Why I'm starting Tomke Trails
Most visitors see the same five places. I want to show you the other Slovenia.
Ask anyone who has visited Slovenia what they saw, and you'll hear the same list: Lake Bled, Ljubljana's old town, Postojna Cave, maybe Piran. They're beautiful. They're also where everyone else is standing, phone in hand, waiting for a gap in the crowd.
I know a different Slovenia. I grew up in the Savinjska region, where the Alps run out into hop fields and hardly anyone thinks to stop. Villages where the bakery closes when the bread runs out. Valleys you reach by a road that looks like it goes nowhere. Kitchens where lunch is whatever the garden gave that week. That's the Slovenia I want to share.
The idea
Tomke Trails is simple: small groups, one local guide, and days built around places most visitors drive straight past. Not a bus tour with a microphone. Not a hike that leaves you exhausted. Something in between: a route from place to place, with stories, good food and time to actually look around.
I call them trails because that's how they feel. You follow a thread through one corner of the country, and every stop leads you to the next.
Why me
I've never been good at staying put. Study exchanges took me to mainland Portugal, the Azores, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Peru, and in between I went looking for bigger adventures: cycling from Slovenia all the way to the Black Sea, hiking the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, scouting my way across South America with a backpack.
The best moments never came from a guidebook. They came from locals who invited me in, showed me how they really live, and pointed me to places only they knew. Now it's my turn to do that for you, in my own Slovenia.
“I'd rather show you a village of forty people than a viewpoint with four hundred.”
Where things stand
Tomke Trails isn't open yet. Right now I'm scouting routes, meeting the farmers, winemakers and café owners who will make the trails what they are, and sorting out everything a proper tour business needs. I'll write about all of it here: the good finds, the dead ends, and the lunches that changed a route.
Help shape the first trails
This is where you come in. Before I launch, I want to know which trails people would really take. Join the waitlist, vote for the trail you'd do first, and tell me what you'd love to see. The first trips will be built on those answers.
Thank you for reading. See you on the trail.
Tomke