Winter Holidays

Posted by Helena Smole in Vacations and trips on Jan 16th, 2012

Why look for a better thing, if you are happy with the one you have got?

Day 1: Low Budget Skiing at Senozeta, Bohinj Valley, Slovenia
My husband and I arrived at the bottom of the Senozeta ski slope at 11 am, paying only 8 euros instead of 10 for a full day. And guess what – we were the only two skiers for about an hour. We were not surprised for most Slovene skiers tend to spend their winter holidays in foreign ski resorts, deeper into the Alps, where there is more snow and where there are numerous long ski routes – Italy, Austria, France. The snow on the Senozeta ski slope consisting of only one ski route was artificial.

Later two families joined us. We skied for 3 hours. The snow was perfect – not melting, no ice plates, no heaps of snow. And so was the weather – not too sunny, not too cloudy, not too warm, not too cold. The views of the snowed-in mountain peaks were magnificent. There was no queue. For a moment I thought of the crowded ski resorts and wondered, what the secret of happiness was. For I felt happy despite the fact that the ski slope was almost deserted.

Day 2: Low Budget Skiing at Senozeta, Bohinj Valley, Slovenia

A few more people were skiing the Senozeta slopes today, but still few enough to be able to remember each other’s names, if introduced properly. No queue, sunny weather, the whole slope in the shadow, thus no melting. No sunbeds, just a few regular chairs at the bottom of the ski route to sit a few rides out and enjoy the sun. This is how skiing used to be – you came to ski, not to eat and sunbathe. There is a somewhat more fancy ski resort above Bohinj valley, up in the Alps, where we had originally intended to ski (Vogel). It has several ski routes, fancy restaurants and snack bars and queues. We thought Senozeta would be only our first day warm-up. But this day we decided to stay down there. Why look for a better thing, if you are happy with the one you have got?

3 hours sufficed again, for skiing down a route that has a drag lift means no resting. You can rest on a chair lift, but a drag lift requires tense muscles, if you do not want to fall while dragged uphill.

Day 3: The Same Place, Evening Skiing
That day we chose rest in order to get ready for skiing in the evening. It was a starry night, very romantic. At first I was scared, when I saw about 15 kids aged 8 to 10. I thought I was going to be forced to watch them carefully, which would be the end of my careless skiing. Kids tend to ski right through, taking as few bends as possible in order to acquire maximum speed. Surely I would do anything to avoid an accident. Yet something told me they were experienced skiers. Call it intuition, if you want. When I had managed to calm down sufficiently, I noticed a van with a sign: SSK Srednja vas (the skiing and ski jumping sports club that uses the Senozeta slope for trainings). From that glance on I felt safe. Despite the 15 kids there was no queue in front of the drag lift, the snow was awesome, we had fun.

Day 4: Hiking above the Bohinj Valley

We decided to do something different that day. We took a school bus full of kids who finished school for today up a serpentine road to ascend enough to be able to descend for a few hours through forest enjoying magnificent views of snowed-in mountain peaks.

The bus drive was an experience. First the bus stopped in the middle of the serpentines. We heard the bus driver talk to a car driver that had come from the opposite direction. The car driver was announcing a big truck carrying tree trunks, so the bus driver could get ready for the encounter. Thus he made way for the truck. The bus later kept stopping at each small village, letting a few kids get off. Once it stopped in the middle of nowhere to let two girls get off and step into their father’s car. Their house must have been a long walk away from the bus stop. Their car then drove away, along a gravel road, covered with snow and ice.

We got off the bus at its final stop – the wonderful mountain village of Gorjuse, a shallow basin with a great view south and a ‘covered back’, an effect produced by a slope on the northern side of the village. Those are supposed to be ideal conditions for a village according to feng shui. Upon exiting the bus we walked half a mile on a bitumen road, then we entered a forest and continued to walk on a gravel road, hearing just the cracking of snow and ice under our feet, occasionally interrupted by a cry of a squirrel or a drill of a woodpecker.

Later the gravel road started to descend in serpentines. There were steeper foot-path short-cuts between the serpentines and we decided to take them. There was no snow along the foot-paths, but the views were still awesome (see the photo of ‘Babji zob’).

After a few hours we arrived at the village of Bohinjska Bela, where we took a train back to Bohinjska Bistrica, the only town of the Bohinj valley. The walk from the train station of Bohinjska Bistrica to our modest apartment rented for a week was short and freezing. Still the thought of a warm apartment and the view of the first evening stars on a clear winter sky warmed us up sufficiently to be able to return ‘home’ with a smile on the face.

Day 5: Hiking above Bohinj Valley

That day we drove by car up to the village of Koprivnik and took a circular walking route to Gorjuse and back.

From the village of Koprivnik we were ascending through a forest along a foot-path, covered with a layer of snow deep enough to enjoy the winter atmosphere, but not so deep that the sinking feet would make the hike too strenuous.

Upon reaching the village of Gorjuse, we had a snack from our rucksack and enjoyed the sun. Let me conclude this blog with a photo of a pasture in the ‘feng shui basin’ and say no more in order not to spoil the moment.