Our time in Croatia for now has come to an end, and we are crossed back over into Slovenia after buying our vignette, so we could drive on the toll roads. Or rather the one toll road we were able to drive on, since it’s all back roads where we were going.
First stop was Predjama Castle which is so unique having been built inside a cave. You can explore the castle museum, and then also tour the surrounding caves. We are more of a ‘ruin’ type of castle explorer, and while we’ve been in castles that have turned into museums, we find them pretty similar. So we skipped the inside of the castle tour, and we skipped the caves. I’m not a huge fan of wandering around dark creepy caves, and the bats were hibernating still, so the tour was not really running fully. Either way, the grounds and the castle were so pretty. I even met some bebiessss.
The next stop and main event of the day consisted of Kevin missing a detour sign and driving down a very windy road we probably shouldn’t have and he read the reviews of this place that warned of the windy road, so instead parked at the top of the cliff where we had to hike down and up vs a five minute walk to and from the parking lot next to it. It turns out that windy road was the road we shouldn’t have driven down, and the parking lot right next to the place was probably fine. Oh well — it was only 92 stories down to the site and 92 stories back up to the car. And not just spread out over a long way, it was just straight up and straight down. No big deal.
The entire way the only thing we kept thinking about is — what if there is no one there. We are travelling in shoulder season, and while things have been open for the most part, there is definitely a tourist season which is not May. Literally if we climbed all the way down and there was nobody there, we were going to be so sad.
Luckily about halfway we started to smell smoke, which must have been a chimney. We made it down and the guy is there waiting for us! He shared that his busy time is in August, and he doesn’t even get one person a day on most other days they are open. We looked at the guestbook, and the last entry was from March. Such a shame, because it was such a fun piece of history.
Towards the end of WWII, the anti-nazi propaganda was increasing, and as Hitler was not happy about this, the press had to be very secretive. So hidden 92 stories down a cliffside in Slovenia was a printing press that would print anti-war propaganda and had the newspapers transported out to the public. They would print about 8,000 newspapers a day for almost two years, before the war ended.
The craziest part is the printing press had to get down into this space somehow, and it made the same trek we did all those years ago. This thing is massive, so that had to have been quite an adventure. Once the press was down there, they built the buildings around it, and ultimately lived down there for the whole period. Sleeping on the floor, washing their clothes in a big caudron over the stove, etc. There was a nearby farmhouse that supported the efforts, and so once the newspapers and flyers were printed, they would be transported to that house to fold, sort and distribute.
There were three times that they were almost caught in the two years — the first was actually when they were trying to acquire the press. It was hidden inside a milk crate truck, and the nazis stopped it as a suspicious delivery from Italy. As they were getting ready to unload the truck to look through it, the air raid sirens went off and all the soldiers had to scatter to their places. The driver then just drove away with the press hidden underneath all the milk.
The second time is when they searched the farmhouse, and the family burned all the paper and proof before they were caught. And the third time, the nazis were sitting up on the top of the cliff looking down searching, so they shut down operations for three days and hid in a nearby cave just in case they found the press.
So walking through these buildings was really a sight to behold. They are essentially time capsules left exactly as they were when it was abandoned, and you can still smell the ink. They had one building which was where all the printing letter boxes are with all the letters and the picture stamps, which they of course had to make by hand when there was a news article that needed a picture on it. The next building had the two printing presses, which still work! We were able to see both of them in action, and even were able to walk away with something printed on the smaller one. There was a kitchen building and then also a cutting/binding building. All of these were just big enough to fit the machines and the workers, which was upwards of 40 people there at a time. They were all well known people who had worked at other printing presses or media companies, and once this press was no longer needed, they went on to work for other companies again, as their secret operation meant their identifies were secret until after the war ended.
Thank goodness this place was open, cause the hike would have been miserable, but also because it was such an interesting place to visit. The trek back up the windy path was not as bad as it sounds, though we will see how our calves feel in the morning to make that final call. Plus my heart rate only hit 170…
Now the real fun began, trying to get back out of this place without going back down the road we shouldn’t have taken. First option ended up on a forest road with a sign that said ‘at your own risk’, so we turned back around and ended up down a different road that was so beyond windy and gravel and just all around not the most fun to drive through. Thinking we just had to get to the next road and it would be better, and it never really ended up getting better. A short period of paved roads, and then back to windy ones again this time with rain. Did I mention this was all switchbacks up and down the side of mountains? So much fun.
We did make it to our next stop by dinner time, and we are looking forward to our time here. We are settled into our cabin surrounded by the Julian Alps and have befriended the neighbor’s cats.
