking Masun’s autumnal splendour, was very scenic. There were boards to read, this time also in English which was greatly appreciated, and we learnt amongst other things about beekeeping and the local flora and fauna. I even found our favourite little bird and learnt his name, the Great Tit.

By the time we made it around to the little museums it was starting to spit with rain, not enough to bother us but a quick look in one of the little museums, which showed us about growing, harvesting and grinding grain, was a welcome break. We didn’t look into the other museums as we were keen to get off to Lipica for the horse show.

When we returned the next morning we found that the group was very large, and followed by a rowdy school group. I haven’t any below ground photos to share with you as photographs can damage the underground formations. The poor guide really had his patience tested by our group and I give him a great deal of credit for remaining as polite and unflustered as he did. In my opinion Škocjan Cave requires a good level fitness and mobility.

Our guide set a fairly slow pace that even I (in my current unfit exhausted state) was easily able to keep up with. However once he would finish his commentary, which from memory he did in a number of languages there would loud complaints from the back of the group as one particular group arrived very late, the older ladies, shod for a nice lunch rather than exploring an underground cave. Of course this was the group that was ignoring the request not to take photos.

The cave itself was a marvellous experience, fans of Tolkien would be in seventh heaven, as we were. While early on we did see a number of stalagmites and stalactites (“how do I remember which is which mum”..”simple love remember when you get changed for bed you take your tites down”) the real show stopper at Škocjan is the huge underground canyon.  

Within the cave itself the Reka River thunders along and at one point, on the Cerkvenik Bridge, we stood fifty metres above the river, feeling like Gandalf. I was just thinking out loud that if you took the handrails from the bridge you could just imagine Gandalf planting his staff and bellowing “You shall not pass!!  A lovely young American traveller overheard and joined in at this point and we had a great conversation about all the fantasy novels we love and how this cave would make the perfect set for any one of them.

Once the natural light started filtering in from outside the photo ban was lifted and we took a few snaps.

 

Sadly my long misbehaving camera had finally gone to its final rest in that great camera shop in the sky and I was waiting on a replacement and so was relying on Emma camera and whilst some have been very good photos inside the cave was beyond its capabilities.

A funny side note, a month into the future I finally received my new Panasonic TZ40 in the mail, after four weeks including confiscation by Croatian customs who returned it after I paid enough to make it cheaper to buy in Croatia. I happily tore open the wrappings only to find my new baby had “Japanese Language Only” written clearly at the top of the box. Thank goodness I have given its older sister a good work out (about 10000 photos in its eight month life) and so can change setting and delete photos without being able to read the display. But enough of that let travel back in time to Slovenia in October.

Lipica Horse Stud

We arrived at Lipica in time for lunch, but being off season there was no lunch as such and so we settled for huge creamy custardy cakes with tea, at least I did while the kids shared the last toasted sandwich from the café.

I can’t honestly say that I was enthralled by the tour of the stud. We were divided into smallish groups by language and shown the stables where we found the beautiful horses. We enjoyed patting the horses and taking their photos with most of the others in our tour group while the guide gave a lengthy and detailed history of the Lipizzaner. At the end of it she ran at one lady and yelled at her for patting a horse “can’t you read No Patting No Photos” and she showed us a small sign at the far end of the stables that we had yet to visit. The tour group tried to stifle their giggles at this as every one of us had unintentionally broken these rules as we had no idea we were.

We popped our heads in for a quick peek at a lovely chapel , from when the land used to belong to the Bishop of Trieste and then moved on to visit a paddock with a number of beautiful foals. They truly are magnificent horses though we didn’t think much of the life they faced as described to us by our guide (the boys never ever get to meet the girls..how sad).

After another visit to a stable we were led in for the main event a performance of the beautiful Lipizzaner horse, purpose bred here since the days of the Hapsburgs, for court ceremonial purposes. As our abrupt guide informed an unlucky tourist who dared suggest it ,“our horses don’t dance”, and indeed they don’t dance.

The performance we witnesses could best be described as dressage, though for the lay person such as our family, with each move set in time to music you could be forgiven for describing it as such.

We particularly enjoyed the display of carriage driving, as the driver was able perform prefect circles and figure 8’s that created beautiful patterns in the floor of the arena.

In the very last act the audience was left gasping as the horse stood on their back legs or leapt from the ground.

After the show we relaxed on the grass next to a lovely and quit busy playground. The weather was wonderful, as it has been mostly since we arrived in Slovenia. And luckily we took the good weather with us to our next stop in Mojstrana, just north of Lesca Bled. But we shall save that for next time and there is so much more of beautiful Slovenia to come.

 

Craft lessons in the wild