Thursday 12 July 2018

Rogla

After five, yes five, weeks we finally got our kitchen sink installed... and promptly celebrated by making for the mountains the next day, for a week-long PhD workshop, with our eldest child joining us from Boston mid-way through.



Rogla the area is a mountain peak in Zreče Pohorje (approximately ze-rech-ay po-haw-ye), north east Slovenia; we stayed at Unitur Rogla, a ski resort on the Pohorje mountain. And we couldn´t get there too soon for me, after all these heatwaves sweeping Europe, because the website promised me it never got past around 23 degrees up in the mountains. When we arrived, it was, thankfully, pretty much like an average British summer day: jacket weather, beautiful views, crisp air, and one happy lady.

Even though Rogla is mainly a ski resort (and apparently one of Slovenia´s most popular), there is plenty to do this time of year. We were told it is more a weekend destination in the summer, and the week was pretty quiet: apart from the onslaught of mathematicians, there were a few athletic teams, a small children´s summer camp, and older hikers, sometimes with grandchildren in tow (grandparents are often caregivers here).



The toddler´s favourite place to play was the children´s village, not because of the cute little houses, but because it was set on a large wooden platform, and, with the mini homes, made an impromptu crazy football course. Plus, on the way up, he got to see actual youth and professional football teams practising on the field because this is also apparently a standard place to go train. (I don´t know whether that is because of the altitude or merely because they built the facilities for extra income.) I think his next favourite thing was seeing the cow (compete with Alpine bell) and two calves who were on hand to be picturesque as you walked around the complex. Or maybe it was the huge breakfast and dinner buffets. He is the sort of child who, if you try to circumvent tantrums by offering, ˝Do you want a or b?˝, will say c and throw a fit. But here he could have whatever he wanted and he ate like he had hollow legs. Things he would never eat if I put them on his plate, he stuffed down, from veggie burgers to chicken, fish fillets and sausages. ˝I ate a PIG!˝ he announced proudly at breakfast.



Hiking trails are advertised as a feature of Rogla... to which all I can say is British readers should get down on their knees right now and thank the Rambler´s Association for championing our rights of way because, although the landscape was beautiful, the trails were poorly marked and the descriptions of the walks often ambiguous. On Monday, we took the ˝short˝ children´s nature trail, and I foolishly decided we did not need the toddler´s backpack carrier, which was the cue for much dragging of feet and whining that turned into tears and tantrums. The rest of the time was spent avoiding as many wood ants as possible. I wish I had remembered to take a photo of the giant ant hills that dotted the forest, but you will have to believe me that there were trillions upon trillions of them, swarming along the paths. At one point, the toddler plonked himself down on the ground in the middle of a trail, and the ants just kept going, right over him. At least this was not Mississippi and these were not fire ants, or we would have been dinner.



Somehow not deterred, and because I believe in healthy, fresh air activities, on Tuesday, we set out (with the backpack carrier), for a 2-3 hour walk, ostensibly past some ancient peat bogs and a lake. We began with a little diversion, unable to find the first starting point. After figuring it out, we made it down the hill to Pesek, where we stopped at the Alpine Hut restaurant for a drink and their specialty, blueberry strudel. And where the toddler tried to run away from some wood ants and fell smack on his face on the concrete, getting the second, but presumably not last, black eye of his life. He was a real trooper about it, too. We followed the road from Pesek until we got to the bit where we were supposed to follow cart tracks up the hill to the bogs. We started up the faint, overgrown tracks, which soon petered out. After bumbling uphill for  a bit in the same direction, we found another track leading to the right as stated and trudged on... until the Alpine Hut was in sight again. Maybe we should have cut our losses then and walked back. But no, we were game. We retraced our steps to another track. trudged uphill until we found a boggy marked trail... but the promised lake was nowhere in sight. Eventually we joined another marked trail down the hill because, as my daughter said, it had to lead somewhere, and we were going through what looked like the grassy plains of the hike description. An hour of trudging (with a break for food and for the toddler to ˝pee on wood ants˝ because revenge is sweet) brought us to a road - hurrah! According to the directions, we turned left for the hotel. Just to make sure, we asked the man sitting at the crossroads, ˝Rogla?˝  He pointed above our heads to the sign that pointed back the way we had come. I think that´s when adrenaline set in, because somehow I made it all the way back uphill for that hour, with Alcuin on my back, from where we picked up the path we knew would take us back to the Alpine Hut (time to stop and eat the last of the food), and then uphill almost another hour to the hotel. A total of five hours. I almost didn´t argue when my daughter said she refused to go on another hike that week. But at least we could say that, technically, we never got lost.

The swimming pool and sauna complex were a welcome break for tired muscles on Wednesday. There were six different saunas to choose from, including Turkish, Finnish, infra red, and one that had changing coloured lighting for some reason, with a plunge pool and jacuzzi to cool off in between. I am always torn over European saunas. On the one hand, I really enjoy them as a health and beauty treatment. On the other, I don´t go in for nudity. Usually, my strategy is to go in with my towel wrapped firmly around me, find a spot in a corner and close my eyes so I don´t have to see anything I had rather not. Here, thankfully, it seemed routine to ignore the no swimsuit sign and stay partially clothed. Teenage daughter took her babysitting fees in the form of an hour-long massage, which I think she appreciated but only said made her feel greasy and tired.



And the conference... well, they say that Americans work hard and play hard, but Slovenes know how to party Slavic style. (And, if anyone official is reading, I am pausing to point out that I paid the conference fee to engage quite legally in all activities.) Moreover, in Europe, free flowing free alcohol is pretty much a human right. So there was a fairly sedate reception the first night, a pause the second, an all-night pancake party the next (which I did not attend after the five hour hike). Then came music and dancing with a band flown in from Dublin. Put together a bunch of maths students, limitless beer and the Tetris song, and, well, you have something you can be glad for everyone´s sake that I did not video. But I even got my husband to dance with me for the first time in years, (NOT to the Tetris song, he would only swing), and we were not absolutely terrible.



 Only then, on Thursday, was it the actual banquet night. Five courses set out in one buffet, wine bottles (plural) on the tables and beer on tap. Slovene food should get its own blog entry at some point, but highlights included cheese dumplings, barley, crushed potatoes with onions, and apple and blueberry strudel. Whiskey and blueberry liqueur rounded off the feast and then it was more music and dancing. The band from Dublin again, plus a Slovenian band. To which I can only say, if you have not heard Billy Ray Cyrus´s Achy Breaky Heart in Slovene, you have not lived (or at least not lived in Slovenia). We slipped off before twelve, but it went on for several hours more. The next morning, several people were shuffling around the breakfast buffet, and my elder daughter and I caught a bunch of students lying around in the sauna instead of attending the final talks.



At the end of the week, my husband pointed out that next year, there is another Slovenian conference right before Rogla. I looked him in the eye. ˝I wouldn´t survive both,˝ I said.

But this is why I did not drink too much - having to negotiate these stairs each night.

Touristy stuff: Here is Rogla´s official website. I have noticed that Slovene websites in general tend to have a little less information and be a little less organised than most US or British sites, but most of the information is there (I was a little annoyed when it turned out that ˝laundry room available˝ meant a paid service, not a launderette). Another time (when we could come in our own car), we would bring more of our own supplies to avoid some high prices in the resort supermarket. And use GPS walking maps.

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