#10 Western Slovenia: August 24 - 30, 2007
The Soča Valley:
Now & Then
Now
Bovec was the northwestern Slovenian town of 1600 people where we dealt with
my immobilizing rear hub problem. At the base of the Julian Alps and at the confluence of 2
mountain rivers, it is a hotbed of modern outdoor sports. The hype around the
adrenaline sports in Bovec was reminiscent of New Zealand with the seemingly
dozens of little ventures ready to haul people out to one of
rivers and slosh them downstream in a rubber raft or mini-kayak. And this part of
the narrow Soča Valley had its own airfield for gliders being hauled up by planes and a ski
lift to haul the paragliders up to the cliffs they needed for their form of
flight.
Being in Bovec made it easy to believe that the Slovenes are
avid outdoor enthusiasts, to the point of regularly claiming more Olympic gold medals
per capita than the US or Russia. Though no doubt some other nationalities would
challenge the Slovene's assertion that they invented skiing about 400 years ago.
But it was just down the valley road from buzzing Bovec that a museum told another story of extreme
experiences in these mountains.
Then
It was in the next valley town of Kobarid that what is
considered one of the greatest military campaigns ever fought in mountainous
terrain is documented. The nearby mountain top
location of the
Soča or Isonzo Front was yet another of
the many long stand-offs of entrenched fighting in the Great War, this time
between the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians. The stalemate had gone on
for 2 and a half years when the Germans were concerned that Italians would soon
make a breakthrough. The Germans decided in October of 1917 that it was time to
lend support to their Austro-Hungarian allies.
The resulting rout above Kobarid is better known by the Italian name
for the town, which is Caporetto. With the arrival of the Germans at this front came a change
in the control of the battle as until then, all of the decision-making was
retained by the distant high command of both the Italian and the
Austro-Hungarian troops. The Germans were experimenting with pushing the
decision-making lower down the chain of command, which dramatically tipped the
balance of power to their side in this instance.
The Germans were also pioneering an
early form of their surprise tactics that were so successful in WWII, the
blitzkrieg. Additionally, it was at this battle for Caporetto that the Central
Powers had an unusually effective use of poisonous gas against the Italians--an
instance where the perpetrating troops weren't wiped-out as well.
The body count skyrocketed with the break-through in the
stalemate that came with the German collaboration. On the Isonzo Front
alone, the Italians sustained 500,000 casualties and lost another 300,000 men as
POWs. The success of this Axis Powers' surge was so unexpected by them that they were unable to
fully capitalize on their success as they lacked the plans or the support needed
to maximize their advance as the beleaguered Italians retreated.
Kobarid's museum to this significant WWI battle was like many
war museums we'd seen before with
uniforms, artifacts, memorabilia, maps, and photos. For me, this only
mildly-interesting subject was made more significant because of the other
mountain top, WWI battle site we'd recently visited on the border between Italy
and Austria. The telling of yet another story deepened my understanding of
WWI, especially as to how it was fought in the mountains.
This exhibit again highlighted the difficulty I'd had in
keeping the players straight in Eastern European history. The "we" and the
"they" just isn't as familiar as in Western Europe. In Slovenia at this time,
the "we" included Austro-Hungary and Germany. A few years later, on the same bit of land, the "we"
would instead include
Italy. The moving borders, changing alliances, and land grabs kept me
consulting with Bill to keep the players straight as he is better versed in war history
.
Now, Then & Hemmingway?
Seeing Ernst
Hemmingway's smiling photo above a doorway raised another "who" question
for me at the Kobarid
museum. We were soon reading that young Hemingway joined the war effort in Italy as an ambulance driver for the
Red Cross in 1918 but wrote his Farewell To Arms based on
this earlier battle above Kobarid in 1917.
