Slovenia plays its Trump card
MOST of the passengers I meet on my frequent flights to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, are there to explore the city’s charming cobbled streets, or else they are heading further afield to pretty Lake Bled or the magnificent medieval seaside town of Piran.
But that could change next year. The country has a new attraction – an industrial town sitting on the bank of the country’s longest river. While much of Europe nervously awaits the inauguration of Donald Trump as the next US President, most people in Sevnica are expecting a huge boost in tourism.
Sevnica, about 50 miles from the capital, is where The Donald’s third wife, Melania, was born. She may have left the town as a teenager, but that’s not going to stop local entrepreneurs from celebrating her rise to the White House by renaming their most expensive pancakes, pizzas and cakes after Melania, and dusting them with edible gold.
Sevnica’s sights include the five-storey apartment block in the Naselje Heroja Maroka area where Melania and her elder sister, Ines, grew up, and the white villa that their parents, Amalija and Viktor, built in the hills.
The town’s main tourist attraction is undoubtedly the castle, which offers superb views across the old town and St Nicholas Church to the River Sava. The castle features baroque and Renaissance interiors, four towers, and a fresco in a disguised Lutheran chapel (it was built to look like a farm building to hide its real purpose).
My main reason for visiting Slovenia over the years has been to sample its top-quality wines. Slovenia’s varieties may not be as well known as those produced in neighbouring Italy and Austria, but the country has been making wines since before the Romans arrived.
The city of Maribor boasts the world’s oldest living vine (about 450 years) and it has produced wine for VIPs such as Bill Clinton. Sevnica is in the heart of Posavje, the smallest of Slovenia’s three wine regions. But it is of interest to tourists like me because it is the only one that produces more bottles of red than white.
The star grape here is blaufrankisch, which was probably brought to the region when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Sevnica Castle’s own vineyard uses this grape and the castle even hosts an annual blaufrankisch festival in June.
If beer is more to your taste, head to the spa town of Lasko, about a 30-minute drive north of Sevnica. Every July the town and a local brewery host a beer and flower festival, which is a great way to attract new tourists. And in the nearby town of Zalec, officials recently spent about £300,000 on a fountain spewing five different beers.
If you’re feeling a bit peckish after a glass or two of the local brew, crepes are ubiquitous in Slovenia, filled with local honey or walnuts, or smothered with chocolate spread. As a homage to Melania, a restaurant at Lisca, a town about six miles from Sevnica, has pimped its pancakes with the finest American-inspired ingredients: blueberries, a bourbon and vanilla filling, ice cream, cream – and edible gold dust.
It’s surely a pancake fit for a First Lady… if Melania ever decides to return to her roots.