Chomping into the local delicacy of an impossibly rich vanilla and cream pastry (called kremna rezina) and a steaming black coffee on a vivid sun-drenched morning, it is difficult to imagine a more sublime place to be than at a café at medieval Bled Castle. Perched precipitously on a bare rock face, this ancient but uninteresting castle overlooks the glittering turquoise glacial Lake Bled with its fairy-tale island church, and glorious snow-capped alpine vista.
This touristy village in the very north of Slovenia, a pocket-sized country wedged between Austria, Croatia and Italy swells with neighbouring European travellers. Officially over 1000 years old (having celebrated its millennium in 2004), Bled like all of Slovenia has a vibrancy and energy in its youthful population and in the progress this tiny nation has made in the last decade. 
Most popular is a visit to Bled Island and the Church of the Assumption. Walk past the hotels in Bled lining the lake to catch a squat gondola-like craft called a pletna, propelled by a local poleman. As you stride up the 99 steps from the dock, spare a thought for grooms who are expected to carry their wife up to the church to show they are fit for marriage. Enchantingly, the wife is meant to remain silent for the journey.
The church bell almost constantly chimes from its tower, echoing across the lake. Local legend dictates that those who ring the bell will have their wishes come true. Clearly many superstitious folks visit Bled!!
Rowing on Lake Bled continues to be popular, with international regattas regularly conducted on the marked rowing course.
Around Bled are lush fields, growing feed for the harsh winter months. Note the unique fence-like structures used as hayracks to dry the grasses for storage.
An excellent half-day hike from Bled is through Vintgar Gorge where a boardwalk hugs the rock wall, weaving back and forth across the raging river and tumbling water below. The gorge finishes a kilometre and a half down the boardwalk with the impressive Šum Waterfall which holds the delightfully alliterative name of Slap Šum in Slovene.
Picturesque Bled is a real treasure, a true travel wonder. Take your time, stroll around the lake, rest and relax in the local cafés and soak up the easy going attitude of this lakeside mecca.
Other Slovenia Posts
Underground Fantasy (Skocjan Caves)
Caverns, Crooks and Castles (Predjama)
The Secret Hospital (Cerkno)
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Bountiful Bled (Slovenia)
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Secret Hospital (Cerkno, Slovenia)
Only twenty kilometres from both the stunning resort town of Bled and the towering three-headed travel wonder Mount Triglav, the small village of Cerkno showcases the Yugoslav partisan ingenuity during World War Two. From early 1944 to the end of the war, a secret hospital supported the resistance movement against the occupying Italian, German and Nazi forces.
Named after the remarkable physician Franja Bidovec, the Franj Partisan Hospital is an evocative reminder of the humanity that exists even in the harshness of war. It contains thirteen basic buildings strewn along a rough path including operating theatres, isolation units, an X-ray room, electric power plant, kitchens and general wards (see entry ticket at the end for rough layout of the hospital - unfortunately in Croatian). 
Located in semi-permanent dinginess in a deep, remote and spectacular gorge and protected by minefields, drawbridges and nests of machine guns, injured soldiers were blindfolded and taken into this remarkable medical facility at night. Food and medical supplies were airdropped by Allied forces, though many medical instruments were fashioned by the creativity of the local staff. A printing facility churned out a hospital newsletter for the convalescing patients. Despite coming under attack on occasions, the hospital was never discovered during the war.
Over the year and a half, over 1000 soldiers were treated including over 500 severely wounded men and at peak operations, the hospital managed 120 patients.
Though you don’t need to be blindfolded and carted in at night, the original entrance of bridges and narrow pathways over a rapid-running, energetic stream remain. This evocative reminder of people's ingenuity and compassion in difficult times of battle has been preserved in its form at the end of the war, highlighting the inventiveness, the desperation and pure tragedy of war.
Postscript
Tragically, in September 2007, heavy rainfall engulfed the narrow gorge and swept away many of the hospital’s buildings. With both government and private support, the hospital is being reconstructed to preserve this valuable historic museum.
Other European Memorial Posts
Remember! (Oradour-sur-Glane, France)
A Humbling Experience (Villers-Bretonneux, France)
Other Slovenia and Croatia Posts
Bountiful Bled (Slovenia)
Underground Fantasy (Skocjan Caves, Slovenia)
The Aquamarine Necklace (Plitvice Lakes, Croatia)
Visiting the Smallest Town in the World (Hum, Croatia)
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Caverns, Crooks and Castles (Predjama, Slovenia)
In a small hamlet only twenty kilometres south from the capital, Ljubljana and twenty kilometres north of the remarkable Škocjan Caves, lays the dramatically sited medieval travel wonder of Predjama Castle. Seemingly growing from a yawning cavern, it was cleverly built in the twelfth century to take advantage of the natural high walls of the rock face.
