SLOVENIA

COUNTRYSIDE:

It's a very attractive country everywhere. Not just in the mountain areas; most places lie among or within sight of hills on all sides. Many hills are covered in forests, and the whole landscape (mid-June) was very green. They pride themselves on their cheese and ham, and a whole roast lamb or young pig is a popular festive treat, but we saw virtually no animals -- just a few small herds of cattle with bells on alpine meadows, and a flock of sheep on a tourist farm.

PEOPLE:

The people we met were, without exception, all friendly and courteous, helpful when you ask, and not easily perturbed or excitable.

WEATHER:

The weather was warm to hot (24-32C maxes) with mainly sunny days, though often cumulus clouds built up during the day with isolated showers. At Bohinj in the mountains, there were thundery showers one evening, then a night later the most amazing thunderstorm I have ever experienced. There was thunder, rain and hail on and off for nearly 12 hours. At the peak, about 0200h, we woke (or were kept awake) by terrific continuous rain and hail, and lightning flashing continuously for an hour. By continuous, I mean with no breaks of a second or longer. The next morning was pleasantly cool (15C) with rain at times, and the mountain tops had streaks of white which were probably hail rather than snow.

ROADS:

We thought we were familiar with driving on the 'wrong' side, but there were sufficient difficulties that we wished we had chosen an automatic. We also wished we had chosen air conditioning, as it was consistently hotter than we had experienced before. Motorways were good but the fast lane was fast. Other roads were adequate width (just) but all had bad edges. In most areas, all roads had bends. Not occasional bends: bends all the way. Sometimes a sharp bend was followed by a steep uphill into a village, then round a corner where houses jutted into the road from both sides. As a result we drove OK but rather cautiously. That was fine when people could overtake us, as they did when it was safe. Then on one stretch we got honked 3 times in 10 mins -- long aggressive honks -- by people as they overtook. We then inferred (though nobody ever told us) that we should have stopped to let them go by. That's reasonable, except it would mean stopping every half minute. By contrast, in the city the drivers were more patient than they are in England. In total, I did not enjoy driving in that country.

THE MAP:

We found our map irritatingly unreliable. It mentioned many villages, but half the villages we saw on road signs were not on it, many small roads were not on it and junctions wrongly aligned, so we took several wrong turnings. Several mountains mentioned by guide books were not mentioned by name on the map, and it did not indicate topography at all clearly. It was quite good, though, at showing the locations of scenic attractions.

CAR RENTAL:

The service by the English agent and the ATET rental company was very good and efficient. The agent prides itself in offering 'all inclusive' rates, but they did warn us there would be an 'extra' insurance charge. The ATET man told us: "You're covered for everything, with no excess to pay, but here's a list of lots of things for which you're not covered at all." This seemed to include a lot of important things, and 48€ seemed worthwhile for a windscreen breakage, so we took it. But it seems like a scam to me. He was very helpful and spoke good English, but he told us too much too quickly. He told us what to do for our 'air conditioning', we thought 'oh great' because we hadn't ordered air-conditioning, but when we tried to get it to work we couldn't, and after spending ages searching through the manual (in Slovenian) with a dictionary, we eventually realised that we didn't have it -- he must have meant simply 'air control'. It then took ages to discover how to open the automatic windows.

RESTAURANTS:

It was so nice to be able to go to almost any restaurant without feeling that we were depleting our savings. We typically had a 2-course meal with a drink, the main course was always large, and the bill for 2 was 20 to 25 €. And no tips expected! (We usually rounded up to the nearest Euro). Most restaurants charged similar prices. (In Britain, a main course alone for 2 people would average 27 €, and usually it's not large.)

TOURISM:

The country is making a good effort with tourism, and everything they do is quietly efficient, with not too much commercialism evident. Museums and castles were very well documented, with English and other language documentation. Even undeveloped sites had good documentation on signs, but not always in English. But signage is poor: some attractions are hardly signed, or just have one sign a km before the entrance. They are not pushy with their advertising, except for Postojna caves which were publicised everywhere, with 10% discount offers from the car rental company or from the hostels. We were told these caves were very good but they seemed very tourist-oriented with their little train and coloured lights, and cost lots more than anything else in the country. We went instead to the just as impressive Scocjan caves which were substantially cheaper and included a set of informative museums. Only Bled had a tourist town feel. Bohinj had plenty of tourists, but seemed more subdued and natural. In Bela Krajina in the south, the sleepy feel and lack of tourists was refreshing, but drivers did not appreciate our driving at speeds that THEY thought were too slow.

JURJEVANJE FOLK FESTIVAL:

We greatly enjoyed the folk festival, in which the main items were dance/song music from Slovenia, Hungary, Lithuania and Macedonia, accompanied by bands with a variety of instruments. Slovenian music is very familiar in style, rather restrained, rather German. The Slovenian brass band could equally well have been English except that the individual tunes were not familiar. The accordion player in a restaurant could just as well have been playing Bavarian or Scottish tunes. Macedonian music is more 'exciting' music with odd rhythms and fast tunes, getting faster.