Ljubljana, Bled & the Julian Alps, Slovenia (Part 1 of 3)
Charming cities and the Julian Alps
I now think of it as the “European Bathroom Shuffle”: walk towards a restroom; stop before entering the facilities because you forgot it costs money to enter; go back to get coins; shuffle back to the restroom. Granted train stations are known to be favorite hangout of the unsavory, so completely accessible facilities would probably cause their own issues. Korea, with your widely available free and clean bathrooms, we miss you!
Our bus left exactly at 9:25 am. N. somehow got obsessed with the fact that it was in Lane A4 when it should have been in Lane A5. He had paid extra for seats in the first row, for what the company called the “panoramic view”. The bus was staffed with one driver and a spare — it began its route in Bratislava and over the course of a long day would finish in Milan, so the two drivers would take turns.
N. noticed the curiosities of European roads: cars often didn’t use their blinkers to change lanes, but they all used the leftmost lane only to pass slower vehicles. Now that we were out of the cities, we were also seeing quite a few vans and RVs that brought us fond memories of our own van life.
At one point, we reached a bottleneck on the road. We couldn’t see if it was because of construction or accident. Magically all cars in front of us started veering right or left, leaving a wide space in the middle, as if some invisible Moses were parting the way. We soon found that cars were required to do this in case an emergency vehicle needed to come through. Not a bad idea. This is one of the aspects of traveling that I enjoy: seeing how other countries and cultures come up with different solutions to everyday problems.
We kept seeing signs for “Park & Write” (pull-offs to discourage drivers from driving and texting) and “Ausfahrt” (which means “Exit” but amused us because we were being juvenile: pronounce every letter and you’ll get the idea.) We were both disappointed there were no “Thanks for visiting Austria” signs.
Neither were there “Welcome to Slovenia” signs. We quickly noticed that Slovenian road signs listed names and distances with the farthest destination placed at the top of the list, with the closest at the bottom. Weird. The country also loved LED traffic signs and had more tunnels that broke through the mountains.
At one point I caught the driver taking a couple of puffs on his vaping stick. He blew out the smoke very slowly, but I could still see it. Signs on the bus stated that smoking was prohibited. He must hate it when passengers choose the panoramic seats and spy on him.
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We finally arrived in Ljubljana — it took me a while to realize “j” just makes an “i” sound — and were really tempted to just call it a day. However, the blue skies beckoned. We took a taxi to the city center and explored this charming city — they had dragons and Flash Invaders!
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First order of business: exchange currency. (By now we were fully trained to expect to pay for restrooms.). Once downtown, we headed to one bank which, according to reviews, exchanged currency — info that turned out to be false. We forgot to be annoyed, however, because of the crowds of young people on the streets next to the bank.
Bands of teenagers were roaming in packs, dressed in black and white. Upon closer inspection, some seemed to be graffiti canvases, sprayed in all kinds of colors. Closer still, we saw and smelled the cans of spray paint they pointed at happy victims.
It wasn’t until some girls who were hamming for N.’s camera approached that I was able to ask: what madness was this? One girl giddily explained that this was a tradition on their first day of school: freshmen were traditionally sprayed by upperclassmen on their first day of high school.
After the bank errand and having purchased our bus tickets to Bled, we walked back to the city center, passing more bands of colorfully sprayed teens and wondering how much poisonous paint each teen had absorbed.
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Our walking tour had originally been scheduled for 12:30 pm, but we had changed it last minute for 3 pm. When we arrived, the guide asked, “Do you speak Italian?” Answer “Certo che no!” At first I thought he was kidding, but it wasn’t a joke — the 12:30 tour had been in English, but the 3 pm was in italiano. What to do? There was only one other couple registered for the tour in Italian and they were kind enough to agree that the tour be in English. So, andiamo!
Our guide spoke quickly, almost feverishly so, and it was hard to keep up with both with his accent and the torrent of information. At a certain point, I gave up and just tried to enjoy the city around me. In other words, I did what N. usually does in these tours, and it wasn’t a bad way to wander around. If nothing else, the guide made clear the idea that Slovenia and Slovenians firmly considered themselves part of Western Europe (“To be honest, Slovenians are just Austrians in a different country.”).
After dinner, we climbed up the steps to the castle and caught a hazy sunset.
