Dr. Noah Charney: Hello, welcome, and dobrodošli to Feel Slovenia the Podcast.  In each episode, we will explore what I have called the world's best country. meeting locals, traveling, eating, and getting to know the very best of Slovenia.  This podcast is written and hosted by me, Dr. Noah Charney, and is brought to you by the Slovenian Tourist Board. 

This episode is all about Triglav National Park, a nature preserve that covers 880 square kilometres in the north-western corner of Slovenia.  In 2024, the park celebrates its 100th anniversary, making it an ideal time to visit.  Consisting of 33 settlements and home to some 2,300 people, the park is a protected landscape under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and it's part of UNESCO's Man and Biosphere Program. 

As a national park, tourism here is all about responsibility and sustainability; both in terms of minimizing the impact of visitors on the natural world, and in ensuring that tourism works in harmony with both nature and local interests.  Sustainable, nature-based tourism is a win for all.  The park includes Mount Triglav,  Slovenia's highest peak, and one that, the saying goes, you must summit once in your lifetime if you are truly a Slovenian. 

But Mount Triglav is just the start. There's a lot to do in those 880 square kilometres, including two well marked trails that guide you through the park. The Alpe Adria Trail and the award-winning Juliana Trail.  While I haven't quite gotten to the top of Triglav yet, I have explored the National Park on many a happy occasion.

For this episode, I spoke to many people about Slovenia's only national park. I haven't yet climbed Triglav, which means I'm not officially a Slovenian yet. That's the saying, climbing Triglav is practically an informal citizenship requirement. I like hiking, but I've never climbed a proper mountain. 

I am Slovenian enough to know that Triglav is 2, 864 metres tall, if we round up. That's 9,325 feet. A fact that all children in this country must memorize in school. I also know that it's named after a mythical Slavic three headed giant. Triglav means three head. And it's the symbol of the country, appearing on the Slovenian flag. 

It's meant to be an easy climb as tall mountains go. One of my friends climbed it when he was five years old, but it's not to be taken lightly. It's at least an eight-hour climb, and most people do it over two days, spending the night at a mountain lodge before summiting the next day. The final 400 meters is via via ferrata, the Italian term used in mountaineering that means you climb while fixed onto a metal cable that's drilled into the raw stone. 

So, I never climbed Triglav, not yet anyway, but a jacket of mine has.  I once gave a Boston Red Sox jacket to my friend the comedian Perica Jerković. Perica is among Slovenia's most successful comedians, but he was born in Bosnia and moved to Slovenia as a child.  Much of his comedy routine is based on never quite feeling Slovenian and recalling the Yugoslavia of his youth.

He built a whole comedy show called Slovene and a Half, which he performed with a Slovenian comedian, Aleš Novak. Perica was the half, and it was all about climbing Triglav. He did climb it while being filmed for part of the show, and he was wearing that Boston Red Sox jacket, though turned inside out, because why would a Bosnian Slovenian comedian be climbing Triglav in a Boston Red Sox jacket, unless his weird American friend gave it to him and he didn't have any more suitable equipment.

Perica Jerković: Well, my story with Triglav is: I had a wish to create a theatrical play, a show about Slovenia and a friend of mine and I started working on it and it just went nowhere. Sometimes this happens.  And later on, another friend said, how about you do a show about mountains? Because I know a lot about mountains.

My father took me there a lot when I was young, blah, blah, blah. And I said like, no, I don't want to do a show about mountains. And then, when we were discussing it, I came to a conclusion that, that this was a better idea to talk about citizenship and becoming a citizens and what this means and what homeland means.

And stuff like that, instead of speaking directly about it, why don't we speak about it through a story about two friends going climb Triglav? One of them is really experienced guy and the other one knows nothing about mountains. So, and this is what we we've done. We went there two times, first time just to check out the filming locations.

And the second time we went filming because the show was composed of two main parts. One is, live sketches on stage and the other part is  taped video sketches in  TNP. So, we were filming there and it was, it was really hard. It took us three days to film it, from dusk till dawn. And it was hard and I really, really, I don't like mountains.

I never did. I still don't because it's just not for me, but I recommend going to mountains every now and then because there's something about those tones and how hot it is. It just, it just really makes you learn something about yourself, how soft you are, how urban life has made you soft. So that's why I really recommend it every now and then, rarely, as rarely as possible.  And the Boston Red Sox windbreaker ended up not just going on Triglav, but also becoming a part of the show because it's a part of a joke. So, thank you, Noah. 

