Croatia Part 4 - June 2012

On Sunday morning, we left Zagreb for Slovenia. Slovenia is another of the 7 countries that was established after the breakup of Yugoslavia and it is relatively tiny...about the size of Israel.

Our first stop was Postojna (try googling postojna caves slovenia). We have all been to stalagmites and stalactite caves before but these were the most amazing by far. Before going, we were a little skeptical...how could it be different? Well for starters, you first board a train which takes you about a mile into the interior of the mountain. And then you walk thru enormous caverns for about another 1/3 mile surrounded by the largest limestone cave formations that you have ever seen. 

There are over 20 km. of passages and galleries in the system of caves, considered the most impressive in Europe and perhaps the world. At the conclusion of the tour, you find yourself in what is called the "concert hall", a large opening with a very high rounded ceiling where the acoustics are perfect. There was a group before us singing "Amazing Grace", so when they finished, I began "kol ha'olam kulo, gesher tzar me'od" and many of our group joined in....it sounded amazing!

From there we journeyed north to the area of Lake Bled, where we took a boat ride on the lake and then took a cable car to the top of one of the surrounding mountains where we got a bird's eye view of the entire area. When we came down, we journeyed to the top of another mountain where an impressive castle sits overlooking the lake as well.

The only thing that could have been better this day was the weather....it was rainy and overcast all day, as a result, my pictures were not as good as they might have been had the day been bright sunshine. All in all, tho, the weather on this trip has been excellent.

We then checked into Hotel Lek which sits at the foot of the Italian/Croatian Alps. The hotel was very nice and the staff was amazing they just could not do enough for us. We had another fish and salad dinner.

I was up bright and early and took a walk in the village; it was quite foggy and I managed to get a number of very nice pictures.

The next morning, we went to the Vintgar Gorge in Slovenia. Awesome gorge with numerous waterfalls. About a 3 km hike in all; very refreshing.

We continued back to Croatia where we visited the Trakoscan castle

and finished our touring with a visit to Varazdan where there once was a community of 1000 jews.

The shul in this town is still standing tho it has not been used as a shul since 1939. It was used as a warehouse and a movie theatre and now is being restored with the view to leaving a memorial to the Jewish community that once was in this town. We found the building covered in tarps as the restoration is underway. The only thing that we could see was part of the outside and some of the inside thru an open window.

We met a neighbor who indicated to us that she was in fact of Jewish descent.

From there it was back to Zagreb for a final dinner at the shul; quite good. The meal was ended with a number of songs, poems, speeches etc by the tour participants. I contributed with a set of gramen.

This morning we were up bright and early and then it was off to the airport for our flight home.

That's the end of a very nice trip. We met some nice people, saw some unbelievable sights and witnessed the continuing decline of Judaism that we have seen in a number of places in Europe.

We are now back in Israel and are thinking ahead to Shabbat when we will host Josh and Phyllis and Paul and Abbey in Hashmonaim and then on to Toronto on Sunday.

That's all, folks!

All the best

Fran and David