26: Bovec // A Very Thirsty River

The beautiful centre of Bovec // © John Bills

I know a drunk when I see one. Cyan shirt, navy jacket, flat hair, arms tethered to knees like a marionette left alone too long. He sat in the bar for a good while, a long time, before anyone came to serve him. He showed impressive fortitude and patience for a drunk, and for that, I can only commend him. He even took his time with his stout, savouring it and enjoying it, rarely moving his taught arms from the sanctuary of his knees. Eyes looking at nothing except directly forward.

All of this played out many hours after I arrived in Bovec, a town in Slovenia’s Soča Valley that exists to be gawped at. A mountain town defined by glacial lakes and picturesque views. That is all that needs to be said about it, in truth. It is beautiful. That alone is a reason to pay attention to it, reason alone to make plans to visit.

It transpired that the man in front of me was far more inebriated than ol’ sturdy arms. Armed with a sleeveless jacket and a perennial frown, his dark brows furrowed intently when the waiter approached and asked if he wanted anything else. It took a long while, but the simple words ‘same again’ eventually snaked out of his larynx. I’m not entirely sure if he knew what he was ordering. Ol’ sturdy arms was still sitting to attention.

The Soča Valley may well be the most beautiful pocket of this most beautiful country, boozers be damned. The eponymous river dominates and rightly so, a cyan-tinted arrow to the heart of anyone with a pulse. The river is known as the ‘Emerald Beauty’ but its colour is far lighter than the emerald, closer to turquoise than green or blue. Branding aside, the river is just about the most arresting sight in a country full of arresting sights.

I’d arrived in Bovec in the early afternoon, as the sun was attempting to reach its peak but struggling to hit the heights of the weeks prior. The heights of Bovec may well have hindered, what with this little town being situated some 454metres into the sky.

You descend towards Bovec, or at least I did, via the quite frankly ridiculous Vršić Pass. Ridiculously difficult to pronounce first and foremost (the girls getting on the bus ahead of me called it Vitch), but difficult to comprehend at heart. This is the highest mountain pass in Slovenia, a serpentine-filled road that snakes its way up 1,611 metres before mirroring its route on the way down, a drive that only the confident and the foolish should attempt. The man at the wheel of the bus was a little bit of both, negotiating the hairpin turns of the road with the experience of a veteran and the interest of a novice, but we’ve been through this already.

This was all hours before the drunks in the Thirsty River hostel, a brewery, bar and hostel all in one. I wasn’t exactly free of inebriation myself, but my faculties were well under control in comparison to the two loons on tables around me. I’d spent much of the afternoon walking around the town and its surroundings, the result of making pleasant conversation upon arrival and asking for directions to the river. Go down, basically. Head to the airport and go down, you’ll get there eventually.

That is exactly what I did, although the ‘go down’ involved walking through dense shrubbery and a secret path that may or may not have been the same as the one Ofelia wandered so cautiously down. That ten-year-old was fearless, but this 34-year-old was convinced that death by bear was inevitable, a weirdly common avenue of thought for a relatively intelligent young man. There are bears in the Soča Valley, so the fear this time was at least vaguely acceptable.

There are bears here, but the history of this river is stained with blood. World War I wasn’t a conflict known for its congenial conditions and the brutality of the Soča was in the top tier of the many battles held under that umbrella. Officially speaking, the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies fought viciously over an important bit of land, but the 12 battles went beyond that. From May 1915 until October 1917, the Soča ran red with blood.

Not today though, far from it. On this 21st-century summer’s day, the river was every bit the turquoise dream that is marketed as, although that wasn’t the right shade. The water was luminous in its insistence on staying the lighter side of blue. Was it bluebell? Minor blue? Tiffany blue? Yeah, Tiffany blue seems the closest, an ethereal hue that reminded me of toothpaste, for whatever reason. The sort of tone that made addicts out of the sober, tincture in pigmented form. I stared, and stared, and stared. Seconds, minutes, hours.

Not days though, although it wasn’t out of the question. I wandered back through bear territory to the hostel, eager to sample the many beers that they brewed on the site. The hostel was more than willing to oblige, giving me ample understanding of each brew before enthusiastically bringing them to me as I proofread the final draft of Donkeys and Men, wiling away a day that was tempered by arguably the most beautiful part of Slovenia and two reassuringly ordinary drunks.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the morning. I wandered the town centre in the early hours before almost everything had opened its doors, but even the most enthusiastic of Bovec lovers will admit that the town is small, to say the least. Less than 2,000 people live in this town, its actual population coming closer to the 1192 that marks the first year it was mentioned. For somewhere surrounded by history, Bovec got off largely scot-free in that regard, although the violence of the Isonzo is hardly scot-free. I walked up to the Church of St Ulrich, although there wasn’t much to see outside of a Neo-Romanesque structure with occasional Gothic accentuations. A policeman sauntered into view, strangely wary of my presence but disinterested all the while. A group of German cyclists waited patiently for a cafe to open, and I slowly moved to do the same.