We saw his book in both English and German and planned to buy
it in the Italian and English editions as everything else in the museum bookshop was in those
3 languages, plus Slovenian. We had thought it a clever way to advance our
Italian skills by having a handy translation in the form of the English version of the
book rather than looking up so many words in a dictionary. And our interest in
the book would be piqued because we'd be reading about a place we'd been, a
story we'd first learned about at the museum. But our challenging Italian
exercise was thwarted as there was no slot for the Italian version on the bookrack.
Too amused by the clever study opportunity, we bought the English
and German versions and planned to pick-up the Italian edition at some city
bookstore. In the meantime, Bill could work his way through his first adult reader in
German and check his work against the English book. I proceeded to read the
English text to speed my studies when an Italian copy manifested. (Being
science majors, neither of us read such classics in college.)
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We left Kobarid quite satisfied: we'd advanced our understanding of Slovenian and Eastern European history a bit, we had a plan to advance our Italian and Bill's German language skills, and we'd have the bonus of reading a bit of missed classical literature. But little did I know that it wouldn't be long until my Slovenian "we-they" knowledge would be challenged again as we visited another historical site--this time from WWII.
The Franja Partisan Hospital near Cerkno
"Hummm, hospital....I wonder why Bill is bothering with a
detour to a WWII hospital?" Over our years of traveling abroad, we'd seen our share of meager medical suites
and kits including evidence of Neolithic skull drilling, Roman surgical tools,
on up to
20th century improvements. They were exhibits, but none yet had warranted more than a few quick glances
let alone a detour into the hills. But there is a reason I jokingly say "Just
point and I'll pedal" as Bill spends hours sifting through the guide books and
tourist literature to craft our routes. The Slovenian hospital proved to be
worth the effort despite his flagging commitment to it that had resulted in his spare marketing
efforts.
The reconstructed Franja Partisan Hospital was 1 of about 120
covert care centers usually hidden in the forests and caves of Slovenia during
WWII. Depending on the source, collectively they cared for between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers. Almost
all of the partisan care facilities were in single cabins or clusters of 1 or 2 room wooden cabins.
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The deep forests
usually had ample water supplies but no roads running through them. The lack of
roads decreased the odds of detection of the hospitals by the enemy, but made
them very difficult to access, both for delivering supplies and delivering the
wounded. These forest centers also could not burn fires during the day because
of the risk of discovery and could not be defended if exposed.
Once the Slovenian partisan fighting increased in 1942 and
1943, the benefits of a particular little gorge as a hospital site were
recognized. The gorge was only a few miles from Cerkno, the unofficial capital
of the the partisans, and the nearby main
road and cart track would speed-up the delivery of wounded to the hospital. And
unlike the customary forest facilities, it could both be better hidden and
better defended.
A single cabin was built straddling the stream in the deep
gorge and Franja Partisan Hospital received its first wounded partisan soldiers
in December of 1943. Roads went close to the gorge and the traffic was split to decrease the chances of drawing unwelcome attention.
From one route, local farmers and partisan groups
lowered provisions down the steep cliffs by rope to maintain secrecy. Patients
and some supplies were carried up the gorge stream itself as a second route so as to leave no
traces of occupancy. What a feat to stumble
along an icy streambed at night carrying a stretcher or guiding a wounded soldier
who was blindfolded.
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In the
hospital's early days a visiting partisan commander appreciated the benefits of
the hospital being in a deep, abruptly dead-ended sliver of a gorge and ordered
that Franja's facilities be expanded. Having a field hospital that wouldn't have
to be evacuated during an encroaching battle would be a potent asset for the planned
spring offensive.
The entrance to
the gorge looked as unremarkable as any other of the hundreds of steep little
valleys in the area and the many natural caves in the walls of the gorge provided
places for stashing supplies, guards, and extra patients when needed. And the
convolutions in the cliff faces and overhangs made it difficult to detect the
wooden buildings from above.
In addition to its hidden
location, the noisy waterfalls on both sides of the hospital dampened noise from
talking and occasional festivities. Somehow, the walls of the gorge also managed
to dissipate the smoke from fires, so the staff and patients had the luxury of
hot meals during the day as well as some heat, unlike their counterparts in the
forests.
