Lokev to Castelmonte to Korbarid - Sun, May 27th

James and I went throught he Vilencia Cave. We were the only two people to show up for the tour. It was not as commercialized as Postonja Cave and Raddi and Ludwig were very excited guides. After the tour Raddi gave us some wine to drink and then drove us for a little hike where we got to see some markers from 1818 that claimed certain towns in certain directions of the marker (big rock with city namees carved in it). Then he showed us some rocks where the wind and snow had blown holes through the rocks and drip troughs in the rocks where the rain made little troughs in the rocks.

Next they drove us to a rock mine in Lipica where we got to see the mining activities.

Then onto a resturant in Lokev that Raddi told us about. The resturant has been in the same family for 400 years. We got the local specialty, the ham that is sliced so thin that it melts in your mouth.

We thought we would try Italy again, only this time Castelmonte, a monestary to the northeast of Cividale. This time instead of really fast, scary drivers we were stuck behind lots of grandmas and grandpas driving reallz slow. By the time we got close to Castlemonte we decided not to even stop but to get the heck out of Italy and go back to wonderful Slovenia.

We made it into Korbarid, SLO that evening and went through the WWI Battle of Corpatello (?) museum. This area of Slovenia in the Soca valley saw some of the worst fighting during WWI. Usually we hear about Flanders Fields and the Western Front, but the Battle of Izono or Soca Front was the worst of the Eastern Front. Half a million Italian and 300,000 Austro-Hungarians and civilians died in this little tiny area. And it is not flat. The armies had fortifications along the ridge lines of the mountains. And when they charges, it was not across a field, but over the ridge or down the mountain and up the next ridge. Mountain by mountain. I like to study Austo-Hungarian history, so I really wanted to see the landscape that they had to fight over.

Something suprising was that the museum heavily favors the Austo-Hungarian side of WWI. Whenever the museum described the Austro-Hungarians it was either a brilliant battle/victory or a mistake that could not be avoided and how happy were as a semi-autonomous state. When they described the Italians it was always their imbecile mistakes or how they declared war in WWI 10 months after they had declared their nutrality or how they terrorized the townspeople. They especially were not pleased in 1920 when the whole area was given to Italy and the facist Italians ruled the area and terrorized the people.