11: Trbovlje // A Short Story About Industry

A miner enjoying a drink in the Regional Museum in Trbovlje, Slovenia // © John Bills

I’m not entirely sure why I hadn’t bothered to check this before, but I was five minutes away from Trbovlje’s train station when I discovered that it lay about 5km from the centre of town. That put a bit of a dampener on my plan to visit the town, what with that possibly eating up an hour of my time there, but it was too late to turn back now. I could have obviously stayed on the train and disembarked in, say, Zidani Most, but the ticket said ‘Trbovlje’. Besides, plans is plans.

Luckily for my lazy-ass self, the people who run Trbovlje are fully aware that nobody wants to walk 5km along a main road, so buses run frequently between the station and the city centre, buses that timed to meet the trains that chunter through the very train station that brought life to what was previously a collection of disparate farming villages. The massive cement factory stood next to the station is another clue into the life and times of Slovenia’s ninth-largest town.

That the cement factory in question is now closed down gives further insight.

Despite the ‘ninth-largest’ claim just two lines ago, Trbovlje is far from large. Around 14,000 people live here, meaning you can get to the centre of the town and not struggle to find whatever it is you are looking for, which in this case was the tourist office. That part was easy, but I didn’t reckon on the office being closed.

An old postcard showing Trbovlje train station and the cement factory // © Snappy Goat

Not to worry, of course, this is Trbovlje, a town defined by its resourcefulness. Oh, wait, isn’t that resources? Yeah, a town defined by its resources. Coal mining was discovered here in 1804 and it was all go go go from that point on, a Murray Walker phrase accentuated by the building of the train station in 1849. Would-be workers flooded into the area around Trbovlje, and buildings were needed to house the men and their families. An exhibition of city panoramas only added weight to the fact, displaying the development of the city from a collection of hamlets into one functioning whole.

The same man who was kind enough to open the museum for me also happened to be kind enough to escort me to the nearby Njiva, a miner’s colony built at the turn of the century (19 to 20, if you were wondering). 121 years had passed since the colony was built (‘njiva’ loosely means ‘field’, by the way) and the ramshackle building looked every one of those years, tired, crumbling, anxious. People still live here.

The outside of Njiva apartments in Trbovlje, Slovenia // John Bills

Two of the old apartments make up part of the city museum, one displaying a standard flat from the 1920s and another from the 1960s. Two apartments, separated by one wall, two types of government and forty years of living. Oh, and a war. A big war.

Naturally, we entered the 1920s first. Two rooms, one for sleeping, one for cooking. The kitchen had a built-in stove that ticked all the boxes, a small amount of coal, brick floor, lime-washed wall, all minimal everything. The bedroom had a double bed with a small bed on the floor, a cradle, a small chest of drawers and some typical ornaments, religious paraphernalia, hope. It wasn’t unusual for six or seven people to sleep in this one room, a tiny amount of space for a couple, let alone a family, but that’s how it was. One-wage families, subsistence living. Crowded living, no hygiene, disease, alcoholism, death.

Industry brought life to Trbovlje, but that life came at a significant cost. Actually, let me rephrase that; the life in question came was the significant cost itself. Such was the desperation for consistent work. Families were willing, eager to live in poverty because it trumped the alternative. Men were willing to risk their lives every single day in the mines because it trumped the alternative. Having a flat and a job was worth the misery, the alcoholism, the worry. Industry brought life to Trbovlje, but it also brought death.

Easy for me to say, of course, from my sheltered 21st-century existence.

We jumped forward 40 years, next door into the 1960s apartment. My first thought was that it was much bigger, but it wasn’t, it was exactly the same size. Slovenes had worked out how to maximise space over those four decades, obviously.

The interior of a 1960’s coal miner’s apartment in Trbovlje, Slovenia © John Bills

It was a different world, albeit the same world but with more stuff. The two rooms were now three, although that was at the expense of the original two. Tito was there, gazing down from the wall, a portrait of Mr Yugoslavia where Christ once rested. The more things change, the more they stay the same. There was a television, a radio, a gramophone and even vinyl. There was furniture, a fridge, a washing machine and an oven. The advantages of two salaries and fewer children were clear to see.

For reasons that I couldn’t place, the 1960s apartment felt poorer than its 1920s equivalent. Maybe it was all the stuff, terribly dated, obsolete upon creation. Maybe it was that intangible straining, the awareness of the brass ring, The poverty of the 1920s was in hope of something better. That same poverty in the 1960s was the something better. As we left the apartments behind, I reminded myself that travel writers should stay in their lane, commenting on atmosphere and aura as opposed to emotional responses to political and economic developments.

So I left the apartments and moved back towards Trbovlje’s train station, moving past the town’s first set of community housing, getting halfway back before remembering the frequent bus lines that shuttle between town and station.

The Trbovlje Power Station gas stack, the tallest chimney in Europe // © Ruben Gutierrez Ferrer / shutterstock

Ask 1000 people what the ugliest city in Slovenia is, and 50% of them will probably say ‘Trbovlje’. With a few minutes to wait before the train, I considered the aesthetics of this maligned town. I felt compelled to defend it, to denounce those who dismiss it as ugly. The hulking cement factory at the station certainly isn’t beautiful in any classical sense, but the juxtaposition of lush hills and monolithic factories made for a genuinely awesome visual. Trbovlje isn’t a button-cute town like Radovljica or a natural stunner like Bled, but why would it be? Trbovlje is undoubtedly Trbovlje, whether you like it or not.

I really liked it. The train sauntered towards the station, passing the European Union’s tallest chimney as it went. It was time to head back to Ljubljana, happy with a day in Trbovlje that didn’t involve Laibach at any stage. Oh, did I not mention that Laibach is from Trbovlje? For another time, another time…