Franja was established in the gorge as it offered a unique opportunity
for the partisans to hold their position
if discovered and attacked. Its physical location made it defensible
and the natural features were augmented by landmine fields, machine gun nests,
and guard positions in which the staff had to be raised and lowered by rope.
The patient care facilities grew rapidly to its maximum of 13 cabins. They
eventually built a water-powered electrical generator at the high end of the ample stream
to improve the available services.
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The hospital treated and housed over 120 patients at a time and in its
brief history, served over 500 wounded. This compound was the nucleus of an
operation that cared for over a 1000 wounded, many of the less severely injured being
in remote satellite units. Franja began as a long
term care facility for the severely wounded but by the end
of the war the staff was able to perform some surgeries and even had what looked
like a stand-up, real-time X-ray machine that was air dropped by the Allies. It was such a reliable location that it
became a hub for Allied air drops of medical supplies for it and other
partisan hospitals.
Most of the
patients at Franja were members of the Yugoslav or Slovenian partisan army, with 2 Americans being among the
others cared for during the war. The Nazi's bombed the area twice, and though evacuated twice
during its existence between 1943-45, the hospital was never fully discovered and no
wounded soldiers were ever captured. Several medical staff however we killed during the 2
enemy attacks. The Yugoslav Partisans were considered the best organized and
most successful of the WWII resistance movements and the Franja Hospital
operation was a convincing testament to that claim.
For the History Buffs:
A Little More Background on Franja Hospital
Like with the WWI stories up in
the Italian/Austrian mountains, keeping the players straight in the Slovenian
museums was a challenge for me. Those
"we" and "they" comments sometimes left me guessing.
The Italians were definitely the enemy at the time of
Franja's existence as they'd made a
successful grab for this western part of the Slovenes homeland at the end of WWI--a
grab that was ratified by a treaty in 1920. Then, early in WWII, they extended their reach as far
east into Slovenia as the current capital of Ljubljana. This increasingly
harsh
presence of fascist Italy triggered the domestic liberation movement to became
more active in Slovenia early in the war.
Most of the wounded partisans in the early days of WWII were cared
for on the sly by sympathetic Slovenian medical staff in areas held by Italy.
Additionally, cooperative medical personnel siphoned off supplies from hospitals
in the occupied territory to support the partisans. By mid-1942, the partisans had liberated significant sections of
Slovenia and began creating a rudimentary infrastructure including courts and
social and medical services.
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Even in these politically improving times during the
war, medical
services were still delivered secretly in clandestine forest cabins and
underground shelters. The support services already put in place picked up speed
when Italy surrendered in September of 1943. In their retreat, the Italians left
behind medical supplies that served as starter-kits for new Slovene field
hospitals.
An additional boost to the partisan hospitals was made by the
Slovenian medical staff released from Italian concentration camps after Italy
capitulated--many who joined the liberation cause. But it was only weeks after
Italy's withdrawal from the area before the Germans began filling the vacuum
left by the fleeing Italians and the German forces established strongholds in
the briefly and somewhat liberated Slovenia. The Slovenian momentum for having a
more open medical service had to again be redirected into underground operations such
as Franja.
The head-scratcher for me at the Franja
Hospital was the Italian presence. Almost all of the physician's notes and some of the thank-you's
from family members were in Italian. In addition, the second largest group of
patients at the highly secret Slovenian partisan hospital, after Slovenes, were
Italians--the enemy. The last page in a little book we bought in the next town
finally had the answers. It was the Italian, anti-fascists division in
Yugoslavia's partisan army that generated the Italian patients and subsequent
letters of gratitude. And presumably the medical notes were in Italian because most of the
staff had been trained during the Italian occupation of Slovenia and Slovene was
an outlawed language.
The One That Got Away
We'd left Franja
Partisan Hospital with more questions than answers and felt very lucky when we
found a booklet in the museum of another town than filled in some big gaps in
the story. That experience was yet another reminder as to how much of one's
satisfaction when traveling is the result of chance events, regardless of the level of planning.
