Author: Vera Stepygina
Holiday makers of the hospitable Adriatic, even for the most thermophilic of you, for sure, there comes a day when you want to freeze under the air conditioner with a glass of cold proseco and finally relax from the sun, heat and noise on the beach. It is at such a moment that you need to gather your courage, get in the car and go on a comfortable journey to the cool, dark and damp – to the amazing, and perhaps the main attraction of Slovenia – Postojnsku-Pit, the largest cave in the world, open to tourists.
Despite the not very euphonious name, Postojnska Yama is an adventure that is stunning in its grandiosity and beauty, although it will start very prosaically – with the rental of an audio guide in your native language (we must pay tribute, the accompaniment in Russian is perfect!) and from the queue to the train-trolley, which will take you to the very belly of the dungeon. Do not worry, you will not be bored waiting for boarding the train – – dynamically moving forward tourists are all, without exception, puzzled by dressing in warm clothes extracted from backpacks. Jackets, socks, trousers and even hats-all this will come in handy in just a few minutes, because the temperature in the caves is kept around ten degrees Celsius all year round, and you will spend almost two hours there. After warming up, you will take your place in the trolley. You only have a few seconds to worry about your possible claustrophobia.: as soon as the train starts moving, you will never think about it again. At first, you will feel like Indiana Jones, rushing through the narrow catacombs of the Temple of Destiny, famously fitting into sharp turns, risking to blow your head off on another low stone vault. And later, when the first “Oh!!!” is slightly released, the beauty surrounding you will tactfully call for concentration, slowness, quiet conversations and unhurried viewing. It is in this mood that you will spend an hour and a half walking around the cave – each of its “halls” will be different, not like the previous one, each will have its own story, its own hiding place. The caves will be huge (accommodating ten thousand people at the same time) and small, like a Chinese box with a surprise inside. Here from the ceiling hang snow-white thin strings of spaghetti-such elegant stalactites you will not see anywhere else. In another room – a unique white and pure stalagmite in the form of a diamond. In the third, a huge crystal chandelier looks like a ghost of the balls that were once held here by the Austrian aristocracy. In the next cave, pay attention to the soot marks on the walls-a memory of the Second World War, during which the caves turned into an important strategic object. But in this hall, let yourself sing your favorite song softly – feel like an artist of La Scala or another opera company that regularly gives concerts here. Carefully walk over the Russian Bridge over the abyss, at the bottom of which, according to the guide, a dragon sleeps, listen benignly to the murmur of the underground river Pivka, because it is thanks to her efforts and hard work that Postojnska Yama appeared. The tour time will fly by unnoticed, but not quickly. In general, it seems to be frozen here, frozen in elegant and intricate forms created by nature over millions of years. Another silent witness to this is the blind proteus, one of the oldest creatures on earth. Before you get out of the big cave and go to explore the local fauna in a small one, located nearby, send a postcard” from the depths of the Slovenian ores ” to your home-the proteus on the postmark of the post office, located deep underground, will become one of the most interesting souvenirs that remind you of the Postojna Pit.
To get to know the “baby dragon” or “human fish” proteus, as well as other amazing creatures that inhabit the ancient world of the dungeon – continue your tour in a small cave. Here, in addition to another beautifully recorded audio guide, you will be helped by the lanterns of cavers, which delight children, and free adults from the need to poke at another aquarium with their finger and ask “well, don’t you see?”. It becomes more interesting when you realize that some of the animals presented in the cave are so-called “endemics”, that is, they can only be found in the Postojna Pit and nowhere else.
After cooling down the heat and heat under the ground, warming up again during lunch and the subsequent visit to the souvenir shop (unfortunately, nothing more interesting than the already sent postcard will not be offered to you), do not rush to leave Postojna completely. Just a few kilometers away, and before you – a real pearl of the Middle Ages, Predyamny castle, built right in a high rock and crowning the entrance to the cave. Here you can do without a guide, especially since in the Middle Ages, customs and customs were very specific, as some wax figures, sitting, lying and hanging here and there, remind you. But the inspection of the interiors, household items and household utensils of those times is fascinating, especially if you come to the castle in the evening, when the setting sun gives the galleries and corridors an exciting twilight, and the tourist Babylon sat on the buses and set off towards the sea-to hotels, beaches, sun beds and drinks with ice. Walking through the half-empty castle, it’s time to come up with and tell the children a fairy tale about the Beautiful Princess who lives here and the Terrible Dragon from the cave, about love and suffering, about longing and loyalty. Let them have something to keep quiet about on the way home – silence in the car will be a great bonus to your unforgettable trip to Slovenia.
