It's raining today, reasonably heavily, so I thought I would catch up on what we've been up to.
Intriguingly, this is the first day that rain has interrupted us at all in three months and is a welcome break from the heat. Too many sunny days in a row have actually made things difficult, because it's so tiring in the relentless sun. What rain we have had up till now has been brief and largely at night and has barely affected our plans.
We've been staying in the two larger cities of Slovenia – Maribor first and then Ljubljana. Both are quite little and there's no way that we could spend four days in each, so we hired a car for half the time to see the rest of the country.
It's ridiculously pretty. The countryside is farmed unless it is very steep, but in a colourful mix of crops and meadows rather than monoculture. The farms seem to be quite small, and have an amazing number of barns and associated buildings scattered around .
There's pretty churches in most villages, castles and palaces are scattered over the place, and the towns have well-preserved old centres.
The couple of "big name" tourist spots are over-full (Bled Castle in particular, but not like Dubrovnik) but because outside of those sights on the package tours, visitors generally come to hike and cycle, so you aren't fighting off crowds. However because some tourists do make it to even the remoter locations, there's almost always instructions and explanations in English, which has been a boon.
The town centres are German in style now, having left behind the Italian influence on the Dalmatian coast. They are uniformly lovely, but if you've been to Austria it looks very similar. On the outskirts you can sometimes see older dwellings that are clearly more local in origin.
The towns historically were inhabited largely by German speakers, although the surrounding peasantry were overwhelmingly Slovenian. Hitler intended to make much of it part of his greater Germany on that basis, but the effect of that was to prejudice the locals against the German speakers. After WWII meant they either emigrated or started to speak Slovenian (which is a version of Serbo-Croat).
So all in all it's a great place to visit for a couple of weeks.
One downside has been that the locals love drinking coffees, ice-creams and eating cakes at all hours of the day, so there are cafes everywhere, but they don't do light lunches. In the heat we haven't really been that interested in heavy restaurant meals, so lunch has been a bit of a mission at times. A few bakeries do filled rolls, but generally we have had to buy something from supermarkets when we would have preferred a cafe lunch.
Driving to see it all has been a mixed experience. The motorways are fantastic and very quick. The main roads are OK, except that they almost never have anywhere to pull over and enjoy the view or take photographs. If you stick to the main routes between the bigger towns it's fine driving.
But the minor roads are a different story, and the roads get minor despite looking on a map like they should be decent sized. They are invariably narrow but nevertheless busy. We've faced unsealed sections, mountainous hairpins where I have been down to first gear, and blind corners on roads too narrow for two cars. The locals are good drivers, but drive very confidently because they are used to the conditions, and don't like being held up. I'm used to some pretty rough places, from unsealed windy NZ roads and zigzagging up mountains in Switzerland, but this has been unpleasant rather too often for my taste.
Still, if we hadn't hired a car we would have been stuck with the main towns, and the really interesting and different parts have been out in the countryside.
Intriguingly, this is the first day that rain has interrupted us at all in three months and is a welcome break from the heat. Too many sunny days in a row have actually made things difficult, because it's so tiring in the relentless sun. What rain we have had up till now has been brief and largely at night and has barely affected our plans.
We've been staying in the two larger cities of Slovenia – Maribor first and then Ljubljana. Both are quite little and there's no way that we could spend four days in each, so we hired a car for half the time to see the rest of the country.
It's ridiculously pretty. The countryside is farmed unless it is very steep, but in a colourful mix of crops and meadows rather than monoculture. The farms seem to be quite small, and have an amazing number of barns and associated buildings scattered around .
There's pretty churches in most villages, castles and palaces are scattered over the place, and the towns have well-preserved old centres.
The couple of "big name" tourist spots are over-full (Bled Castle in particular, but not like Dubrovnik) but because outside of those sights on the package tours, visitors generally come to hike and cycle, so you aren't fighting off crowds. However because some tourists do make it to even the remoter locations, there's almost always instructions and explanations in English, which has been a boon.
Ptuj city centre. Amusingly pronounced "ptooey". Not really, actually "ptwee" listen here
The town centres are German in style now, having left behind the Italian influence on the Dalmatian coast. They are uniformly lovely, but if you've been to Austria it looks very similar. On the outskirts you can sometimes see older dwellings that are clearly more local in origin.
The towns historically were inhabited largely by German speakers, although the surrounding peasantry were overwhelmingly Slovenian. Hitler intended to make much of it part of his greater Germany on that basis, but the effect of that was to prejudice the locals against the German speakers. After WWII meant they either emigrated or started to speak Slovenian (which is a version of Serbo-Croat).
So all in all it's a great place to visit for a couple of weeks.
One downside has been that the locals love drinking coffees, ice-creams and eating cakes at all hours of the day, so there are cafes everywhere, but they don't do light lunches. In the heat we haven't really been that interested in heavy restaurant meals, so lunch has been a bit of a mission at times. A few bakeries do filled rolls, but generally we have had to buy something from supermarkets when we would have preferred a cafe lunch.
Driving to see it all has been a mixed experience. The motorways are fantastic and very quick. The main roads are OK, except that they almost never have anywhere to pull over and enjoy the view or take photographs. If you stick to the main routes between the bigger towns it's fine driving.
But the minor roads are a different story, and the roads get minor despite looking on a map like they should be decent sized. They are invariably narrow but nevertheless busy. We've faced unsealed sections, mountainous hairpins where I have been down to first gear, and blind corners on roads too narrow for two cars. The locals are good drivers, but drive very confidently because they are used to the conditions, and don't like being held up. I'm used to some pretty rough places, from unsealed windy NZ roads and zigzagging up mountains in Switzerland, but this has been unpleasant rather too often for my taste.
Still, if we hadn't hired a car we would have been stuck with the main towns, and the really interesting and different parts have been out in the countryside.
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