10: Žalec // Beer Fountain. A Fountain of Beer

Žalec is the hop-growing capital of Slovenia // © Stanislavskyi / shutterstock

Beer fountain. A fountain of beer. 

What more does one need to know? I could spend the next thousand or so words talking about history, architecture, industry or individuals, but I know as well as you do that it is the beer fountain that will turn heads. Žalec is known for plenty of things, but the magic creation of hops, yeast, barley and water tops them all.

So yes, beer fountain. I had to find it first. This might not sound like the most difficult task in a town of less than 5,000 people, but I wasn’t necessarily looking for the fountain in any sort of active fashion. I presumed the same as the beginning of this paragraph suggest, that I would happen upon it without too much difficulty, but like most presumptions it proved incorrect. I walked in a number of different directions, starting at the train station and moving past closed shops and business as I did, with no sign of a fountain, no sign of beer flowing from that fountain.

There was the Church of St Nicholas, the oldest building in town, or at least the oldest in terms of appearances in written documents. It isn’t the original building, how could it be, but it retain the dignity that many Slovenian churches find themselves swimming in. Nothing made it stand out, nothing made it feel extraordinary. There was nothing about the church that made me gasp, made me open my mouth wide in amazement. It was no different to any other church in Slovenia, but viewing that in a negative manner is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the church in the first place. Churches aren’t built to impress tourists. They are built to provide spiritual peace and communal serenity. The bricks and mortar are second to the intangible. 

Still, no beer fountain. It was close, I knew it, I could sense it. If you want to introduce some idea of pivo-radar there, be my guest.

There was the tourist information centre (closed, obviously) and the birthplace of Risto Savin, a Slovenian composer who did more than most when it came to instilling a opera culture in the country. He wasn’t born Risto Savin, he was born Friderik Širca, but I don’t think his parents were too bothered by the use of a pseudonym. 

Savin was a musical prodigy from birth (a birth that took place in 1858, by the way), a fixture in local choirs and a noted local pianist, but his musical output soon played second fiddle to his military years. He flew through the Austrian army (not literally), scrapping through World War I and becoming an officer, before deciding enough was enough and heading back to Žalec. It was time to become a fully-fledged composer.

That’s about it, really. Savin spent the rest of his life making music, penning songs and operas, most notably the Wagner-inspired Lepa Vida, which may or may not be about Slovenian actor and all-round champion Vida Cvar. His compositions held their own but it was his influence and presence that ensured his place in Slovenian cultural history.

All well and good, but the beer fountain was just a short walk away, so forgive me for rushing through the life and times of Risto Savin. 

The first of its kind in Europe, the beer fountain in Žalec isn’t quite the free-flowing pivo extravaganza that you might presume it is. It isn’t a fountain, for a start, and you can’t just rock up to it with your own glass and guzzle to your heart’s content. The ‘fountain’ is made up of six ‘pumps’, each offering a different local brew, and the only way to access the liquid gold is by buying a special glass from a nearby kiosk. The glass, designed by legendary Slovenian designer Oskar Kogoj, has a special token built-in, a token that allows would-be boozers to sample the aforementioned beers.

You don’t get a full beer though, that would just be silly. You simply stick your glass under the pump and wait for the magic to happen, a magic that doesn’t extend beyond 1dcl of pivo. The whole thing is kinda expensive, but you won’t find me or anyone else complaining. This is a beer fountain, a celebration of centuries of hop-growing and the magnificent side of pivo.

Those centuries are lovingly detailed on information boards stationed around the fountain, and I lazily strolled around them with a small glass of Kukec, brewed by Težak. The name of the beer comes from the big daddy of Slovenian brewing, a solemn chap from near Sežana called Simon Kukec. The boy travelled around in his early years, working on the railroads and serving in the army before settling in Trbovlje, where he opened a restaurants for miners (the people who go underground, not young people) and made a shedload of money, enough to buy the brewery in Žalec and all the surrounding hop plantations. That in turn led to his decision to merge the brewery with the one in nearby Laško, and the rest is history. Delicious Slovenian pivo history. 

History that snaked through the decades and found its pinnacle in the form of a beer fountain, opened in 2016 and flowing with pivo ever since. There is a joy to that magical combination of good beer and fascinating history that quite simply cannot be beaten, a contentment that reminds us that to travel is to live, that this life is one to cling on to with all one’s might. Sure, owning stuff is fun and all, but how could the humdrum security of the day to day come close to a beer fountain and history? It can’t. I finished my last sample, took one last adoring look at the fountain and the dreams of Simon Kukec, and made my way back to the railway station.