Feature slovenia copy by Roger Toll

In from the Cold Two decades after Slovenia emerged from a Soviet deep freeze, skiers are warming to its Alpine charms

c o u r t e s y o f To m o J e s e n tc n i k

By Roger Toll

S IME / e S to c k P h oto . o pp o s i t e f r o m to p : S IME / e S to c k P h oto ; Dav o r L o v i n c i c / G e tt y I m a g e s

landed in Ljubljana when much of urope was in a deep freeze. A craggy, E snow-crowned peak floated above the frosted air no more than 15 miles from the airport. This was looking good, I thought, as I coiled myself into a rented Renault and headed to Bohinj, a mountain town encircled by the Julian Alps. A few months previous, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what country Ljubljana was the capital of. And what little I knew about Slovenia — tethered tenuously to Western Europe, with flat farmlands and woods sharing borders with Croatia and Hungary, and a squiggle of coastline across from Venice — was colored by a few pictures of the country’s mountains I’d seen years ago. For along its northern and western border, Slovenia shares some of Italy’s and Austria’s most scenic topography. And that is where I was headed.

snow was reminiscent of New England conditions. The day was frigid and, worse still, the sharp peaks I had seen in photographs were shrouded in the clouds. The winter’s meager snowfall kept Vogel from opening its five-mile, 4,000-vertical-foot run through a canyon back to the bottom of the tram, so for the next hour I slid along the small collection of unedgeable trails, then bee-lined it to a cozy chalet to defrost the tip of my nose. “We’ve been coming here for 15 years, but we have never seen it like this,” Julian

t the far end of the deep glacial v alley of Bohinj, sharp alpine peaks d issolved into clouds that, I hoped, presaged more snow than the scattered flakes that were falling. The village church’s bells were tolling the hour as I drove into town and found the Bohinj Eco Park Hotel, Y which provided an extensive wellness center and water park, where I had a choice of treatments, various saunas, a steam room, several pools, and a gym — a welcome luxury after a long flight. The steep tram ride to the Vogel ski area — a 15-minute drive from town — hoisted me 3,000 vertical feet to a small, rustic collection of weather-worn chalets that houses three restaurants, two rudimentary ski shops, and a couple of cafeterias that are pure ’50s Vermont. The parallels continued outside: New England-style rolling hills were laced together by a small network of hand-me-down lifts that had probably migrated from Austria a few decades ago. Hardened by the wind and cold, even the

Symington, from Brighton, England, told me from the next table. “The snow is usually covering those windows right to the top,” his wife Marianne added. Like many other British skiers, they first came as value shoppers — attracted by food, lodging, and skiing prices about half of what they would spend in France or Switzerland. But it’s the people and the ambience they have fallen in love with, to such a degree that they sometimes return in summer for hiking, biking, and visits to remote villages. “There is a sort of innocence or simplicity to life here, and a real absence of materialism

as we know it farther West,” Julian said. “It’s sort of pure, uncorrupted. You go into some villages, and you just can’t believe it is part of Europe. You still see horse troughs in the village center.” That afternoon, I stopped at the tourist office to talk with Klemen Langus, Bohinj’s director of tourism, an athletic 40-year-old dressed in jeans. “Because we’re in a national park, Vogel can’t grow any farther,” he explained, “and people love the way it is.” But he was excited about a new ski area, launched this winter in the mountains directly above Bohinj. “We had two separate ski areas up there years ago, but they closed. The man who built your hotel bought both of them and is tying them together by adding new runs in between, and installing modern lifts and lodges.” With a vertical of 3,500 feet, 2864 Eco Ski Park Y will be Slovenia’s largest and most challenging ski resort — and its most environmentally respectful — when it is completed in a few years, Langus said. Its Slovenia is nothing if not picturesque, from the amazing views of Kanin ski area to tiny villages that scream Old Europe. 87

S IME / e S to c k P h oto . o pp o s i t e : C o u r t e s y B o h i n j Pa r k ECO H ot e l

The terrain has been there forever, but new facilities like the Bohinj Park Eco Hotel are new to ski tourists.

cumbersome name derives from the height (in meters) of Mount Triglav, the country’s highest peak, visible across the valley. Like everyone I had met so far in S lovenia, Langus spoke perfect English. “It’s our second language,” he said.” He pulled out an advertising brochure from the 1930s: “Slovenia, the South Slavic Switzerland,” the cover read in English. Even as part of the S ocialist Republic of Yugoslavia, E nglish was the second language of Slovenia. As it had throughout history, the country still looks West. “We have been under the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. The first time in 2,000 years that we’ve been independent was in 1991.” Much of Slovenia’s charm, it seems, comes from having spent years in a geopolitical deep freeze that preserved it in a simpler state, then thawed after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. With its small population and two-lane roads that wind pleasantly through the agricultural countryside, it is redolent of another, more-peaceful time. Yet compared with its Slavic neighbors, it is a modern, developed, highly educated and relatively wealthy country, with high-speed highways that make anywhere in the country less than a two-hour drive away. Twelve percent of its booming GDP comes from tourism.

