THE JULIAN ALPS and BOVEC SLOVENIA

by Dan Winters (posted by his more techy savvy daughter) 

       "Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence" –  Neman Bohl

Northwest of Bled, smack dab in the middle of the temple sweating, nose bleeding Julian Alps is the alpine village of Bovec. It is not easy to get to. You have to conquer the fearsome Vrsic Pass. It snakes between the sneering 7000 foot peaks: Jalovec and Prisank. That means negotiating the barely two lane wide road and—as they warn you before you start—50 switchbacks. Switchbacks so bad ass that they number them. If it is not a full 180 degree, it doesn't freakin' count. There are hundreds of nasty, heart in your mouth, 165 degree turns that don't qualify. Worse, there are about a thousand motorcycles without mufflers speeding towards and around you at every hairpin turn. It is like a scene from Mad Max: Fury Road. Even worse, all that turning freaks the GPS dominatrix out. She screams "TURN RIGHT! THEN TURN LEFT" all the way over the pass. Carol drove battling the road, motorcycles, and the hysterical voice—a feat worthy of Charlize Theron (That is right— second Mad Max: Fury Road reference.) Me, I wrote this blog, doing my part. We made it.

We arrive late at the Dobra Vila. It is a stylish building, modern and traditional at the same time, but it is quirky. When we arrive, they are booked. They have us coming the next day; we whine. The manager appears, he checks the computer and he says,"You are lucky. Someone just canceled, there is one room left!" The staff could not be nicer. They give us the key to room 69. We think, "This place doesn't look big enough to have 69 plus rooms?" It doesn't. The room is on the second floor. As we walk the hall with our bags, we note that there are six rooms on that floor—numbers, 50, 136, 640, 106, 2300 and good old 69. We laugh. That kind of quirky. The room is beautiful with views of the surrounding peaks: Sleme, Trenta, Kossi Berg, Golobar, etc., etc. Later we notice the three 3x4 foot pictures in the hall. They are late 50's animations. The first two portrayed a Father Knows Best house wife. The captions say "Fantasize, Your Are Less Likely to be Disappointed" and "Jewelry Because Good Sex Doesn't Last Forever."  The third was of a Dick Van Dyke look alike. It says, "Sex, I Am Only Two People Short of a Threesome." That kind of funny quirky. It was a great place. The food was gourmet. We had a trout on pea purée and green mashed potatoes and a pork with plum and almond sauce salad.  We thought, "Just like Mom used to make." The day we check out, we read the printed notice that is always affixed to hotel walls. The kind that contains important information like the location of the fire exit. On this one, there was a printed paragraph in six languages that read:

"69 -- Honorable guest, it is probably the most indecent of numbers, but the 6 and 9 form such a nice embrace. We have dedicated it to all those in love."

 Yeah, that kind of quirky. It was a cool place.

We spend two days in Bovec. We hiked in the Hansel and Gretel like dense forests stumbling over boulders, following manic streams to pounding "Holy Crap" waterfalls. They got a lot of water in Slovenia. We played crappy golf on a crappy golf course jerry-rigged in the most scenic and imposing setting possible—shear rock-faced mountains rising thousands of feet straight-up. Carol pointed out a perfect spot to carve out a Mt. Rushmore rendering of our four latest presidents. After deep thought, we opted for Buster Posey, Seth Curry, Will Ferrell and maybe that hot guy Riggins from Friday Night Lights.

     "One of the advantages Bowling has over Golf is that it is hard to lose a Bowling ball." -- Don Carter

It is an insanely, hard course–9 holes, 3,300 feet, streams and ponds everywhere. The totally unfair pencil thin fairways are edged by kiss-the-ball-goodbye, Big Bad Wolf woods. There is about fifty yards between holes, always up hill. The rickety pull carts we rented were last used by the Prussian Army to transport cannon balls.  We cross one stream on the third hole three times. There are two ponds in the fairway of six. Raise the white flag, we surrender. They got a lot of water in Slovenia. We should have known. We told the guy who check us in that we sucked and needed golf balls. He gave us each a bag of 12 balls. He said, "If you need more, call my cell." I returned with three, Carol with five. It was a gas.