A little closer toMurska Sobota.

Murska Sobota is the town for the whole of Prekmurje, the region beyond the Mura that only became part of Slovenia in 1919 and still speaks its own dialect, eats its own food and builds its own houses. The Renaissance castle in the middle of the town park holds the Pomurje Museum, which is the clearest introduction to any of that. On the edge of town, beside Lake Soboško, stands Expano, Slovenia’s pavilion from the 2015 Milan world exposition, taken down and rebuilt here. The land is dead flat for forty kilometres in every direction, which makes this the only part of the country where cycling asks nothing of you, and it is the reason the hot-air balloon world championship was held here in 2022. Eat the bograč and the gibanica; both are from here and are not the same anywhere else.

Photo: C.Stadler/Bwag (via LetsVisit)