Ten Hidden Treasures of Kamnik, Slovenia — Part one
We tourists tend to target the obvious. Famous, iconic monuments that we know from postcards. Legendary restaurants that we’ve spotted on TV shows or read about in foodie magazines. Sites where favorite films were made. As an art history professor, I see a parallel in the way we study art. There are a few hundred paintings and sculptures that appear in just about every Art History 101 course and textbook, and they are great. But for the curious, wise, intrepid explorer, someone who avoids cliches and looks outside-the-box, the question is: what else have you got? There are wonderful artworks beyond the traditional Top 100, just as there are sites of touristic interest beyond the Eiffel Tower, the Vegas Strip, the Berlin Wall and Madame Tussaud’s in London. I’m the sort of tourist who seeks what are so often described by travel writers as “hidden gems.” In fact they usually aren’t hidden, they are just not standing up in the crowd, waving frantically and shouting for you to come over and see them.
The entire country of Slovenia is one such “hidden gem.” It’s literally been called just that in countless travel articles I’ve encountered, as if the writers are fresh out of descriptives. It takes a worldly, knowledgeable, proactive, interested traveler to hear how wonderful Slovenia is and to seek it out. But even when you get there, most stick to the popular path of staying in Ljubljana and doing a day trip to Lake Bled…and often that’s it. Now I love Ljubljana and Bled. But there are levels of touristic verve. Level one is the tourist who recognizes that Slovenia is worth visiting — and inevitably loves it when they do come. It takes a level up to explore beyond the Ljubljana-Bled fulcrum. In answer to the question of “What else you got?” I would reply: “The town of Kamnik.”
Kamnik, where I, as an expat American, have lived for around a decade, is an even more hidden facet of the hidden gem that is Slovenia. Slovenes know it as a charming, beautiful small town of some 10,000 souls, nestled at the foot of the Kamnik-Savinja Alps range. They know some of the treasures around the town but still in the township, like the mountain plateau Velika Planina, the magnificent botanical garden Arboretum, the magnificent former royal hunting grounds of mountainous Kamniška Bistrica. But even they aren’t sure what to see in the town of Kamnik. They come because they know how lovely it is — it is often used as the setting for films, thanks to its postcard-perfect center — and they enjoy their visit. But they barely scratch the surface.
It was only when I moved here and spent a lot of time researching, asking locals what to see, that I realized that most Kamnik residents also don’t know of the treasures in their midst. That is when I began writing about Kamnik, not only for foreigners, but also for locals, who smile with delight when they learn of something wonderful that has been around them all along, and which they never knew of or thought to visit.
#mojaslovenija #ifeelsLOVEnia
Noah Charney
