We are used to seeing all sorts of things commemorating the dead on the Western Front in the First World War: the poppies, the centenaries, the memorials erected on the village green, the poetry.  So it came as a bit of a surprise, on a holiday in Slovenia, to find evidence of the effects of war in a very different part of Europe.

Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1914.  The area around Kranjska Gora, in western Slovenia, was strategically important for the war against Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian authorities ordered the building of a better road over the Vrsic pass, which rises to 1611m (about 5,900 feet), using Russian prisoners of war as labour.  The road was built in 1915, but disaster struck soon after.    A terrible avalanche in March 1916 killed around 100 Russian prisoners, who were by then being used to clear snow off the road, as well as destroying some of the equipment used to build the road.  As a result, avalanche protection was improved, and the road construction strengthened.

You can still see some of the results of this labour: some of the cobble stones on the many hairpin bends on the road from Kranjska Gora to Vrsic, are originals from the rebuilding during World War I.  There is a small wooden chapel, built in the Russian style, to commemorate the men who lost their lives in the avalanche.  But maybe the more lasting memorial is those cobble stones that their successors put down, which are still benefiting travellers today.