hough only 18 miles away as the crow flies, my next stop, Kanin, requires an 80-mile, two-hour drive with a detour through Italy in winter. The day I set out, news outlets were abuzz with hundreds of European dead due to frigid temperatures engulfing the continent. Slovenia appeared to be at the tip of the tongue of the arctic blast. Five miles into Italy, a kind greeting from the owner of a roadside cafe and a pasta al pomodoro warmed my soul, but when I crossed back into Slovenia over Predil Pass, it was 7 degrees F. Past the Soviet-era

c ustoms station, the sinuous mountain road dropped quickly toward Bovec, a small town snug in a U-shaped glacial valley, its steep granite walls soaring 6,000 feet above me on both sides. As I checked in to the Mangart Hotel, I caught live video from the top station of KaninY on a television in the lobby. It was a whiteout. But the next morning dawned sunny and frigid. I called Maja Orel, a Kanin executive who was expecting me. “Oh, I am just so sad. It is too cold, too f rozen, so we didn’t even send the groomers out this morning. It would have been too dangerous.” She was almost crying with d isappointment, her speech punctuated with rending sighs. “I am just too sad you can’t see the beautiful peaks up there and the view all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. It is truly gorgeous.” Three hours later, I was sitting in an igloo next to an ice bar, wiggling my toes in a vain effort to warm them after chasing ex-racer Blaz Veber around the slick slopes of Kranjska Gora, an annual site of World Cup slalom and GS races. It took us about an hour, including lift time, to ski the whole area, which

hangs like an apron off a humble mountain at the edge of the party town of Kranjska Gora, the exact opposite of quiet Bovec or Bohinj. When the elevator opened on a boisterous lobby and bar on my way to dinner at my ski-in/ski-out hotel — the Larix — it was full-on culture shock. These were not the Slovenians I had gotten to know over the past few days. Indeed, the 200 jolly drinkers hoisting huge Bohemian beer steins turned out to be Czechs. “You know, they are the No. 1 beer drinkers in the world,” a waiter confided when I asked where they were from. Kranjska Gora is popular with people from nearby eastern European countries as well as the British. With short runs that parallel each other about 100 yards apart, each with a lift, it resembles a bowling alley as much as a ski area. For now, the resort doesn’t have much to offer expert skiers beyond a raging night life, but a new chairlift to the top of the mountain — adding 400 vertical feet of steep elevation that feeds into the challenging World Cup GS course — is expected to be running this winter, offering what will be the ski area’s first black-diamond run.

“It’s sort of pure, uncorrupted. You go into some villages, and you just can’t believe it is part of Europe.”

L u k a Ta m ba c a /A l a m y

Not all the action is downhill: Peaks such as Jalovec in the Julian Alps are meccas for mountaineers. 91

headed back to Ljubljana the next morning, an hour’s drive away, and found my hotel in the pedestrians-only city center, which hugs the narrow Ljubljanica river running between handsome retaining walls and palazzos of various styles, especially Rena issa nce, Ger ma n Ba roque, a nd Viennese Art Nouveau. It was such a friendly, lively, and youthful town, even in the bitter cold, that I contemplated renting an apartment for a month in the summer. Despite its small population of 280,000, the city has 14 museums, more than 50 art galleries, 10 theaters, four professional orchestras, and a nonstop summer schedule of free music, art, and theater festivals. Y On my last day in Slovenia, a Sunday, I drove 20 minutes from the city center to Krvavec ski area, which several Slovenes had told me is their favorite. Y From the parking area and ticket window, a 3,000-verticalfoot gondola ferried me over a steep, freshly snow-covered fir forest. The day’s diffused sunlight was prismed through frozen mist into glittering diamonds that reminded me of Russian forests I had seen in movies. Forewarned of Krvavec’s weekend crowds, I was surprised to find it fairly empty,

robably due to the cold. Four inches of fresh p powder lay off-piste, which is where I skied during three hours on what is really, despite the accolades, a small hill: about 1,700 vertical, with five chair and two surface lifts, and 15 miles of trails. But after the poor conditions I’d been skiing — which had been no better in Western Europe that month — four inches felt as welcome as an 18-inch dump at Alta. Remarkably, it was all still fresh when I arrived around noon. Like elsewhere in Europe, this is a country that lives for carving and racing. So I spent three hours, playing alone on side slopes, sliding through stands of trees, and laying down long carves

through untouched snow that lined the groomers. It was the best skiing of the week. I got a seat in the last row on the small Adria Airways flight to Zurich the next day. The steward, a young Slovenian and an avid skier, asked if I had had a good time. “Yes,” I said, “despite the poor conditions, I enjoyed the country and its people very much.” “If you are used to skiing Switzerland or Austria, you will see how small our resorts are,” he said, in a tone between embarrassment and regret. Then his face lit up with that warmth of Slovenes I had seen throughout the week. “But we love to ski. You know, it is our national sport.” s Y

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c l o c k w i s e f r o m to p l e f t : A d r i a n S h e r r att/A l a m y ; S IME / e S to c k P h oto ; A r n e H o da l i c / C o r b i s . o pp o s i t e : S IME / e S to c k P h oto

Slovenian resorts don’t tend to be strikingly modern, but then neither does the scenery.