Slovenian Dumps: A Trip to Lake Bohinj by Ben Mallalieu
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Lake Bohinj is an odd choice for a dump, not least because it both beautiful and unspoilt. The water is very deep and still, and the lake is surrounded by fir and alder forests, alpine meadows, mountains, knobbly churches, wooden hayracks, wild flowers and Magritte-like clouds (the one where the cloud is lying on the ground and the rain is falling on top of it).
For some extraordinary reason, the lakeside is almost entirely undeveloped and any future development looks likely to be strictly regulated. The south side has a road, a few hotels and a couple of camp sites, all well hidden in the woods; in its entire length, the north side has just a single shack and only a footpath through the trees.
You can swim slowly in the lake with your nose just above the water like a crocodile, the ripples spreading slowly out towards infinity. Only electric motorboats are allowed to disturb the peace. I really wanted to like Lake Bohinj.
A Wonderful Fairytale
Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, is one of my favourite small cities, with a laid-back university/bohemian air and wonderful fairytale Ruritanian architecture. Unfortunately, outside Ljubljana Slovenia still hasn't fully recovered from the communist era where everything was either forbidden or compulsory. At Lake Bohinj, there’s a very strong 'Do not walk on the grass' mentality - signs even tell you not to let your dog swim in the lake although it's hard to imagine what harm it could do.
The cafes round the lake have identical menus offering overpriced mass-produced snacks of the toasted ham and processed cheese variety, and the hotels would appear to be uniformly bad. The Rough Guide describes the Hotel Pod Voglom (not the most enticing of names) as 'unimaginably dull' and the Zlatarog as 'dreary in the extreme'. In his book 'The 8.55 to Baghdad', Andrew Eames says of the Bellvue: 'I felt gusts of sympathy for it, the kind of sympathy you might feel for a family pet on its last journey to the vet.'
The View from the Balcony
Our hotel in the nearby village of Stare Fuzina was built in the time of communist austerity and has since suffered nearly 20 years of free-market neglect. I liked the view from balcony - I could sit there for hours and watch a delicate tongue of low cloud slowly exploring the far end of the valley - although if the balcony itself had been even a foot wider it would have been much more comfortable; and that was the least of its problems.
You can forgive many things of a hotel - the dismal decor of chipped, dark brown veneer, the plugs that don't fit any of the plugholes, the small print in the 'welcome' brochure saying that if you don't clean the (impossibly small) kitchen area to the approved standard before leaving you will be charged EUR 50 extra - but being cynically and clumsily ripped off over the restaurant bill on the first evening isn't one of them.
A Beautiful Rural Place
And as to what you do when not swimming in the lake, admiring the clouds, cleaning the kitchen and querying the bill at the restaurants, the choice is limited. Like most beautiful rural places, the Bohinj valley is not good for teenagers. I probably skipped the bit in 'Heidi' where she spent her adolescence hanging around the bus shelter and carving satanic slogans into the woodwork. The one at Stare Fuzina has '666' scored several times with what might be an increasing sense of desperation, various slogans in Slovenian and, more puzzlingly, 'Shiva is god' in English.
The villages away from the lake are pretty enough, although you may not fully share their enthusiasm for red and pink geraniums which make everywhere you turn look like a badly printed 1950s jigsaw puzzle - after a while it becomes positively sinister; if Hitchcock had thought of making a film called 'The Geraniums', this would have been an excellent place to shoot it.
The Master of the Bohinj
The church of St John the Baptist at Ribcev Laz is said to contain an impressive collection of frescos by 'The Master of the Bohinj', but it was closed until further notice. The Museum of Alpine Dairy Farming in Stare Fuzina was also shut. The main attraction in Studor is an unrestored 19th-century farmhouse - if it isn't open you can pick up the keys from the house next door. Unfortunately, when we knocked next door, there was no answer.
Luckily, at the Rupa restaurant (better than most) in Sredna Vas, I found an interesting series of oil paintings on small rectangles of wood, which I can tentatively ascribe to 'The Talentless Amateur of the Bohinj'. They are reminiscent of the Bosch Seven Deadly Sins in the Prado, mostly on the theme of life turned on its head – wild animals shooting guns at an unarmed party of hunters, and a man locked in a cage while his wife sits at the table drinking wine.
My personal favourite is of a group of men sawing the head off a giant snail, which for some reason doesn't look very concerned. He reminds me of Brian in 'The Magic Roundabout', terminally optimistic. The significance is obscure, not to say entirely missing. Maybe the snail in undergoing a necessary and welcome transformation. Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams' has plenty to say about snakes, as you might expect, but nothing about giant snails. Sir James Frazer's 'The Golden Bough' can usually be relied on to provide some interesting if spurious anthropological anecdote to give substance to a travel article, but for once he is silent. I am told the images have some connection with beekeeping, but I can’t imagine what.
However, the good thing is that Lake Bohinj will almost certainly get better, and there are not many tourist destinations you can say that about. If you are an aficionado of dumps, get there while you can before someone opens a half-way decent hotel and ruins it.
Interested in your own rural holiday? See Travel Intelligence's lisitings for luxury hotels in Slovenia.