In the late 1400s, renown thief and baron, Erasmus owned the castle. Murdering one of the close relatives of the ruling Austrian emperor of the day, he was ordered to be captured. For over a year, the emperor’s men lay siege at the castle and its one drawbridge-managed entrance, effectively starving Erasmus out of his castle. 
Little did the captors know that the castle was built on a natural limestone cave which Erasmus used to secrete food and water into his fortress. So brazen was Erasmus that he used to throw food at his besiegers to tease and frustrate them. He was finally betrayed by a double-crossing servant who marked the baron’s restroom with a flag. Answering nature’s call, the baron was splattered by a cannonball while perched on the “royal throne” – a truly ignominious way to die.
Today the castle continues to peer out across the delightful small village of the same name. The rooms are lightly furnished with reproductions of what the castle would have been at the time including wax models. You can almost imagine a riotous feast in the Knight’s Hall and feel the pain wrought in the torture chamber. Most intriguing is the ingenious adaption of the castle with the natural rock. A tour of the lightly decorated cave under the castle is conducted by helmeted torchlight (no electric lighting in this cave) and includes graffiti from the 1700s in the form of the owner’s inscribing their names in blood.
To add to the medieval feel, a jousting tournament takes place in the middle of every summer but the highlight is undoubtedly the majestically but improbably sited castle over the inky depths of the surrounding cave.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Underground Fantasy (Skocjan Caves, Slovenia)
Carved out over millennia by the broiling Reka River, Škocjan Caves is Slovenia’s most stunning natural travel wonder. This river disappears underground in the little village of Škocjan and emerges some forty kilometres away, having carved its path through the rock over many years.
A large area of south-west Slovenia lies on a limestone plateau. Incredible caves and tunnels have been eroded from the soluble limestone, leaving a fairyland of richly coloured and unusually shaped stalactites (the ones that drop from the roof) and stalacmites (the ones that grow from the floor). Out of all of these, UNESCO-listed Škocjan sits at the very pinnacle of these subterranean treasure troves.
Awkward to get to, easiest is a walk of a few kilometres from Divaca rail station on a pleasant path to the hamlet of Matavun. The area contains some great short walks (especially the Educational Trail) through some local villages and around collapsed cave areas. There is a small museum showcasing the cave’s history which helps pass the time till the guided tour is due.
The cave starts modestly through a longish tunnel and through a number of chambers with a variety of typical cave decorations and formations, the most notable with the typical imaginative names. Early on, the tour traverses Silent Cave, Paradise Cave and the impressive Great Hall and witnesses The Organ (which looks a little like a church’s pipe organ) and the Stone Forest.
As the tour exits the Great Hall a deep-throated rumbling can be heard from below. The Reka River lies around fifty metres below and is dwarfed by the immense Murmuring Cave – 300 metres long and over 100 metres high (which means that the Statue of Liberty or London’s St Paul’s Cathedral would fit inside). It lays claim to being the world’s largest underground canyon. Walking gently along a narrow ledge, the tour comes to the vertigo-inducing Cerkvenik Bridge (lead photo). Defying the considerable degree of edginess and shaky legs and leaning nervously over the bridge, it is beyond comprehension to imagine the raucous river below could have carved this cavern for giants by dissolving minute particles of limestone.
The previous bridge and the remains of the earliest bridge can still be clearly viewed and paths to various other caverns and halls branch off for the professional cavers and scientists.
Moving along, the next section includes a mesmerising formation called The Bowls. A series of a over a hundred natural troughs of water have built up over time, filling and emptying into the bowl below, leaving tiny mineral deposits to construct the walls of these mini-reservoirs.
Soon after the eyes squint as the daylight streams through the natural cave entrance created when the roof of an area collapsed and onto a funicular to save the legs from having stagger back up the hill.
The world contains numerous limestone caves, all fascinating in their own way but Škocjan stands as one of nature’s finest travel wonders – a subterranean wonderland of unimagined scale, breathtaking chambers and magical formations.
Notes
Photography is not permitted in the caves. Cave photos are sourced from an online gallery and a brochure. Other photos are available from the cave’s website.
Other Central Europe Posts
Bountiful Bled (Slovenia)
Aquamarine Necklace (Plitvice Lakes, Croatia)
Personal Space (Halstatt, Austria)
Hiking the Confection Villages (Cinque Terre, Italy)
