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We took the night train (~6 hours) from Munich, Germany to Lesce, Slovenia (斯洛文尼亞), kicking off the first (of two) former Yugoslavian (南斯拉夫) countries. Interestingly, Slovenia won its independence after just ten days of war. By contrast, Croatia saw nearly five years of war. The rough story that I’ve been able to piece together so far is that Slovenia had a much smaller Serb population than Croatia (2% vs 12%), and was a bit less central, with less critical infrastructure.

Our night train adventure, with an entire cabin of 6 beds to ourselves

Lake Bled was gorgeous, and we ended up circling the lake no fewer than 3 times: once on a bike, and twice on morning runs. We also rented a boat and rowed to the islet and church in the middle of the lake.

Various views of Lake Bled

Bled is located at the edge of Triglav National Park, the only national park in Slovenia. We biked through Podhom and hiked Vintgar gorge. They say you aren’t a true Slovenian until you summit Triglav, so I suppose that will have to wait.

Biking to Triglav National Park and hiking Vintgar Gorge

For being a resort town, the food was surprisingly delicious. We were told that Slovenia has a big focus on food, with a burgeoning farm-to-table movement. Normally, I’m skeptical of these claims, but it was wholeheartedly true in this case. Many restaurants prided themselves in offering all-Slovenian-grown-hunted-fished-or-harvested food. One big thing they do here is add pumpkin seeds and pumpkin oil to things. The pumpkin oil (sometimes mixed with olive oil) adds a deeply-nutty depth to the bread. Truffles are also very common here and generously added to many dishes.

Delicious food, mostly in Bled. Bottom left is Lake Bled Cream Cake, or Kremsnita. Bottom right is Prekmurska gibanica.

After two nights in Bled, we made our way to the capital city of Ljubljana, which grew out of the ancient Roman city of Emona. Here are some highlights:

  • blind wine tasting during our rainy first evening
  • a tour of the Union Brewery
  • visiting the castle on the hill and listening to costumed people re-enact historical scenes
  • having a horse meat lunch (a bit too lean for my tastes)
  • sitting at cafes in the old town by the river and doing some people watching
  • attending Open Kitchen (sort of like Off the Grid but in Slovenia), where different restaurants set up stalls outside to sell you food
  • buying fresh Slovenian produce in the market

Sights of Ljubljana. Upper left (cut off in the collage): hanging out with Ashley and Ian at Open Kitchen.

We took one of our days to go up into the Kamnik Alps (by way of Kamnik) to visit Velika Planina and Big Pasture Plateau. It took two bus lines, one gondola, and one chair lift ride to get there, but the views were breathtaking. It has a long history of herding and pasturing and more recently of skiing and tourism. The original huts were unfortunately burned down in WWII, which is why they look a bit more robust now. See here for some other interesting WWII history.

Kamnik and Velika Planina

Overall, we were very impressed with the food. Slovenian cuisine incorporates a bit of everything from each of its geographical neighbors. The traditional desserts were so-so. We had a few different types of štruklji (both sweet and savory), the famous Lake Bled Cream Cake (kremsnita), and prekmurska gibanica (a pastry with seeds, walnuts, apples, raisins, cheese, and cream). We were welcomed to our Bled hotel with two shots of blueberry žganje, a type of local brandy.

The wine was an interesting story. Apparently the wine is rarely exported because there are only small producers and the Slovenians drink almost all their wine domestically. “Orange” wine, produced from white grapes with a long maceration period, is pretty popular here, as is a mixture of red and white wine known as cviček.

Food in Ljubljana (and Velika Planina, Upper Left)