Dr. Noah Charney: For this episode on Triglav National Park, I spoke to a British expat who lived for many years in Slovenia and has a new book about his adventures there called Dormice and Moonshine.

His name is Sam Baldwin, and he told me about the time he climbed Mount Triglav. He has made something of a habit of summiting peaks in countries to which he has expatriated. He has a book called For Fukui's Sake about his time living in Japan, where he climbed Mount Fuji. Here is his personal Triglav climb story.

Sam Baldwin: Mount Triglav is the centrepiece of Slovenia's one and only national park, and it's a real symbol of the country. It features on their flag, on their 50-cent coin, and in numerous poems and paintings.  And it's said to be the duty of every Slovenian to climb Triglav.  Although I have to say, when I have spoken to my Slovenian friends about that, it seems that quite a few of them haven't actually climbed it at least yet. 

I climbed Triglav one year at the very tail end of the summer climbing season. It was middle to late September, just before you might get some early snow, which might make the route a lot more hazardous. I asked many Slovenians whether I could just climb it alone. Um, some of them said it would be better to get a guide.

Um, some of them said, you can just follow the signs. In the end, I decided to get a guide because although I'm considering myself reasonably fit, um, I was alone and I thought I'd be able to enjoy the climb more if I had someone who really knew what they were doing.  So, I contacted a guide who was called Bor and I remember calling him up on the phone and he'd asked me, okay, Sam, have you got your waterproofs? Have you got hiking boots? Have you got a hat? And I was like, yep, I certainly do. And he said, great. I'll bring the helmet, harness and ropes. See you tomorrow at six. And then he hung up. And I remember feeling quite anxious about that because I'd read that you didn't need any special mountaineering equipment or knowledge to climb Triglau.

 So, I wondered what he had in store for me. The following day, he picked me up in a rather battered, uh, VW van and I remember stepping into his, into the passenger seat and he had a model of an ice climber made out of wire hanging from his rear-view mirror.  And he'd replaced his gear stick with a ski pole.

So, I knew that I was really dealing with a serious mountain man. Perhaps the best thing about climbing Triglav is the range of geographies it takes you through. There's some really very, very beautiful scenery along the way.  We started off our walk through dense beach and spruce forest, kind of moving up through that until we started to reach, um, grazing pastures.

Where the shepherds spend the whole summer up there tending their cows and making cheese. Then as you get higher, the trees start to shrink. And eventually you're just left with going to grassy scrub. And then beyond that, just rock.  I think Bor, my guide, has spent the whole summer guiding big groups. So when he had the opportunity to just take me as a solo trip, he wanted to take me somewhere a little bit more interesting for him, but perhaps a little more scary for me.

We eventually had to put on the harness and ropes, we roped up together and we were tethered together as one and we passed through some quite difficult for me terrain, um, stuff that I was certainly have not tackled on my own.  Big walls of granite or walls of limestone, perhaps really quite steep stuff.

And there was a lot of what's called via ferrata, meaning iron road in Italian. Along the way, these are where you have metal stakes or rings or steps embedded into the rock to help you climb. And quite often we would clip onto these or loop some of the rope over. In case we fail. 

Dr. Noah Charney: As Sam makes clear, mountaineering, even if you're dealing with a peak that's generally considered easy to climb, is not something to take lightly.

Always come prepared with necessary equipment. And unless you're a seasoned climber, it's best to hire a local guide, as Sam did. For more information on mountain safety, we've prepared a special episode of this podcast, which you can listen to.  

As Sam notes, Triglav is indeed full of symbolism for Slovenians. The three peaks were said to symbolize the unity of the three main historical regions of the territory, Carniola, Styria and Gorizia. And it also means independence. As the tallest mountain in former Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav partisans from Slovenia distinguish themselves by wearing a cap with three peaks to it, called a triglavka. 

If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you'll know of my special love for the Slovenian modernist mystic architect, Jože Plečnik, the subject of my doctoral thesis.  Well, we have him to thank for having made Triglac the national symbol. Back in 1934, he helped design an early rendition of the Slovenian coat of arms for display on the cloak of a religious statue of Mary, Mother of God, in the parish church in Bled, which was decorated with coats of arms of each of the nations that comprised what was at the time called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. 

The first president of independent Slovenia, Milan Kučan, stated that it was the duty of every Slovenian to climb Triglav at least once in their lifetime. I guess I better get a move on. What waits me at the top? Well, there's an odd tradition that when you summit it for the first time, while at the top, someone whacks you on the butt with a rope.

