A lot of travelers are slowly coming to the realization that Slovenia is a diamond in the rough in central Europe. It doesn’t have the famous charm of nearby Venice or Vienna or Prague. But Slovenia has a great deal to offer vacationers in Europe. In this article, we are going to talk about the country and especially the people of Slovenia.
Veneto, Italy – May 16, 2017: Vicenza is a cosmopolitan city, with a rich history and culture, and many museums, art galleries, piazzas, villas, churches and elegant Renaissance palazzi. The “city of Palladio” has been listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994.
Stay Away from Casinos
Here we mean that we recommend that you do all of your casino gaming online. No one has so much time on a European vacation that they can spend a large chunk of it at a land based casino. Your favorite online casino has all of the gaming action you could want and you can always add to your account by using the Slotocash bonus codes.
Slovenia: Small and Beautiful
Slovenia has been overlooked for so many years partly because it is small and partly because it was under the control of the communist government of Yugoslavia at the same time that Prague, Venice, and Vienna and many other free countries and cities were attracting vacationers to repeat visits.
Slovenia is a country of only about 20,000 square kilometers which is half the size of Switzerland. The country has a population of only 2,000,000 which makes its population density very low.
Slovenia is also a country of many small localities. The people of Slovenia like to compare their 200 or so localities each with its own political system including a mayor who also has a day job with larger cities like London, Moscow, and so many others with populations that exceed all of Slovenia’s population by a factor of two or more and yet have only one political system and one mayor!
Forests and Mountains
Slovenia doesn’t have the grand Alps but it is quite mountainous especially in the north. In the other regions the topography tends more to hills and plateaus. One of the most famous plateaus is in the center of the country only about a two hour drive from the capital Ljubljana. It is called Velika Planina.
Cow herders bring their cows there in June as the weather warms and stay there until the cold weather returns to the plateau. The herders welcome thousands of guests to their range which all of the herders share with each other. The cows roam freely so visitors are asked to pay attention to every step!
Caves, Caverns, and Mines
Because Slovenia is so mountainous, it has many caves, caverns, and mines. Visitors can take a guided tour of a copper mine and a deep cavern. The country is so compact that you can make many one-day trips out of your base in Ljubljana or you can go online and rent a cottage, apartment, or home for one or more nights.
The People of Slovenia
This is where visitors get their first contact with the amazing people of Slovenia. If you are renting a home or apartment, you will want to make contact with your host before traveling. The same is true if you are taking hotel rooms.
In Slovenia, everyone you will need to speak with even through email, speaks and writes English well. This is not just a business decision in Slovenia although we have heard that the people of Slovenia realized that they would need tourism to have the kind of lifestyle they wanted. So, somewhat for business reasons, the education system in Slovenia emphasizes English.
What strikes visitors is the degree to which the Slovenian people respect foreigners, are open to questions about the country, and are patient enough to explain many things that people in other countries aren’t patient enough to explain.
Ask a Restaurant Owner about Their Restaurant
We have heard from more than one visitor to Slovenia that they were so impressed by the service, ambience, and food at several restaurants that they began asking the owners to tell them about the restaurant. Every owner was happy to talk about his or her establishment!
Ask a Clerk
Many people have said that whenever they had a question they would ask the person who was likely to know the answer and the response was always friendly and courteous and absolutely not perfunctory. This applied to such mundane questions as “when does the museum close”?
The men who run the boat rides to the island in the middle of Lake Bled in the northwest of the country also are very open to questions. They don’t see themselves as just men who run a short boat ride. The men and women who run the wine cellar in the various castles in the country are also open to every question even though they hear the same questions again and again every day!
Communism and the People of Slovenia
We have heard that the people of Slovenia never embraced communism even though they lived under it for many years. The make-up of Slovenian culture took place over hundreds of years and the communist regime was unable to take it away from them.
In addition to openness towards strangers, the character traits that stand out to travelers is that the country is spotlessly clean, the people are more romantic than most post-modern Europeans, they don’t like to argue, they revere family life, and extremely proud of the way they gained independence from Yugoslavia’s communism as it was crashing in 1990.
Clean
We spent many hours eating ice cream or drinking coffee in plazas and we never saw a single Slovene from little kids to adults throw any kind of trash on the ground! It so struck us that we started to pay attention everywhere we went. The people do not throw trash on the ground!
Romantic and Family-centered
Young people still look forward to marriage and family even if the families are small. The people celebrate holidays with their extended families. We saw many groups in restaurants that we later found out were families celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, and the like.
Why Argue?
One of our guides on a short tour in Ljubljana said that the people of Slovenia are lazy perfectionists. By that he meant that the people don’t work as hard as Americans but whatever they do, they do perfectly.
The same applies to disagreements, he said. When there is a disagreement, the main goal rather than arguing the point is to find an area of either compromise or understanding that a compromise is impossible.
Pride in Country
To make the story short, the people of Slovenia voted in a referendum by 88% to 12% to break away from Yugoslavia. When months later the army of Yugoslavia came to the border between Croatia and Slovenia they found every military and para-military man guarding the border. The war of independence was really no war at all and Slovenia was free!
Bees and Wine
One in every 200 people keeps bees for honey. Most have small bee-keeping enterprises so they have other jobs as well. Nevertheless, many will give you a great tour of their bee-keeping operation and at the end you’ll be able to buy honey, wine, or crafts from local craftspeople.
The people of Slovenia also grow wine grapes. One in 70 families has a small or large wine-making business. The wines are not nearly as famous as French, Italian, or German wines but many people find them just as satisfying at a fraction of the price!
A Country that Rewards Repeat Visits
Since they won independence, the people of Slovenia have emphasized tourism as a source of income. They still have a long way to go before they can rival Italy, France, Spain, or Greece as travel destinations.
People who do include Slovenia in their travel itinerary always say that they would like to go back! Thumbs up – highly recommended.
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