Global Travel Writers: Articles

Slovenia � Adriatic, alpine, astounding

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:41:00 -0400

Tucked into a curve in the Adriatic alongside Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, with Trieste literally just down the road, Vienna and Rome thirty minutes away by air, and Venice, Salzburg and Munich and Munich a few hours away by road, Slovenia and its capital Ljubljana is thoroughly European. Indeed, with its castles, crafts, alps, lakes, ports, culture, fertile farms, annual jazz festival and layers of linguistics this 'boutique' country traversed by the sun in all of twelve minutes is very much Europe in microcosm.

From a balcony of the famed Vila Bled take any eyeline out across the water, past the tear-shaped island with its baroque church of the Assumption, up the sheer cliff on the other side to the striking 11th century castle clinging to the peak, and then out to the Karavankens in the dramatically arrayed distant background (with its imposing Mount Triglav), and you readily understand why this once royal realm has been eulogised and celebrated by poets, painters and photographers.

Snapshot of Slovenia

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:20:00 -0500

The strangely shaped whitewashed spire of Stanjel shows up from some distance as you drive from Nova Gorica to Sezana in western Slovenia, where hilltop towns a few kilometres away in Italy dot the horizon. Roundly tapering like some sort of medieval rocket nose cone over an open belfry, the steeple dominates a haphazard scramble of stone buildings that make up the town.

It's old. So old that the cobbled streets leading to it are dented by centuries of walking. Yet the clock on the church tower tells today's time with strangely arrowed-at-both-ends hands, as if to give a second opinion, and the bells ring out proudly soon after we arrive, striking noon into the consciousness of the working locals. Strangely, though, our guidebook is mute on its history.

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This article continues with details of this forgotten medieval town as well as Slovenia itself and includes information on accommodation provided, local food and cuisine, things to do and see.

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(finishes�)

We keep walking, leaving the town at last, the only sound the occasional clink of cutlery from deep inside a house. As we complete the loop back to the church, nearby a man still hammers on something in his back yard, the only person in the place it seems who's working through his lunch break.

�Sally Hammond 2006

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Tito and me

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 22:47:00 -0500

Tito's bed was big and wide and white. Puffy pillows and a cool bare polished boards gave the room an almost monastic look - and maybe it was a good thing that Mr President wasn't actually in the bed when I was invited to sleep there.

From all I knew of Tito, he had been a restless soul. In fact he may never have slept in this particular room. On the other hand, he may well have done so, as Vila Bled, now a prestigious Relais & Chateaux property in Slovenia, was his guest house - the dorm where he put up his friends high and low. Haile Selassie, King Hussein, Kruschev, Nehru, Indira Ghandi and Nasser all stayed here at one time or another, and they certainly would have been as wowed as I was with the neatly framed postcard view of Lake Bled and its island church through both the bedroom and lounge room windows. They surely would have been just as happy to relax, too, over a meal on the shaded terrace, again with that magical view across the lake to the thousand-year-old fortress of Bled Castle on the opposite cliffs.