Monday 21 January 2013

Skiing in Slovenia

Another year, another ski trip to a new country, this time Slovenia.  I've always been a bit annoyed by the time it takes to get to the slopes from London, particularly by air - yes, the hour and a half flying time to, say, Geneva is good, but then you have a two hour drive to the resort, meaning you tend to get there just as the sun goes down.  So, on discovering that Slovenia has an airport just fifteen minutes away from the Kravec ski centre, I had to give it a try.

The English side of the journey doesn't go terribly well mind you.  Freezing temperatures in London mean my bike refuses to start, even when I spend an hour pushing it up and down.  Not feeling particularly happy I take the train into work along with my bag full of ski gear, I now have to get the train to the airport as well of course.  Which is where things really go downhill, in my idiocy I go to Luton rather than Stansted.  After much messing around going from the rail station to the airport and back, then back again, I find a coach to take me - very slowly - to the right airport, my expected relaxing evening with numerous beers and dinner at the Holiday Inn having turned into a bit of a nightmare, ending up with a single pint and a packet of crisps.  Ho hum.

Plenty of space on the pistes.
Up early next morning, and things start going to plan - flying out at 7.45am, I soon get back to sleep and before I know it I'm in Slovenia, at 11am local time.  Getting into my hire car doesn't take long, and it really is a short, and well signposted, drive to Kravec.  Park up, change and I'm at the top of the gondola before midday, with a full afternoon of skiing in prospect.  It's a nice little area too - somewhere around thirteen runs served by nine or so lifts, ranging from a creaky old single seater to a modern clutched express chairlift running up to the summit of Krvavec the mountain.  I'd rate most of the runs as reds, the piste map sees things a little differently, claiming twenty-three runs evenly split between blue, red and black.  It achieves this by somewhat dubiously marking each of the wider pistes with two or three lines, often of different colours...

Sausage, cabbage, beer.
Fun is had anyway, and also sausage - stopping for lunch, I find the menu rather incomprehensible, but the waitress speaks good English (as do pretty much all the locals, it seems) - beer and a large amount of 'Kranjska' follow.  The resort shuts up at four, and by five I'm in the capital, driving into Ljubljana proving pretty easy.  Park up, check in and it is time for a little wander about.  The city is certainly scenic, the Ljubljanica river is lined with impressive architecture and criss-crossed by bridges, the whole overlooked by the medieval castle on the hill above.  There are also a fair number of bars, I enjoy a pint of three or the local 'Union'.  Still full of sausage though, I opt for a bit of tapas rather than a full meal.

The lone gondola, leading down the mountain to the car parks.
Back to the slopes for a full day on the Saturday, and while there is a fair bit of cloud up on the mountain, and a lot more people, I still have fun bombing down the now familiar runs, as well as finding a few new ones, and even a snow park.  There is a bit of hassle getting to and from the resort, more people means I have to park well down the mountain and get a bus, still it is all efficiently organised, and free.  Think I earned some dinner today, even with more sausage at lunch, so, back in the capital I find a restaurant, the charming 'Das ist Valter' - named in tribute to the 1972 film 'Valter brani Sarajevo' - 'Walter defends Sarajevo'.  It was the most popular foreign film in China during the '70s you know...  They supply me with, surprise, sausage - six of the things, plus some sort of burger, half a chopped onion and a kind of flatbread.  All good, if heavy... I grab a few more beers and then sleep.  Then it's back to the airport, a short flight, then oops, snow in England.  So it takes four hours to get back home from Stansted.  Ho, once again, hum.

The Dragon Bridge in Ljubljana.
On balance though this worked very well, I can see myself going again.  This time my flights were with Easyjet, but I see Wizz fly there too (from Luton, haha) - their schedule would allow a trip from Saturday to Tuesday, the return flight leaving at 7.30pm.  That would give you three full days skiing with just two days off work, and no sleeping on a coach.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.