Slovenian Summer #3: Caves, Castles and Crushed Digits

Bastille Day! Apparently the French Revolution has some kind of great significance to the Slovenians – it’s everywhere – but we hadn’t quite worked out why. Rather than sticking around to represent the Auld Alliance in any resulting festivities, however, I had plans – cave and castle plans.

Things began to go wrong in a typical Kathleen way. The gift I had bought Meg at Lake Bled already began to fall apart. I had a short-lived panic – where were the bus tickets we had bought the day before? A frantic search ensued, until I had to give up and go down to breakfast. I cringed as I walked towards Alissa and Narges, ready to admit my stupidity.
“Did I have all the bus tickets?” I asked.
“No, I have all of them,” replied Alissa, and I felt relieved and even more stupid. They were very nice about it, though Alissa expressed her concern that I was guardian of the room keys for the day.

We walked up to the bus station, Narges again making her case for fruit trees everywhere. I suggested she should become an advocate and make speeches to councils around Scotland, possibly hooking up with garden centres in a move that would surely make her rich. She seemed to think it was too much work.

We got the bus without incident. I enjoyed this driver’s radio station, including U2, though I hoped his choice of song – “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – did not reflect his sense of direction. We were on a schedule. The music continued. I suspected Anastacia was not traditional Slovene folk music. It seemed this driver’s tastes in music are more mainstream and – somewhat mercifully – less Eurovision-worthy.

Today, we saw more flat land with lumpy bumpy wooded hills which looked remarkably like the carse of Stirling.

Coming into the town of Postojna, I spotted (to my surprise) that the residents of a block of flats had painted their windows in an interesting manner.

When we stepped off the bus, I began instantly to feel the heat. It occurs to me in hindsight that perhaps it may not have been the best day to dress head to toe in black (though my nifty cover-up allowed me to get in touch with my inner Austro-Hungarian). We wandered into the tourist information and were told that the only way to Predjama Castle was a taxi, €30 with the driver sticking around for an hour or so. Fair enough, we thought, and headed out to the caves. The sign said less than a kilometre (so I was pretty confident we could make the 10am tour in just over ten minutes), but it was a bit of a trek in the heat, as it turned out, given my heat-absorbing ensemble and the unfortunate fact that the supposedly equally spaced signs read 500m, 200m, 100m… Narges entertained us with another impassioned plea, that what Postojna really needed were fruit trees along this road. Then when we hit what was meant to be the entrance to the caves, we found ourselves at the car park and there was a further sign to the caves reading “300m”. So past the array of souvenir stands we marched, and arrived at the ticket window at 10.03 to discover we were too late. But we bought combined tickets for the cave and the castle and waited for the 11am tour. Meanwhile we sat in the shade, until drums sounded in the square above us and Narges bolted up the stairs, with a joyful cry of, “It sounds Middle Eastern!” We followed.

The music turned out to be from a music and dance troupe from Izmir in Turkey who played Turkish music and were dancing impressively, given the heat and the many layers of their costumes. I was suddenly glad we had to wait.

After chatting with one of the dancers, Narges’s ears pricked up when we began to queue with a large Israeli tour group. “I’m going to ask if they are from Jerusalem!” As I envied her multiple languages, a bilingual conversation ensued with a woman from Tel Aviv which, for someone who generally studies the dead-language part of Hebrew, was absolutely fascinating She told us that it was supposed to be very cold in the cave, which delighted me and worried Narges in her tank top, who didn’t have anything to put over it. The Israeli woman laughed and said, “I hope you will not become ch’ isha Lot” – like Lot’s wife – “She was a pillar of salt, you a pillar of ice!” I was surprised how much of that conversation I understood while listening, though the entirety of my contribution in Hebrew was a well-placed Toda when she ushered me ahead through the closing masses to rejoin Narges and Alissa.

Signs inside warned of 8° temperatures, which on reflection was a slight exaggeration for the purposes of flogging €3 coat rentals, if I may be so cynical. We boarded a train – cute! – and headed for a couple of kilometres underground, where we disembarked and congregated below the relevant language signs. Then we walked up… and up… and up… our tour guide called our eventual rendezvous point “the mountain” and it didn’t seem unjustified! She seemed a bit gruff at first, barking at poor tourists at the rear, “Come along! We do not have all day!” but she warmed up after that.

