Hidden Slovenia: Tradition, Nature, and Nostalgia

My father’s family is from Slovenia, and a few years back, we took a trip there before boarding a cruise ship out of Venice. Slovenia is bordered by Italy on the West, Austria to the North, Hungary on the East and Croatia down South, and you can drive across the country in about 4 hours. Those four countries can get very busy and full of people, but if you just drive across the border into Slovenia, you find a bucolic countryside full of rolling green hills, lush forests, the majestic Julian Alps and natural hot springs.

It was really nice to be in a place where everyone knew how to pronounce our last name, and our tour guide even helped us call the home of one of my father’s distant relatives. We stopped by the Lipica Stud Farm, the origin of the Lippizan horse. Sure, you can see them Vienna at the Spanish Riding school or line up to see them as they pass between their stables and the training venue. But in Lipica, you can go into the barns to meet the stallions, or head out to the pastures to see the mares and foals grazing and learn that the foals can be brown, black or spotted and only turn white once they mature. We were surprised to visit Piran and learn that it had been part of the Venetian Empire, but the architecture and design of the town was clearly Venetian.

But the biggest surprise, or rather, happy coincidence, was the food. On a drive out to the Maribor region, which is Slovenia’s wine and natural springs region, we stopped at a restaurant called Gostišče Jurg located at Male Rodne 20, 3250 Rogaška Slatina, and it was stepping into my childhood, at least the part of my childhood where my Slovene grandmother made every meal from scratch. My father saw on the menu an item I’d never heard of, something his mother used to make for him when he was a kid, called ‘Štruklji’, or cottage cheese dumplings. They’ve got a good taste, but can be a very heavy meal, so I stuck with a small helping, but my dad had a full serving. For me, most of the food was the standard ‘meat and potatoes’ meals my grandmother would make, but then they brought out a tureen of soup. Now, it was just a simple beef broth with noodles, but this was always one of my very favorite things my grandmother made from scratch. The moment the noodle soup (handmade noodles) was in the bowl, I had to text a photo of it to my sister, we both loved her homemade soup and noodles. In fact, I made sure I got two very full bowls of the soup before I would touch any of the other food they served, except for the homemade bread that was also the same as what grandma made. On their menu, under the soup section, it says ‘like our grannies’, and that is exactly what I told them when I asked for that second bowl of soup.

So sure, we got to be tourists and see a Venetian Square in Piran, feed grass to Lippazan horses, go caving in the Karst region and climb the stairs on the island in Lake Bled to ring the bell of the church there, but the real highlight of the trip was getting to eat the foods we both group up on.

Join us on our next adventure “Away from the Crowds”!