Slovenia's Lipizzan Stud Farm

     Slovenia has 28 miles of shoreline along the Adriatic Sea, tucked in-between Croatia and Italy. There's been an intermingling of national origins around the Adriatic Sea over the past few centuries: Slavs, Croatians, Italians, Serbs, Austrians, and Germans. 

Vicki and I visited the Lipica Stud Farm mid-September 2018 (only seven miles from Trieste, Italy near the Adriatic Sea). The farm entrance road is beautiful. It's a working farm as well as a tourist destination.

Guided tours of this huge 740-acre farm complex are offered in a handful of languages. In fact, 72 percent of Slovenians are tri-lingual.

    Back in the 1500s, a bishop of Trieste, Italy (see arrow in above map) abandoned a summer home near the little village of Lipica, Slovenia. The Habsburg Dynasty which ruled most of Europe for 650 years needed a stud farm for their prized horses from Spain, and they wanted a soil and climate similar to Spain's climate. So they chose the bishop's abandoned summer home in Lipica in 1580 and restored it, now known as the Lipica Stud Farm. Because of its history, it's officially one of Slovenia's "cultural monuments of outstanding importance." Below is their oldest stallion barn, the Velbanca. Fancy and formal, eh?

     There is a tremendous amount of old timey classy feel at this breeding farm, the buildings, the huge barns with high ceilings, the outbuildings, the doors and windows and ceilings, plus all the red tiled roofs.

And a chapel on the grounds . . .

The Lipizzan has black skin and is born with black hair.

Most Lipizzans are grayish with black skin, dark eyes, and as they grow older, they acquire a white hair coat. The coat becomes lighter each year, as the graying to white process takes place between 6 and 10 years of age. There were hundreds of tourists here, and we could all pet most of the horses which is amazing. 

Even more amazing, this farm probably hires three dozen full-time horse handlers. With frequent human interaction, being haltered and led around, these horses are "socialized" (unlike some horses in Texas which are merely "pasture ornaments"). They're also pastured in huge pastures; Vicki and I walked along a dirt road and admired the beautiful hilly green pastures and an old ice pit that was a "refrigerator" in the old days.

Grooming, washing, farrier visits, vet visits, breeding visits, there's a lot of work to be done and horse handlers are busy workers. We frequently passed a group of four horses being led by one handler. They all seemed acclimated to walking by hundreds of tourists.

This young stallion (below) however WAS a handful! Not because of bad manners, but because he was so full of himself! He was high-stepping, neighing loudly like "Hey everybody, look at me!" and the handler had to keep a good grip on that rope.

Stallions don't breed naturally with mares, they're taken to this special place where the "act" is stimulated on a barrel-type contraption with the help of horse handlers . . . all the mares are artificially inseminated. Eliminates the need for a vet if a stallion gets too rambunctious.

We paid for entrance tickets when we arrived to tour all the facilities, and surprise, surprise, that day was "Lipica Day" according to the cashier. I asked "What is Lipica Day?" She said it's an annual special day of parades, a band, performers and much more. The four-hour show was free with our entrance ticket! Wow, what a bonus!

It was the best horse show in the world (in my opinion) which included a large band and high school gymnasts. We saw a dressage show which is very traditional classical riding in Europe.

We saw chariot races; those folks on the back of the chariot are weight control to keep the cart from flipping over at the turns. They lean into the turns just like sailors racing catamarans on one hull. Seeing movies about chariot races doesn't even come close to the real thing 30 feet in front of your eyes! And the audience was really getting into it!

The best of the show was a horse whisperer who trailered all his horses to Lipica for this special day. 

His name is Vincent Liberator. In above photo, notice how none of these horses have a halter? Sometimes there's a "hey you!" squabble (third horse from the left, above) but Vincent has all these horses wrapped around his little finger.

It's incredible! He doesn't reward his horses with treats like most horsey folks, he just talks to them softly and pets them. See (below photo) how they all have their ears pointed toward him? There's almost 1,000 people in the audience (huge outdoor arena) and the only thing they care about is him!

He runs with them . . . like a member of their herd.

He makes them all lay down like dogs! OK everybody, on the count of three . . . click here for a YouTube clip of this guy's amazing control of his horses.

