Hitch-hiking in Slovenia

Lake Bled contains Slovenia’s only island. The island is only accessible by boat, and from the single harbor, a line of ferries snakes their way along the water. Each boat has two oars that make ellipses as the captains follow a slow, silent rhythm. The ferries are many different shapes and colors. Some look like the gondolas of Venice, and others resemble something you would expect to see on the Congo River from Out of Africa. Half a dozen of the ferry drivers are lounging in one boat. One has his wide-brim hat over his eyes; he’s lying on the bench with one leg hanging down beside him, slowly swinging it sideways. The water is an impossible shade of clear; the crystal surface seems to shimmer.

We’d taken the 10:52 train from Villach to Lesce Bled. The train station is about 5 km from the lake itself, and our first attempt to find it led us to a large field that we eventually figured out was private property. Within the field, a fence enclosed a herd of sheep, and a dog came charging out from a copse of trees to hurry us on our way. We walked about a mile through that field before encountering an impassible hill and turning around to try a different route. It was a beautiful day.

We finally made it to the lake after walking for another hour. The town of Bled makes me think of a place that’s just starting to try modern tourism but doesn't quite know how yet. There are signs in English for “Traditional Slovenian food”, but these adverts are subdued and relaxed, a half-hearted offering to capitalism. The small village doesn’t seem quite ready to give itself up.

The lake itself is not huge; you could probably walk around it in an hour. On one of the hill(tons) surrounding the water, a cable car takes the thrill seeker to the start of a bobsled course that twists and turns in concert with the natural indentations in the stone. On the opposite side, Castle Bled sits atop a patch of bare rock. It has walls and a few other fortifications, but clearly its extreme height was its main defensive advantage. The stairs that criss-cross up the mountain face don’t have any fences or handlebars, just some wooden poles spaced about 5 feet apart. I touch one, and it wobbles under the light pressure of my hand.

We get to the top and discover that it costs 8 Euros to get into the castle! Instead, we climb around on the outside walls awhile to view the lake from a height. It seems so small from above: a Duke’s private swimming pool or a Bishop’s fishing pond, perhaps.

As we climb down the stairs, we notice a parking lot on the other side from where we came up. We aren’t keen on walking all the way to the train station, so we decide to try and catch a ride. There are about 40 cars in the lot, and an old man is putting his things into one of them. He must be in his late seventies or early eighties. He moves slowly; his hands shake slightly.

Just as he’s about to climb into the car, I summon my gall and ask him if he speaks English. It takes him a second to discover that my voice comes from me, and it takes another few seconds for him to respond.

“Yes”
“Are you going to Lesce Bled?”
“Lesce Bled?” He says it with a combination of sounds that my mouth can never hope to replicate.
“Yes.”
“Ya ya ya, come in!”

I would say that he enthusiastically begins to move his stuff from the passenger’s seat to the back, but his motions are so slow that it is hard to tell. We get in the car, and I consider offering him a cookie before deciding that it would be rude to get crumbs in his car.

There’s a highway that runs from the lake to Lesce Bled, but he skips the first part of it, winding through the narrow streets of the village instead. We begin to talk, and it becomes obvious that he understands English quite well. He says his name is Tony. He pulls into a gas station using an illegal left turn, and says “Yah Yah, I know I know” to the honking cars that swoop behind us.

Tony wants to talk, and we want to listen. It seems like he hasn’t spoken English in a while; he appears to enjoy feeling the foreign words come from his own mouth. His face scrunches and puckers. Not for the first time, it strikes me how rough my Germanic language must sound to ears that are used to smoother sounds. I like how he begins every sentence with “Yah, yah”

Our plan was to take the train from Lesce Bled to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Tony tells us that he lives about 13 kilometers from Ljubljana, and will drive us there. This will save us a lot of time, and we thank him profusely and sincerely. He protests that he is happy to do it.

Tony was a manager in a company that produced and exported a variety of gelatin-based products like glue and chewing gum. He has been retired for about fifteen years now. He has two daughters, but he never says a word about a wife.

He talks a lot about his former boss, ten years dead now. His boss, we learn through Tony, was a heavy drinker. Whenever they went to a conference, his boss would always be asking where the beer was. Tony thinks that is why he died relatively young.

We drive through the hills that become lower as we go further south, and Tony tells us about life in World War II and through communism. He tells us that his boss killed an unarmed German soldier in the woods that we are driving through.

“To kill a man”, Tony says, “it never leaves you. A man with no weapon, I think he (the boss) never forgot that. The German asked to not die because he had a family, but my boss killed him because he was scared and didn’t know what to do.”

Tony tells us more about his boss’s destructive drinking behavior, and I think that Tony believes his boss committed suicide slowly, one liver cell at a time.

We arrive in Ljubljana, and Tony decides to take us to the castle. He has not been up there for more than ten years, and he wants to see from above how the city has changed. There are dozens of stairs leading upwards, and I’m astounded at the speed with which Tony climbs, especially given his shuffling gait and shaking hands. We spend nearly thirty minutes atop the highest tower. Tony points out to us many of the historical and cultural landmarks: the University, several old churches, a couple of monuments. Tony is very proud that the main monument in his city is to a poet, rather than a politician or a war hero. This, he tells us, shows that culture is most important to Slovenians. I like how he tells us this with an affectionate pride, like a parent. It’s clear that he’s enjoying himself.

Tony drops us off just outside the border of the Old City, which is inaccessible to cars. We watch as he does a halting 5-point turn and disappears with a wave, and we walk along the river whose name translates to “Little Ljubljana”, enjoying the trees that hang low over the bank to graze the water, the brown stone of the houses standing remarkably close to the river, and the peacefulness that settles over a city whose residents want only to sit outside at a café and enjoy some sunshine.