It’s 13 years since we were in Italy but nothing much seems different. People still talk with their hands, the scooters have their special Italian loud tuning, everyone smokes, there are lots of elegantly dressed women, the food is the same, there’s graffiti almost everywhere, and it’s actually quite reassuring things stay the same. Kay and I landed at Milan after the 22 hours of flying and a fraught change in Singapore. It was a bit after 6 a.m. so we got the train into town, parked our luggage at a hotel that might make more money out of holding luggage than people, and started walking until our apartment was available. By the time we got in and then out for more exploring until Melanie arrived that early evening, and then had a meal, sleep came very easily that night and no jet lag was felt subsequently.
I am a bit of a fan of “free” city walking tours because the guide has to do a good job or they won’t earn much from the tips, and we did that on our full day in Milan. The next day we hopped on a nice fast train with no graffiti on the windows and went to Treviso. More than a few years ago I had been at a wine tasting run by one J Kirwan and I had asked about staying there rather than in Venice. He had played rugby in Treviso, found his wife there, and it looks like he buys his glasses from there, so his advice to definitely stay in Treviso was followed. It was a great idea as the centre is a lovely old town with all the the little winding streets and other old stuff, plus a few cute canals and lots of classy shops and restaurants. I don’t often remember restaurant names but one was called Toni Del Spin, recommended by JK’s daughter, and now by me.
The train ride to Venice was only half an hour, and I had overcome my reluctance to visit a place overun by tourists, so we went for a day visit. I hadn’t done much research and the simple plan was to hop on the Grand Canal boat, go to the second to last stop, then walk back to the railway station away from the crowds apart from the compulsory visit to St Marks Square. It actually worked out pretty well, mainly because Kay took control of the map and marked our wriggly trail on it so we didn’t go round in circles, or end up looking at a canal that needed crossing with no bridge in view. The square was full of visitors but most other places weren’t as bad as I envisaged, however I was very happy to get back to Treviso for the evening and give Venice a mental tick and “done that”.
This trip was originally planned for 2020 and was to include Kay’s niece Philippa, and the family bit was because Kay’s father finished his WW2 in Trieste along with most of the NZ Army. We went there next and of course there isn’t a lot of stuff directly related to that to see, but we did have a good look at the Tribulane building which is still showing bullet holes in the stone work. This happened because the very large building was occupied by a bunch of SS who refused to surrender.
Their senior officer was drunk and belligerent and said bad things to the NZ officer trying to deal with him. General Freyburg eventually gave an order for the Kiwis to surround it with their tanks and give it 20 minutes of bombardment. This caused to SS to retreat to the cellars where they must have run out of booze as they surrendered the next morning and were handed over to the Yugoslav Partisan army and, given what went on there at these times, probably ended up dead in a deep cave. The Partisans were Tito’s lot and had control of the city when the NZers arrived, which led to a few tense days before they went away. We had a couple of days there and were joined by Belgian friends, Guy and Vicky, who we originally met in a canoe on the Rio Tuichi in the Bolivian part of the Amazon Basin, in 1995. We last saw them in Talin in 2017 so it was fun to catch up. We agreed to go to a castle on the coast the next day which for us included a bus ride to a little village called Prosecco, followed by a down hill walk to the castle. Guy and Vicky are young and adventurous so walked all the way from Trieste to Prosecco, and then led the way down a path that looked very neat and tidy on the website Guy used. I assumed wearing my jandals would be fine, but it wasn’t, as the trail was far from tidy and my knees protested more than normal for the next few days. It was an interesting castle and we had a lengthy lunch nearby, where we could marvel at the Italians sunbathing at the beach, which was mostly a series of concrete terraces above a very rocky water line.
I have never been able to get excited about Italian white wine because generally it doesn’t have much taste, which is my opinion only. We came across an amazing food and wine retailer with built in restaurants in Milan called, very cleverly, Eataly, and I asked there for a white wine with a definite taste. I bought a bottle of Vermentino which was certainly a step up compared to my previous experiences. We found another Eataly in Trieste and had a lovely lunch there, while Len from New Jersey tells me there is also one in New York.