And it was in this same Cerkno/Franja area
that one tourist opportunity got away from us, which was visiting
the 1995 discovery site of a Neanderthal bone flute. We learned that we were near the Divje Babe cave where
the flute was
found but, not surprisingly, the cave wasn't in easy biking range.
We pondered whether to make the extra effort required to see
the site and decided against it. In previous years we'd already been to the museum
where it was housed and either saw it or a replica of the inches-long flute
dated to 45,000-82,000 years ago. We decided that the cave where it was found probably
wouldn't be much different than other prehistoric caves we'd seen. Luckily, a few days later, a regional museum had yet another replica and
a demonstration video on how the flute might have been made so missing the cave
felt even less important.
Idrija's Mercury Mine
New Risks to Consider
Risk management is an ongoing, secondary topic for us as
travelers, a topic that rises to the surface more frequently when we cross the
line into or beyond the old Eastern Block countries. "To go or not go" to the
small city of Idrija revolved around the issue of mercury contamination. We used
our electronic encyclopedia to brush up on our
heavy metal chemistry and weighed the
sight-seeing "pro's" against the long term health "con's".
We were reminded that being liquid at room temperature is what makes mercury
both so dangerous and commercially so special.
Pro's & Con's
Intriguing Idrija is the site of one of a handful of large
mercury mines in the world, it being second only to a site in Spain. It produced
13% of the world's marketed mercury during its more than 500 years in operation.
It ceased to
be profitable in the 1970's when health and environmental issues eroded the
metal's market price; the mine was finally decommissioned in the the 1990's. We'd
seen several salt and coal mines and even a flint mine, but had to admit that a mercury mine would be
different.
Our guide book was unabashedly enthusiastic about what
sounded like open (and therefore toxic) exhibits of mercury in the museum and
additionally, it recommended a visit to the old mine itself where free beads of mercury
were clinging to the walls. We'd learned that our guide books were quite helpful
in knowing what parts of town to avoid after dark, but had found their
expertise about more subtle health issues to be wildly deficient.
Being acutely aware that US
standards of consumer safety are not the norm in Europe, especially in Eastern
Europe, we pondered if visitor
safety was a high enough priority at these Idrija tourist sites. The memories
were still too fresh from seeing an engaging fountain spewing mercury in a
Barcelona museum a couple of years ago--an exhibit that we
physically distanced ourselves from as soon as we understood what it was.
Somewhat reassured by seeing that the Idrija museum had received an EU award in 1997,
we decided to detour to the city and its museum. Once there, we'd cautiously assess the
situation at the mine before committing to a visit.
Understanding the Hazards
Visiting the mine itself turned out
to be the high point of our Idrija detour as our extremely knowledgeable young guide was a
straight-shooter, unlike the guide at the museum. The youthful museum guide
had said "Of course it is all safe now, just look at me." We had been
looking at him and decided he didn't look all that healthy even before he made
the comment. But the guide at the mine itself didn't rely on personal
testimonials. There he explained the impressive mine ventilation system
that we could feel ourselves and we were pleased to hear that the mine's air
quality was continuously monitored. And while in the mine we'd noticed that most
of the rock walls were faced with a barrier material, including clear plastic
sheets over the free beads
of mercury shimmering on the rock surface.
The stories told at the museum and at the mine about the past
were a fright however, reminding us that it wasn't silly to be concerned. Early
miners would die from toxicity in less than 10 years of work; later they
usually survived until their early 40's. Advancing technology increased the
range of their illnesses from simple mercury poisoning to silicosis of the lungs
due to the fine rock powder created by the automated equipment. And what
wasn't known until after the mine operations ceased was that they all would
have died from radon exposure if the mercury and its byproducts hadn't done the
job first.