Seriously. But Triglav National Park has more to it than Mount Triglav alone, of course. The national park is the only park of its sort in Slovenia. Established in 1924, it covers an area of approximately 880 square kilometres, or 340 square miles, in the north-western part of Slovenia, near the borders with Austria and Italy.

It encompasses a swath of Slovenia that runs from the Pokljuka Plateau above Lake Bled all the way to the Italian border. This is a dream for hikers, particularly thanks to a new trail that opened just a few years ago. It circumnavigates the Julian Alps and can be hiked fully or in pieces.  The full trail runs 270 kilometres, or 168 miles, with various routes available.

To do the whole thing would take a little more than two weeks. What's it like to do? I had the good fortune of interviewing Rudolf Abraham while representing Slovenia at the World Trade Market in London. He's a British photographer and author of outdoor travel books, who happens to also have an amazing beard. 

His new book is Slovenia's Juliana Trail, published by the prestigious hiking press Cicerone.  He didn't just hike the main trail, but also a four-day extension, which meant that he covered 330 kilometres over 20 stages.  The trail was awarded the Best European Tourism Project in 2021 and is well worth doing, in slices if you've not got two weeks to spare in one go. 

He also hiked and wrote about the Alpe Adria Trail, which includes three countries, Slovenia, Austria, and Italy. So, one of the things I love about the Alpe Adria Trail is it actually covers a cross border initiative. So, it runs from Austria through Slovenia to Italy. Rudolf, you've hiked both the Alpe Adria Trail and the Juliana Trail, and you know it very intimately because you've written books about them.

Actually, can we see, this is the book about the Juliana Trail, little strategic product placement. Maybe you could tell us about what it's like to hike each of these trails, and if you have maybe one story from each that you might like to share. 

Rudolf Abraham: My experience with hiking bits of both of these trails goes back about 25 years to when I first, first visited Slovenia. And after that I lived in, in Zagreb for a couple of years and any of my spare time was usually  go and hike somewhere in Slovenia, go and try and climb Jalovac, go and hike on Mali Maestrovka and end up climbing it the wrong way around or from the wrong side, which was a bad idea. And I wrote my first guidebook, my first book, which is a hiking guide. Next year will be 20 years ago, and the, the Alpe Adria Trail mission came to me sort of from knowing that it being an area that I specialized in, and when that had been published, the Alpe Adria one, Klemen came up to me at an event and said, you know, we're planning this new trail, and this is what it's like, and it's going to be amazing, and you'll really like it.

So I went, hiked some of the bits that I didn't know from, from beforehand. And got a commission from Cicerone very, very quickly to do the book. And they're both, you know, really nice, accessible trails. Which is one of the reasons that I like them. But they both tie in so many different sides of the country and of the region.

Whether it's tying in these sort of amazing  landscapes with, wonderful food and amazing history and very different sides of history from the Isonzo front, the World War front in both trails, both Juliana and the Alpe Adria to medieval castles and, and a history of mining and iron work.

Dr. Noah Charney: While in London, I also interviewed Klemen Langus, Director of Tourism for Bohinj, a lakeside town that's part of the National Park. 

So, to begin with, Klemen, you once described tourism in Bohinj as living room tourism, and I love this idea. Could you tell us what you mean by that? 

Klemen Langus: Well, it's not just for Bohinj, you know, everybody nowadays is talking about a sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, responsibility, regenerative tourism, green tourism, and It's sometimes very difficult for me to understand what does it all mean, all these expressions.

So, okay, we came to this idea that our destination is like a living room I refurbished for myself, because I live there and the people who live there. We have chosen the colours, we've chosen the furniture, because that we feel comfortable in, in it. And then we invite people to our destination.

Our guests, our friends, our colleagues, and  they usually come with some, maybe a gift, or they even  take their shoes off before they enter my living room. And they are amazed how I organize my living room. And during the evening, with some glass of good wine and good food, a new idea has emerged between both of us that can enrich myself and my living room. And also the guests, my friends who are there, they go back to their home thinking, okay, maybe I can do the same as Klemen has done in his living room. And I am reached by their ideas and they say, okay, Klemen, did you think maybe you can change the colours of your walls here? And I say, yes, maybe a good idea 

So, it's this combination, this balance between the guests and myself.  In my living room, there are some rules must be followed also by my guests.  This how I understand the sustainable way of tourism. And the second thing is tourism: is co-dependent industry. Know when, when organizing furnishing the, the living. I'm not electrician. I don’t know nothing about it. I think about how to paint the walls etc. So, I need these colleagues to help me with organizing, with furnishing my living room. So co-dependency for tourism something. It's very important and there is something I can do on my own, but sometimes I need help, assistance.

