We planned a wonderful road trip to stay with my cousin in Broggingen, Germany. Broggingen is where my Grandpa’s family came from, before moving to CA.
Before going to Germany, we planned to drive across Slovenia and stay the night in the Julian Alps, which are in North West Slovenia near both the Italian and Austrian borders. Immediately after entering Slovenia, the landscape changed. Slovenia, even right inside the Hungarian border, is lush and green. The further west we went, the greener everything became and more mountains appeared. The view from the car was absolutely beautiful.
We planned our first stop to be in Postojna, to visit the longest Karst (landscape formed by the dissolution of soluble rocks) cave in the world. Our GPS lead us directly to the caves and into the parking lot. We strolled through the shopping center which is located outside of the caves. There was absolutely no one around, it felt like a ghost town. We had read online that tours happened every day at 10, 12 and 3pm. It was about 9:59 when we reached the ticket booth. Dusty asked if we were too late for the 10:00 tour. The lady behind the window seemed a bit irritated by our tardiness but informed us that if we hurried we would make the tour. I asked for the student price and she in return asked to see our student IDs. When I told her we didn’t have them on us, she sighed and became more irritated, though allowed us to pay the student price (a bit less than the general admission). She handed us our tickets and told us to hurry up. We scampered towards the cave, but we didn’t know where to go! A janitor, or a sanitation engineer according to Dusty, pointed us in the right direction.
We rushed into the entrance, our tickets were checked, and were appointed our train seats. The train had no ceiling or doors, similar to an amusement park ride. The train took us deeper into the cave system at a speed faster than we were expecting. The cave ceiling appeared to be extremely low and droplets of water hit our heads as we ducked every few seconds. As we traveled further beneath the Earth’s surface, the humidity level rose and the atmosphere felt very still.
After getting off of the train, we started on the trail to walk further into the caves. People began to gather into tour groups. We quickly realized we had joined the Slovenia tour guide by mistake, so we made our way to the English speaking tour guide. He was very knowledgeable and provided great information. We enjoyed taking in the magical surroundings. Lime stone and calcium carbonate replicated wax, slowly dripping from the ceiling. Large rocks, which looked just like ivory, protruded from the cave floor and towered above us.
The tour lasted about an hour and a half. When it finished, we made our way into the gift shop and purchased a couple of post cards. We snapped photos on the way to the car. It was a beautifully crisp day. Before getting back on the road, we ate our packed-lunch in the car. We enjoyed yummy sandwiches, chips and juice. After a half hour lunch break, we plugged the GPS in and headed to the Julian Alps.