Hearing that the town school had recently been torn-down because of high
levels of radon and of the centuries of mercury contamination of the river made us want to
keep moving however. Surely the city's main water supply was safe at its origin
but breaks in the distribution system could result in contaminated water at the
tap. We quieted our fears about the local water supply by buying bottled water that night for cooking and drinking
and continued our aversion to buying local fish. (Idrija's mercury contamination
extends to the Adriatic as the Idrija River is a tributary of the Soča
River that dumps in at the bay of Trieste,
Italy.)
A Bit of Mine History
Amazingly, about 30% of the mercury taken from this mine was
free-flowing, liquid beads of mercury--the discovery of which in 1490 about 3' underground
lead to the beginning of the mining industry. The remainder of the mercury was
extracted from cinnabar ore.
In the early days, the bright red cinnabar contained
about 50% mercury and seams could be traced visually by the miners. As the quality of
the remaining ore decreased, it eventually contained less than 1% mercury. As
operations shifted to mining poorer quality ore, core samples from potential
seams
evaluated chemically in the lab replaced on-the-spot assessment by the
miners themselves.
Much to our relief, our exceptional mine guide also minimized
the fairytales that we usually endure on these mine visits and instead shared what was in the hearts of the miners that lead to the often tiresome
tales. Our guide commented that the miners really did believe that an elf-like
creature inhabited the mine and that as a sign of respect, they would often
leave a bit of food for him. It was their way of acknowledging that they were
intruding on the territory of another being and showing some humility in hopes
of some consideration in return. He
also commented that part of the fervent tradition of praying in the mine
chapel before descending to the working levels was the fear of dying deep in the mine. It wasn't
the dying that was so bad, but it was dying closer to hell that was the risky business. The
miners
were concerned that they wouldn't make it to heaven if they were too far from
the surface of the earth.
Ahead of Their Times
The Slovenes generally strike us as being a notch above the
pack and their early, aggressive forestry management system designed to keep the mining
industry in timber seemed centuries ahead of its time. Black Forest mine, glass,
and timber industries vanished because of deforestation, which is an often-told
story in Europe. But the Slovenes made their forests a renewable resource
shortly after the mining industry took off in the 1500's. In keeping with that awareness, we
also read that Slovenia established the first national forest in Europe, which
was a little more than 100 years ago.
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Heading Out
After Idrija, we had one more tourist site to see in
Slovenia, which was Postojna Cave. Much of western Slovenia is a karst plateau
of limestone in which the process of erosion has created fissures, sinkholes,
underground streams, and caverns. The plateau is an old seabed of marine animal
shells that was uplifted and then transformed by water percolating through the
soil that had become mildly acidic in its downward journey. It was this
carbonic acid chemical erosion process that produced hundreds of miles of
caverns in the country, some with spectacular stalagmites, stalactites,
curtains, and other formations.
Our guide book was correct in that Postojna Cave was over-priced
and overly touristy. And despite suffering those insults, no-photos were allowed
to remember the experience. But we did enjoy the chance to again see the
astounding products of one of nature's many slow processes. And at least at this
cave the managers resisted the temptation that overwhelmed some Czech Republic
cave operators, which was to 'enhance' the experience with multi-colored
lights..
From Postojna we'd make our dash to the Croatia border for
our 4th visit to that country, though once again covering mostly different
territory than before.
Where We Are Now, October 7, 2007: Brindisi, Italy
We and our bikes, left Dubrovnik, Croatia at 11pm on
October 2 and at 8am the next morning our ferry docked in Bari, Italy on that
country's east coast. We are currently working our way around the southern
"boot" of Italy, which is all new territory for us.
Bill reports that by the time we push off from the western,
mainland at the port of Reggio di Calabria to go to Messina, Sicily, we
will have almost biked around the entire perimeter of Italy in our 7 years of
cyclotouring (as well as zigzagged across much of the interior). Sicily will be
our last biking destination for 2007. We may linger in Germany a week or so
before flying home to visit a German couple we met n Spain a few years ago.
At last, we are enjoying some of the best summer weather
we've had all year.
Love,
Barb
