The train
from Ljubljana towards Jesenice took us to the small, unmanned
station at Radovljica. Our plan was to get a taxi from there to the
even smaller town of Brezje where there is the Slovenian national
shrine to Mary, “Help of Christians”. We are not Catholics but
there is a museum of nativity scenes there. Adrienne has a collection
of 50 cribs from our travels around the world and there cannot be
many museums dedicated to her slightly odd collecting habit. We had
to go. The way out of the station was up a dark, grey, damp, graffiti
covered concrete staircase that brought us to the bottom of a steep,
narrow road. There was no hope of finding a taxi stand. Bad start.
But then I
saw two small signs “Tourist Information” and “Old Town
Square”. Well, that was worth a look. A short uphill walk brought
us to Linhartov Trg” (Linhart square), which turned out to be a
town square dating from the 15th century. It is hardly a
secret, it is UNESCO protected, but we had no idea it was there. It
is a paved square lined by old townhouses rendered in painted in
shades of cream with red tiled roofs. Municipal buildings form one
side of the square, traders on the other.
We scrapped
our plans for an early afternoon train back to the capital. The
tourist information office got us by bus and a short walk through the
Slovenian countryside to Brezje and the Nativity Museum. Who would
have thought that you could fill 10 rooms with nativity scenes of all
ages and origins? I liked most, the cribs from the Americas: the holy
couple as porcelain flamenco dancers from Peru, a nativity scene in
the palm of a hand from Mexico and a dread-locked infant from
Jamaica.
Back in
Radovlica, people were busy fixing green garlands over the nave of St
Peter’s Church, while others arranged white flowers round the altar
ready for a wedding.
In the
other corner of the square was a museum of Pharmacy and Alchemy that
had only been open for 14 days. €4
each was repaid by a beautifully designed and interesting small
museum. It is an enterprise started by Milan Plešec,
a pharmacist, and his daughter Anna, who sold us our tickets. Mr
Plešec had bought half of the
building that had almost fallen into disuse as a nunnery, only 3 nuns
remained. I asked what he had done with them. Anna laughed and told
me they had been moved to other religious houses.
The origins
of chemistry as a modern science were set out in the basement. Even
though I studied chemistry at school and knew it had its origins in
alchemy, I did not know that “Chemi” was the Egyptian word for
the black earth of the Nile Valley. This was adapted by the Arabs to
Al Chemy and thence by way of the age of reason to the science of
chemistry. Upstairs was a collection of instruments
Mr Plešec
had displayed his collection of antiquarian books, pharmacopoeia and
an Histoire des Drogues. It was quite right that these fragile and
valuable books should be beneath glass but I would have loved to turn
their pages.
The square
has a few snack bars with nothing much to eat. We were rescued by a
friendly fellow tourist who directed us to Gostilna Augustin where we
had a long lunch of grilled local trout on a terrace overlooking the
Sava Valley. The train we planned to return on came and went. We
didn’t care.
Pausing
only to admire a chocolate chaise longue commemorating a recent
festival, we took one of the half-hourly buses back to Ljubljana. All
right, it wasn’t really chocolate just made to look like it.
Notes
Museum of
Pharmacy and Alchemy. Linhartov Trg 28, 4240 Radovlijca, Slovenia. Mioba.sp@gmail.com
The best
way to explore this area might be by the Bled Hop on-Hop Off
bus: Bled Hop on Hop off bus
Gostilna
Augustin Gostline Augustin
There is a
free guided tour of Radovljica every Tuesday at 10:00 am
I travelled
to Slovenia with the excellent PTG Tours https://www.ptg.co.uk/
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