The Julian Alps

Friday July 5th, 2011, Bled Slovenia
Last night we went out to Gostilna Pri Planincu (which means “By the Mountaineers”), an informal bar and restaurant that has good Slovenian pub food. We had a wiener shnitzel and a veal with roasted potatoes. Not fancy but good. After dinner we walked up the street to Smon Slascicarna, a dessert place, for the Bled specialty, a layer of cream and a layer of vanilla custard in a crispy crust, called kremna rezina. Excellent dessert.
Last night was the start of the Okarina Etno Festival Bled in a park right by the lake. Solar System, an electronic funk/dance band from Colombia played. They do a really good live show meant to get everyone dancing but the music just isn’t for me. Anita liked it better than I did.
This morning we got up, had breakfast and caught our tour bus down the street at 9 am. There were 15 of us, mostly Brits, on a big luxury tour bus, plus the tour guide and the driver. We did a sort of clockwise tour of the Julian Alps from Kranskja Gora, a ski town northwest of here, over the Vrsic summit and around through Triglau National Park. Then we went northwest into Italy and back into Slovenia and home.
Our first stop on the way up to the pass was at the Russian Chapel. During WWI, the Austro-Hungarians used Russian prisoners of war to build the road up the mountains and the fortifications to defend against the Italians who were on the Allied side. Ten thousand Russian prisoners died from the cold, harsh conditions, overwork and avalanches. This chapel commemorates them.
Of course, the Russian dead were just a drop in the bucket. The Italians tried to invade Austria-Hungary, which included Slovenia, through the Soca River Valley and up the mountains. Austria-Hungary, with the high ground, defended against 11 major Italian offensives over 2 ½ years from 1916. Some of the mountainside bunkers are still visible. With the help of Germany, Austria-Hungary finally launched their own offensive against Italy and pushed them back. Soon after, Austria-Hungary and Germany were defeated by the Allies anyway and Italy was awarded this region, which they held until after WWII. So the whole Soca Valley war was for nothing. However, 22 nationalities fought here, 300,000 soldiers died, 700,000 were wounded and 100,000 were declared missing in action. Sixty thousand died in avalanches in one winter alone.
Our tour guide told us that a recent forest fire could only be fought by dropping water from helicopters. It was too dangerous to send in firefighters on the ground because the fire kept exploding bombs that were left in WWI.
This is known as the Isonzo Front in Italy. Not long after he got out of high school, Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver for the Italians here. Those experiences were the basis for his later novel “A Farewell to Arms”.
We stopped at the summit of the Vrsic Pass for coffee. It’s very beautiful. Then we started back down toward the Triglau Park Information Centre to the south. There isn’t 100 metres that’s straight on this whole road. Most of it is still the same road the Russian prisoners built, with modern maintenance. The whole narrow 2 lane road snakes around the mountains and it‘s all really steep. It’s only open in the summer due to snow and avalanches. There are 24 switchback or hairpin turns on the way up and 26 on the way down. On each one, our tour bus had to use the whole road. If anyone was coming the other way, they had to back up because the front of our bus would either be almost touching the retaining wall on one side or the little guardrail over the steep mountainside on the other. This went on and on. Once again, I took the window seat. We had beautiful weather and the scenery was spectacular.
The Park Centre was okay but not that interesting. Then we went down to the town of Bovec for lunch. Bovec is a small town with at least 4 or 5 whitewater rafting companies.
After Bovec we stopped at an old Austro-Hungarian fortress, the Kluze Fort that Napoleon’s troops managed to conquer. There’s a really deep gorge right beside the fort and iron rungs and tunnels built into the cliffs.
After that we crossed into Italy and stopped briefly at Lago del Predil, a mountain lake resort. It wasn’t that interesting and by that time the sky had clouded over a bit.
On the way back we stopped just west of Kranskja Gora to see the 2nd largest ski jump in the world. It used to be the largest but was eclipsed by one in Norway so now the Slovenians are building a 2nd one on the same site to regain their title. They have had many world championships here. There have also been lots of World Cup ski races in Kranskja Gora.
We didn’t get back to Bled until after 5:30 but we had a great day, saw lots of stunning alpine scenery and learned a bit about the history of the region. Well worth it.
Saturday August 6th, 2011, Bled
Last night we went to Pizzeria Rustika in the old town for a great pizza. Then we walked down the hill to the music festival in the park. By the time we got there, “The Men They Couldn’t Hang”, a sort of electric folk/pub music band from England had already started. They were really good and had the crowd right into it. We stayed out past 10 o’clock (unusual for us) even after our long day of touring.
This morning we had the breakfast buffet here and, while we had a chance, asked our host for some cardboard and a marker. When we got back to our room I made a sign for tomorrow’s destination since we might have to hitchhike the last few kilometres to save time. It’s either that or take one bus into the big bus station where we’re going and then another one back to where we’re staying out on the Istrian coast. So, for our 35th anniversary we’ll likely be hitchhiking, just like we both did when we were teenagers. At least this time we have some money.
After we got organized, since it was a little overcast and we didn’t feel like doing any major touristing, so we went for a brisk walk around the lake. On our way, we found the Mayer Penzion Restaurant, where we want to have our anniversary rehearsal dinner tonight. It looks really nice and the menu looked good with at least reasonable prices, so we made reservations.
After our walk, we came back to our room for lunch on our balcony and then walked back to the old town for a decaf coffee and a “Grmada”. That’s a mixture of cake, rum, custard and raisins, topped with whipped cream and drizzled chocolate. Really, really good.
We’ve just waddled back to our room and are getting some stuff together for the morning. We have to leave here at 6:00. We’ll be in Ljubljana by 8:00 and should be able to get the bus to Istria at 9:30, arriving on the coast around 12:30.
We’ve decided that we’ve seen all the sights that we set out to see so we’re going to spend a week at the beach in Istria in a resort hotel with breakfast and dinner included. We probably won’t blog much because we know the internet will be very slow. However, we do have lots of pictures for today of yesterday’s trip through the Julian Alps.