Culture of Slovenia

Education: Universities in Ljubljana and Maribor 87,056 students (2002/2003)

Culture: 14 professional and numerous amateur theatres, 2 operas, 45 permanent galleries, 60 museums, 5 professional orchestras and a symphony orchestra

Media: 6 daily newspapers, 40 weeklies, state television, private televisions, state radio station, local radio stations.

Crafts

Slovenian craft has a hundreds of years of tradition (already in the middle ages when crafts nearby castles, fair centres, guilds and later on also collectives, started to develop).

Craft has been fighting for its existence and development all the time. Slovenian craftsmen have numerous values diligence, knowledge, quality, honesty, innovativeness, introduction of technological novelties, market adaptability which enables preservation of craft.

Cuisine

Slovenia is a hospitable country which surprises its visitors with the abundance of traditional Slovenian food as well as culinary masterpieces which originated outside the country but have received a Slovenian touch. To complement our dishes there have always been excellent wines of three Slovenian wine growing regions. You can encounter all the pleasures on wine roads and in numerous traditional gostilnas. Gostilna is the heart of the Slovenian culinary offer. Beside drinks the offer of gostilna has to include at least three dishes, which are typical of the environment or region. Gostilnas are often owned by families and mainly preserve the tradition in their offer and fittings, and in preparing homemade dishes they preserve the principles of healthy nutrition.

Slovenian wines, especially in the wine growing regions. Gostilnas are famous for homeliness and genuine hospitality - that is one of the reasons why guests like coming there again and again.

In the palette of national dishes there are many connected with the traditional festive slaughtering. Popular everyday dishes are made from cabbage, beans and potatoes. Every Slovenian region has its own various types of bread. There are also many flour-based dishes, among which those made from buckwheat - the cereal which gives grey flour, are a speciality.

More than seventy variations of struklji are widely spread across Slovenia. The most renowned is luxuriously filled prekmurska gibanica. Don't forget to try the potica, a cake roll filled with walnuts, poppy seeds, raisins, various herbs, cottage cheese, honey or crackling. In Primorska, they will delight you with original fish dishes and delicacies made from local plants, vegetables and fruit (asparagus, artichokes, truffles), and of course prsut from Karst which is cured in the bora wind.

World heritage

Rakov Skocjan 
This exceptional system of limestone caves comprises collapsed dolines, some 6 km of underground passages with a total depth of more than 200 m, many waterfalls and one of the largest known underground chambers. The site, located in the Kras region (literally meaning Karst), is one of the most famous in the world for the study of karstic phenomena.