The horse farm brought about 20 of its own mares to the arena and let them run in a big circle. No problems! They apparently did this a lot . . . none of the horse ranchers I know in Texas can run their herd of horses on demand and calmly snap that rope on each halter and lead them away.

For a promotional video about Lipica Day, click here. You'll see how big this annual day really is, and how much fun it is for anyone from age 1 to 101. Good old fashioned fun!

Coming up, Croatia! Did you know that Croatia has over 1,000 islands on the Adriatic Sea? Just when I'm thinking Slovenia is a pretty cool country . . . I haven't been to Croatia yet.

Slovenia's Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj

     When Slovenians want to escape the day to day grind, they go to Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj for a fun week or weekend.  Both are picturesque lakes . . .  below photo is Lake Bled.

Close-up view from another location of that crag in photo above . . .

This is a church on Lake Bled's more remote shoreline.

 My sister Vicki visited an island on the lake via a tourist rowboat.

   Instead of joining Vicki, I visited with a friendly solo swan on the lake. It tugged on my shoe with its beak . . . like "Hey you, aren't you going to feed me bread crumbs?"

I didn't have any food on me, and it eventually swam away with a webbed foot resting up high on its back, hmmm??? Is this sort of like giving someone the finger?

Gorgeous sunrises on the lake. One early morning in a grassy vacant lot I saw a female Alpine ibex!

I took a fuzzy bad photo of it, thinking it was a deer but then later after looking at the photo on my sister's iPad and seeing those horns, we realized it was a female ibex! There's a statue in the village of a female Alpine ibex (males have larger horns).

It amazes me that most rural Europeans (in France, too) heat their homes with wood. We saw many, many wood piles, the one below was obviously stacked by an organized homeowner.

Below is Lake Bohinj . . . it's a dead-end road to this lake because of the beautiful ring of mountains (Triglav National Park).

We rented a kayak for half a day on the lake . . .

Lake Bohinj has two little villages and many farms . . . they bring their cows home on the road. Twice we saw cows being herded down the road.

Unbeknownst to us, the 62nd annual Cows Ball was being held a couple miles away the next day!

We visited the Church of Saint John the Baptist, built in the mid-11th century.

Inside and outside are frescoes; they're restoring them from various periods.

Simple beautiful windows . . . 

 While we were at Lake Bled, we took a shuttle to the Vintgar Gorge, beautiful clear blue-green water, the Radovna River.

 

It has a long boardwalk built in 1893 that hugs the canyon walls and frequently criss-crosses the river.

Wonderfully scenic gorge . . . the 126 year old boardwalk (repaired occasionally) is amazing.

At the end of the boardwalk is Sum Falls, almost 50 feet high.

But unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to go to the Cows' Ball because we had an un-reserved train to catch in the nearby itsy bitsy village of Bohinjska Bela. No busses, no taxi's, we had to walk on a narrow country road to get to this train station. In fact several times Vicki stopped on this lonely rural road (almost no traffic), and said, "I don't think we're on the right road". It sure didn't look like we were headed to a train station, look at those mountains! "Are you sure you got the right address?" I asked.

It's amazing how Vicki finds these little gems in our travels. I took the above photo at the train station. There were NO tourists there, just a handful of seemingly local folks.

At the tiny no-service (but charming) train station, we read a bulletin board that explains this train goes through a tunnel (four miles) made mostly by hand between 1901 and 1904!! Wow! And then here comes the train!

Only two cars! Looking like it's ready to board Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band . .  . .

And what a scenic wonderful ride! Twice we stopped at a little village so the train conductor could take a smoke . . he stood there smoking outside and we passengers waited for him to finish his cigarette. Couldn't believe it! Only in Slovenia . . . and by the way, that train was over an hour late when we first boarded at Bohinjska Bela, most likely because of the train conductor's frequent smoke breaks.

It was a gorgeous ride! I am ready to do this one all over again.

     Map explanation below shows Lake Bled, then a bus to Lake Bohinj, then a train with a tunnel through the Mount Kolba mountain range (part of Triglav National Park) and with amazing mountain and valley views all the way to Sezana (very near Trieste, Italy at the northern most part of the Adriatic Sea). Our destination is Slovenia's famous Lipizzan horse stud farm. From Sezana, a reserved taxi is waiting to take us to the farm . . . 

A surprise is waiting for us at the farm :)