So, this is very, maybe, basic understanding of sustainability, of tourism, but it's quite easy to understand it, it’s why the idea actually came to life some years ago. It is actually responding the idea of the living room. 

Dr. Noah Charney: I love that idea because it promotes mutual respect and that locals will be welcoming to tourists. And there's an expectation that the tourists will respect the locality. And the locals will be welcoming as they would a guest into their home. Even if they're welcoming them into the country or into the natural world within that country.  

So today we're talking about particular two elaborate hiking trails. And one of them is called the Juliana Trail, and one is the Alpe Adria Trail. Tit, could you maybe tell us what's the difference between the two, and where do the trails begin and end?  

Tit Potočnik: Hello to everybody. So, what I have to add, to what Klemen has said,  is that Klemen is Director of Tourism in Bohinj. And Bohinj is one of ten municipalities in the world. In the Julian Alps, so Julian Alps Biosphere Reserve. It's a UNESCO program, Man and Biosphere, from 1972. And, Biosphere Reserve Julian Alps is the oldest biosphere reserve in Slovenia. It is from 2003.  And Triglav National Park represents The core and buffer zone of the biosphere reserve, and the transition zone is the area around the national park.

So, we are talking about ten municipalities, which are connected with the same idea. The idea is to have the identity of the biosphere reserve, which, the basic thing is searching for the balance between man and nature. So, uh, we are here not talking only about tourism, we are talking about, culture, we are talking about agriculture, what is connected, with food. So, it's all then connected with the nature protection, quality of living in inhabitants, like it was said, and also that the visitors get the expectation, which they demand. 

So that's why a product, Juliana trail, was done to achieve all these goals. So, from the, from the matter of nature protection, that visitors avoid the quiet zone so that we help population of animals, which can live and reproduce themselves without any interference. Then the second one is, is the quality of living in the habitants. You do not want to have too many hotspots.  That's why you are, Juliana Trail is based to avoid the hotspots. But to give the visitors the experience which they expect. So, with the beautiful views and a trail which is not too hard. So, it is for, for everybody. And the third thing, also is then the difference would be the Alpe Adria trail. So Alpe Adria trail is not only in the Biosphere Reserve Alps, but it's a longer trail which is connecting Alps with the Adriatic Sea.  So, basically there are two touristic products, but I can see as Juliana Trail, a product which is more involving all stakeholders, which are in a certain area and which is for all these three goals, which I was telling you before.

Dr. Noah Charney: What surprised Sam Baldwin most about his Triglav adventure?

Sam Baldwin: You can do Triglav in a day, although most climbers do it over two days. And that's what I did. We spent the night in Koča na Doliču, where, which is a big hut, not too far from the summit. And then the following morning we made the final push for the top. 

Something that surprised me was when we finally reached the top, my guide Bor said, Sam, give me a camera. I thought, great. He's going to take a picture of us. Um, how nice, but instead he handed the camera to one of his guiding colleagues and then he proceeded to take a coil of his rope, his climbing rope, and whip my behind, which was not altogether painless.

 Uh, I was quite, surprised by this. It, he claimed that it was a tradition for first time climbers. To undergo this whipping. Now, I didn't see anyone else getting whipped and I never heard of that. However, I have since discovered that it is indeed a tradition. I think coming down Triglav was more taxing than going up. Your legs are weary and  that the gravity really takes its toll on your legs and knees.  However, it was really great to have Bor as a guide because he took me well off the beaten track. In fact, we didn't really follow the main path at all. He kept on diving off and he took me to some incredibly beautiful parts that I never would have found otherwise.

I remember one valley towards the bottom. It was like a Garden of Eden. There were damp ferns and Edelweiss flowers.  It was such a beautiful spot. And it made me realize, how amazing the Triglav National Park is and how it's something that I would recommend to any visitor coming to Slovenia.

Dr. Noah Charney: Whether you are intrepid enough to summit Triglav or simply prefer a lovely stroll around a gorgeous lake like Bohinj, Triglav National Park is a perfect spot for you to explore next time you're in Slovenia.And if being whacked on the butt with a rope is your thing, then head straight for the top of Mount Triglav. 

Hvala and thank you for listening to Feel Slovenia the podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Slovenian Tourist Board and was written and presented by Dr. Noah Charney.  Please subscribe to get each new episode and tell all of your friends interested in travel and all things Slovenia. 

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