That ended our short time in Italy and the next day we had a driver and car to drive us for an hour to the Vipava Valley in Slovenia. We were staying near a very small village called Slap at a restaurant/lodge named Majerija. The valley is one of the major wine areas in Slovenia, which is a country that is very keen on eating and drinking wine, preferably local. It’s not really wine making as we know it, the biggest winery has 40 hectares of vines and the average is probably below 10. Everyone lives in one of the many small villages and seemingly all have an underground wine cellar that was built 700 years ago. Wine tasting is also different because you have to eat as you sample. When you get in the tasting room it has a table with lots of food and dining cutlery. The wine is all right but not spectacular.
We arrived close to lunch time so our host drove us into the main town, Vipava, and sorted out that the preferred restaurant was open. We were thinking about a small salad and maybe a wine, but our host was not to be deterred by our suggestion and we ended up with a four course meal and more than one wine. That set the scene for our two evening meals at Majerija, which were definitely up to a one star Michelin standard, and all this in or outside a lovely restored 600 year old building. If you are ever in Slovenia this is a must. Our rooms were underground with a glass section in the ceiling which was part of the path around the vegetable and herb garden above.
Such things can’t last, or you might become poor, so we left for the local capital, Ljubljana. Our Airbnb turned out to be large and roomy if a little rough around the edges. This is a city of 200,000 and has a controversial mayor who has set about turning it into a green city. I presume the EU is helping because what is being done would be fairly costly. The main thing has been to ban traffic from the middle of the city and set it up for walking and biking. It has a river, lots of squares, old buildings (although part was flattened by an earthquake in 1895 so some are comparatively young), and the Slovenian need of food and drink is extensively catered for, plus a castle on a hill. In other words it a great place to visit. The only negative is that most stuff is closed on Sunday which was our last day. Apparently they had a referendum about work on Sunday and there some exceptions but not many. We were told one of the rules is if a place has an exemption to work on a Sunday the management has to also work on that day.
Politically Slovenia sounds quite sensible for a Slavic country on the edge of the Balkans. It left Yugoslav in 1991 which set off a 10 day war with the rest, 16 deaths for Slovenia and 44 for Yugoslavia. It is a democracy which recently had the sense to vote out a far right government that was modeling itself on the elected dictatorship in Hungary. There are a few suggestions that some people seen to have got rich without adequate explanation as to how, but to an outsider it doesn’t seem like the gangster/political arrangements that rule in other Balkan countries. There a strong Catholic Church influence apparently, particularly in the country areas. The language is much the same as other Serbo-Croat languages and consequently a mystery to people like me. That is alleviated by almost everyone speaking English.
How would you pronounce Ptuj ? That is where we went after Ljubljana and you say it like Tui with a hint of P at the start. We travelled by train and it was quite a scenic ride although my companions were busy playing scrabble. Slovenia has a lot of tame looking forest and agriculture is sort of hobbyist looking until you get to a flat place and then it’s cropping. Farm animals are rare but there is plenty of local milk in the supermarkets so the cows must be hiding somewhere. The train carriage had compartments as of old and Kay’s large fat suitcase didn’t fit in the overhead racks, so was banished to the bike storage place. There were 2 younger males in our compartment and my attempts to learn more about Slovenian politics from them went no where. One of them came from one of the little towns we stopped at, but luckily he was going to Ptuj, so we didn’t have the anxieties related to getting off at right place. Our hotel was called MuziKafe and was very quirky and delightful, and the small old part of town once again had lots of old stuff, a big river, and a castle on a hill. It was obvious that the Slovenian requirement for lots of food and wine was as strong in the east as it was in the west. We went to the best restaurant in town, according to TripAdvisor, for lunch and knowing that ordering a main course is a sure way of not being able to leave a clear plate we requested three entrees. The affable waiter gave the slightest indication of disappointment but then rapidly recovered his equilibrium. The entrees were very nice and he cheered up when the ladies decided they should have a dessert, but he did make them wait quite a while before taking the order.
It is now late evening and we have to get up very early tomorrow to catch a train for Zagreb. Slovenia has been a positive experience and I would certainly recommend a visit. For those of you in NZ I hope you are enjoying all the election noise, and for those in other countries tell your politicians to try and stop Azerbaijan and Armenia fighting. I am supposed to be going to Azerbaijan in a month.
Adijo.