Postojna Cave was discovered in 1818 and opened to the public in 1819, so the tourist-exploitation theme is long-running. You can still see the build up of soot on some stalagmites deposited by generations of early tourists. The cave finally acquired an electricity supply in 1880 – well in advance of Ljubljana!

We proceeded through the “beautiful caves” – my favourite was the “Spaghetti Gallery” which has thousands of thin, pure white limestone stalactites suspended from the ceiling. While we were route-marching – or I was, as I kept getting stuck behind wandering people with video cameras and was struggling to catch up – through the Red Cave, the lights went out twice. Slightly nervewracking when several kilometres underground.

We did however survive to see the “human fish,” teeny lizard-like amphibians who live in the river that carved the cave, and can survive 10-12 years without food. And I thought my metabolism was slow!

Ran into the same lady from outside, who seemed less enchanted to encounter me again. “Where is your friend?” she asked.
“I lost her somewhere,” I replied, then with a feeble attempt at humour, “Maybe she turned into a pillar of ice!” I was rewarded with a blank look. I’m sure it would be funnier in Hebrew. Really.

We all piled back on the train, and as we speeded back through a tunnel, there was sudden manic laughter from Narges and Alissa a few seats in front of me, which was quite creepy in its echoing. We never got to the bottom of that, as they forgot why by the time we left Postojna.

Outside I was waning, and realised I wasn’t drinking enough. Outside we failed to find a taxi, but taking Alissa’s sensible lead, we trailed back into town and into the tourist information again, to find that the town has only three taxis, and two were booked up. The third was scheduled to do one more trip at 2pm – meaning we would have to give up Piran. We discussed and decided to be positive, given that we already has castle tickets and a way to get there. We bought some fruit – mmm, grapes – and walked back to the caves for pickup!

Then something delightful happened. Narges found a walnut tree! Asking the people, sitting in their garden if she could pick a couple, she returned to share the delights of fresh walnut, very welcome after all we had heard about them.

When we arrived back at the car park, Narges and Alissa ran up to the touristy area for lunch supplies, and I parked myself at the entrance, just to make sure the taxi didn’t go without us, you understand.

While I sat, I overheard (okay, eavesdropped on) a Slovenian driver and two Argentinean cyclists saying goodbye, the Argentinean man praising the Slovenian on how much help he was, and the Slovenian being typically laid-back and self-effacing. They asked a party of passing Swedes to take a photo of them all together, and the Slovenian said, “You know where he’s from? He’s from Argentina. They cycled here!”
The Swede with the camera paused. “All the way?”

The taxi arrived as Alissa and Narges arrived back with a burger (Narges) and a pizza (for Alissa and I). Alissa, being an angel, also brought more water and a diet coke, though she made me promise to drink all the water before the coke. We, and lunch, piled into the taxi with two Israeli women not with the tour group but here for the IOSOT conference and a man from NE England, who must have wondered what had possessed him to get in a taxi with all these people babbling about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We made our way to the castle via an exceptionally windy road (i.e. lots of turns and bends, not the four winds), then when we all disembarked, the three of us did what probably few tourists do and spent the first five minutes of our precious hour wolfing down pizza and bottles of water before walking to the castle entrance. Narges spotted some more walnuts en route and restocked.

We walked across a somewhat unstable drawbridge to the castle entrance, my photographing of which was cut short by Alissa yelling back, “Kathleen, it’s cool in here!” and I bolted.

A nice Slovenian girl took our tickets and asked where we were from – Scotland now our standard sensible answer – and chatted with Narges and Alissa before exclaiming, “Ah! I love the Scottish accent! RRRRR!” There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that.

The castle was indeed exciting, being built into a cliff, with a secret passage behind it and a jousting area in the front. Thrilling! Not to mention the obligatory decorative antlers. Unfortunately the tour route signs took us up a number of steep staircases, so I knew there was no way to get back down them that would make me happy. But the things we do in the name of education.

Predjama had some very pretty rooms filled with furniture that – I must admit – I could imagine turning up at McGregor’s auction in St Andrews. Allison would have approved. Alissa and I were independently intrigued to find Charles Edward Stuart – Bonnie Prince Charlie – gazing down from a portrait…

…and slightly disappointed to find, from the plaque at the bottom, that it was the strikingly similar-looking Count Jozef Windischgraetz.

