August 5, 2001

Slovenia: Unheralded Gem on the Adriatic

By FRANK BRUNI, New York times

 "Slovenia was once a republic in the federation of Yugoslavia, and it occupied the northwest corner of that former country, sharing a border with Austria to the north and Italy to the west. When Yugoslavia shattered more than a decade ago, it was other shards that drew notice, and not for happy reasons. Americans read plenty about Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia, and what they learned hardly recommended travel to those places. But wealthier Slovenia, now an independent country, went its less turbulent way — its profile humble, its gentle rhythms undisturbed, its attractions largely unheralded beyond neighboring countries.

What an oversight. There is little you might seek in Europe that Slovenia, which has only about two million people and covers an area roughly comparable in size to Wales or Israel, could not provide, and that it could not provide in a more pleasant, peaceful fashion.

You want castles? Slovenia has hundreds of them, including Predjama Castle, near Postojna, less than an hour's drive from Ljubljana. Predjama is as dramatically situated as any castle you have ever seen — a white 16th-century fortress literally clinging to the side of a perfectly vertical cliff high in the mountains. Some friends and I found our way there along pristine roads so well marked, and so barren of traffic, that it would have taken a concerted effort to get lost. And we arrived to find most of the merely two dozen or so parking spaces empty and not a tour bus in sight. We sat alone at a picnic table that afforded the perfect viewpoint in silence broken only by wind and birdsong.

You want hills tumbling to a royal blue sea? Slovenia can do that, too, even though the stretch of the Adriatic that belongs to it is only about 30 miles long. There are no truly wide, respectable beaches here, but there are old, labyrinthine cities like Piran, which has Venetian Gothic architecture and nestles close against the water. Because you are at the apex of the Adriatic, on the narrow curve where Italy becomes Slovenia and Slovenia then becomes Croatia, you can see across a carpet of blue to distant hills and, on a clear day like the one I was there, even more distant mountains, sometimes dusted with snow.

You want open-air cafes? Ljubljana has scores of them. The local residents fill them in the morning to drink cappuccino, in the evening to drink respectable (and cheap) Slovenian wine and tasty (and cheap) Slovenian beer, and at various points in between to eat their beloved gelato. You cannot walk more than 25 yards through the center of Ljubljana without running into yet another gelato stand, and late into the night the lines are a dozen-people long.

You want shopping? Ljubljana again obliges, not with the high style of Paris or Rome but with its own delights, like mid range Italian shoes at low-range prices. There are no statistics to back this up, but I would wager that Ljubljana has more shoe stores per capita than any other city, and I admit that my friend Anne and I sampled a good many of them. A fun and funky pair of men's shoes runs between $40 and $75 — easily half the price that a similar pair would cost in the United States — and women's shoes run from $20 to $60. Yes, I snapped up one or two — O.K., four — pairs, allowing me to interact fully with local shopkeepers and take an accurate measure of the courtesy of Slovenes.

They are as friendly and helpful as any people I have met. One of the benefits of traveling through a country that would like to have more tourists than it does is the warmth of your reception, and I was constantly startled and moved by the politeness I encountered.

FRANK BRUNI is a White House correspondent for The Times.