And to be fair, I love Austria. But I hadn’t expected Slovenia to be like that (even though I’d previously seen parts of Croatia that looked like Austria).
Though many people use the term “Balkans” to describe the former Yugoslavia and Albania (myself included), the Balkan peninsula technically includes Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece as well. But Balkans purists use the term to describe the region beneath the Balkan mountain range. And only a tiny portion of Slovenia is within this range. When you add that geography to the fact that Slovenia has also been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it makes sense that it looks so different.