We saw the toilet where Erazem (the Slovenian Robin Hood, if your believe the stories, though I’m not sure Robin Hood was ever a robber baron hiding in a castle) was finally killed. He was betrayed by a servant who told his enemies that he could be targeted “where even the king must go alone” and shone a light to be helpful.

At this point, Narges had to be dissuaded from disappearing over the side of the lofty balcony to reach some berries she had spotted. Of course, Alissa turned up with her “Go, Narges, go!” and undid all my good work. Bad influence, that one.

We found a shop – of course – and Narges and Alissa tried Slovenian brandy. Narges made an interesting noise, and Alissa settled on a bottle to take back to Matt, which may partly make up for the fact that we went to a cave without him.

Coming back to the taxi, Narges found some crab apples just out of reach. Alissa volunteered to jump up from a high point and succeeded in getting one, which made Narges even happier! While they found the WC, I went on to the taxi, which is how I found myself having a conversation with the English guy about the relative merits of Scottish castles in the middle of Slovenia. Stirling was naturally the victor, with us in agreement that both Caerlaverock and Castle Stalker were pretty cool.

We were ferried back into town in perfect time for the bus back to Ljubjana, and having abandoned Piran we found ourselves with a little bit of afternoon left, so decided to detour through the centre proper, which we had barely glimpsed in our national touring. I looked at the map, and following my finger waved vaguely (I was tired) in the direction of some Art Nouveau (but I still had my instincts), we weaved down beside the very pink Church of the Annunciation.

Finding an ice cream café, we sat down. I found my chair too far away and reached down to pull it forward. Unfortunately the seat lifted up, so when I sat down again I trapped my finger in the mechanism and sat on it. Ow. I briefly thought it was broken, but when the initial pain subsided a little I could move it. I was distracted, however, by Alissa’s noises of approval at the pistachio ice cream, and decided to have one scoop. Excellent! The wedding march blared out of the church. We carried on eating.

After, we found ourselves on the main square, Prešernov trg, with its stature of Franc Prešeren, Slovenia’s national poet.

He lived a tragic life, his great love Julija Primic rejecting him multiple times before dying, his best friend dying of pneumonia after an unfortunate swim in the river, and he died young himself, but he wrote some very upbeat poetry, one of which, “A Toast”, is Slovenia’s national anthem.

Around this square were some of the Art Nouveau buildings by Jože Plečnik, including my favourite, the Central Merkur building.

Plečnik was lured back from Prague (where he also designed a bunch of stuff) by the prospect of a professorship in his native city and the opportunity to redesign the centre of the city in a period of regeneration. So many of Ljubljana's public buildings are seriously Art Nouveau.

We took photos on the Triple Bridge, with us in various combinations – you just have to – before proceeding down the river. There are some stalls and riverside cafes along the banks, but with so many willow trees hanging around it feels relaxed… and there are some lovely buildings.

We sat at a fountain, getting splashed for a while, Alissa with her feet in the fountain, then went on the prowl for food.

We sat by the river in the shade, listening to music from the bridge behind us. Narges ordered a pizza, thinking that the regular size sounded reasonable and the smallest one too cheap to be filling. The result was huge! With her leftovers and a willingness to share, she nearly became the Bird Woman of Ljubljana, until we begged her to stop – the pigeons were gathering all around us in a sort of alarmingly Hitchcockian way. We laughed, though, when a vigilant sparrow stole some pizza crust from right under the beak of a particularly mean looking pigeon.

Narges then said, with real conviction, "You know, I’m pretty sure your finger will drop off," which caught my attention and she went into great detail before she noticed that Alissa and I looked alarmed and said "Sorry, did I say finger? I meant your nail."

After we paid the incredibly enthusiastic waiter – “cashorcard” delivered as a single word in a bored monotone – we crossed the Triple Bridge again and looked around Joze Plečnik’s Market Colonnade (an real masterpiece) where we found a cool drinking fountain, a welcome development.

We came across the rehearsal of the choirs for Beethoven’s Ninth the following evening, at the opening ceremony for IOSOT, where we met one of St Mary’s own lecturers, also presenting at the conference. Then it was back to the hostel, and collapsement.

Goodnight, Marjeta and Tomasz.

Read On: Slovenian Summer #4: Lounging About in Laid-Back Ljubljana