May 31, 2018
What were you doing in the summer of 1994? In the former Yugoslavia the conflicts that marked the decade had already been going on for three years and would continue through the decade, although Slovenia was an oasis of calm beside the bombs and ethnic cleansing that were tearing up the new countries to the southeast, events that remain living history as you travel through the region.
It’s in this context that the BBC came to Slovenia to film a holiday programme, visiting Bled, Soča and the coast. Although most likely uploaded from a VHS, and thus of limited quality, the video shows a country that still seems recognisable, 24 years later, and is an artefact from a time when the country was still a mystery to those not living within or on its borders, and perhaps the dying days of when “hidden gem” and “best kept secret” could be dropped into the narrative without irony or journalistic sloth.
