that Beer Fountain in Slovenia!
Is it the only beer fountain in Slovenia, Europe or the world? Well, it is certainly the only one in Zalec and yet another secret place for you to put on your list to visit in Green Slovenia!
In a country getting more and more known for its amazing wines, Slovenia also has vast plains full of high quality hops, a lot being exported to places like Amsterdam where they make beers you might have heard of. The central region around Celje is particularly covered in hops and will very possibly be along your way as you whizz around Slovenia's natural treasures.
So if you want to have a pleasant stopover in a typical little Slovenian village with a pretty high street and taste up to 6 Slovenian beers, then you'll need to pop "Zalec" into your googlemaps!
It's easy.. just buy your glass at the little hut and then wander around the fountain filling it up at each of the 6 fountains.. the driver gets to take the photos!
In fact the trickiest thing about this whole process is actually finding the fountain in the first place! Maybe it is a throwback from our time touring around Australia, but we were looking for something massive like their big red lobster statues or the worlds biggest sausage or something bizzare like that.. so we drove straight past the fountain!!
It is actually in the middle of the village, you need to look for a park with a wooden hut and then you might spot the fountain. You cannot park directly next to it, so you need to locate it and park nearby in this busy little centre.
You are also lucky as you can look at our photos here and know what to look out for, but we didn't know what to expect, so were thinking there would be a massive rock waterfall with beer gushing out or something like that!!
Actually, its all very tastefully done with a modernist curvy stone fountain containing the 6 mini fountains, which are just big beer containers like you might see at a bar.
Hanna was our taster and bravely tasted all 6.. one was a very disturbing green colour, but each to their own, generally it was a unique and wonderful experience and well worth a stopover.
Congratulations to the mayor of Zalec for coming up with this unique little treasure.. we are always telling our guests how the really, really special thing about Slovenia are the local, very friendly, slightly whacky people and this is a great example of that!
There are some other things to see in Zalec and we really tried to "hop" to see the local Eco museum, but after 15 minutes of fruitless attempts to walk there from the beer fountain and cross a railway line.. we gave up.
Slovenians are world champs at hospitality, but still have a way to go putting decent signs for visitors to actually find things! This is very slowly improving, but on this occasion the museum missed out on our patronage.. maybe you will have more luck!
One thing nearby absolutely not ot miss though is the amazing "Hells cave", aka Pekel cave.. now that is another Slovenian natural treasure you might not have heard about, but if you have made the diversion to come see this fountain, then maybe go see this fab cave.. but do the cave first and the beer second for obvious reasons!!
And a final couple of nearby tips if you are scrathing around looking for local things to see, the nearby enourmous Celje castle has the most fantastic sunset and Velenje castle is also worth a detour..