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The town of Bled was just an hour’s bus ride away from the capital. Yet it seemed dreamily far away, with its pretty lake, flowered paths, and cream cakes. We walked around the lake, hiked to a higher viewpoint that turned out more challenging than we expected (and that was to be a taste of the hiking yet to come), and prepared our gear for our next adventure.
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Our trekking company had recommended that we consult a Slovenian weather forecasting website specifically designed with granular information about mountain weather in the Julian Alps. The only problem was that there was no English translation. So I found myself cobbling up information with cheat sheets of the days of the week in Slovenian, pictures of suns and clouds, and numbers related to wind speed and temperature. It was all Greek to me.
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Trek Day 1 četrtek (Thursday): Destination Prešernova Koča na Stolu (gain 1616m, loss -19m, final elevation 2100m)
The hiking app was handy, giving us a clear path to follow; it warned us with a sad moan in a minor key when we veered off, and happy bells in a major key when we got back on track. Right from the beginning, the trail rose. We were mostly under tree cover, which was nice, but the trail was mostly made up of tree roots exposed above ground because of what I imagined was the tramping from many hikers. Although the trail was periodically dotted by the red and white circle markers, this appeared as close to as natural a trail could be.
And the only thing it did was rise.
We were both grumpy because of the steep, tiring incline without any breaks on the tree line that would have provided some views to distracts us from the miserable ascent.
Our first break was at the Valvasorjev dom pod Stolom hut, charming with an outdoor spigot for water (“voda”), cozy hut with a main room decorated with hiking memorabilia, and picnic tables outside. And flushing toilets; these we would miss higher up. The lady working in the hut seemed a tad disappointed that we didn’t order any drinks and wanted only one bowl of a stew called “toja”and without a klobasa, no less.
Only after leaving the hut and hiking another half an hour did the tree line finally break; we were then able to get a panoramic view of Bled and the mountains around Triglav.
At this elevation, the trail went from tree roots to rocks — sometimes gravelly, sometimes bouldery — with no shelter from the sun. N. and I rued the plans we made by bringing arm covers instead of loose light shirts. We had thought it would be cold, but clear skies and sunshine made for good walk-around-Lake-Bled weather and not hiking-in-the-mountains weather. Also, our baseball caps did nothing to protect our necks from the heat and sunburn.
We kept running into a young American couple who appeared headed to the same hut as we.
At one point, wild raspberry bushes lined the trail and we tried a few: they were much smaller and firmer (but not necessarily sweeter) than the ones I got from the grocery store back home. At least it was a brief distraction from the rocky road.
Rock and rock and more rock. And still unrelentingly uphill. We were both tired and cranky because there had been a few spots that were quite dangerous, where a misstep would have led to falling off the side of the mountain. We were reminded of yesterday’s experience hiking up to the viewpoint of Lake Bled.
The hut Presernova Boca na Stolu sat on a narrow ridge below Mt. Stol, comprising of the main hut, an outhouse (the flushing indoor toilets were out of commission because of the lack of rain, as the helpful handwritten sign indicated), and some sheds for the generator and propane tank.
Sprawled on a bench in the main room, I might have taken a bit of a nap before dinner — spaghetti with meat sauce and a thick rice stew with chopped up ham; it also included a couple of crepes with jam. The host lady was friendly and kind but tended to ask questions and give us directions in Slovenian, and we managed to magically understand her. (“Do you want glasses with your beer?” Yes please. “Can I take the salt and pepper away?” Of course, thank you!)
Outside, the clouds came and went and N. ran outside whenever the views opened. Keeping the hut hosts company was a little dog inside and a whole bunch of sheep grazing outside, one of whom come next to a hiker and wouldn’t stop licking his legs, I guessed, because of the salty sweat. Yum.
Four large Slovenian guys sat on the table next to us. They were enjoying their dinner, drinking beers with lemonade (!) and guffawing at this and that. They were obviously feeling good and relaxed, so much so that one ripped a loud fart (not fahrt) and the other three burst out laughing. The guilty one turned around and looked at me — I was the only other person in the room at the time — but I was able to hold my poker face.
We were assigned to sleep in the same room as that young American couple — two platforms were built into the wall in a small room. Because they were larger and taller than we, we volunteered to sleep in the upper platform because it had a sloping roof that made it very tight.
N. and I later agreed that it might be time to graduate to inn-to-inn hiking trips and leave these hut-to-hut trips to younger folks.
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