Author: Keren Landman / Source: Atlas Obscura
The way Goran Kneževič tells it, you wouldn’t be wrong to mistake his grandfather for a character out of a fairy tale.
A kindly headmaster assigned to an impoverished farming region of eastern Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia), Jože Brilej created a school so special that children begged to attend.
So esteemed was his work that he was bestowed Slovenia’s highest award for educators: enough money to build a cottage in the forest next to a babbling brook. With any free time they had, the headmaster and his family escaped to the cottage for peace and communion among the flora and fauna of the woods.But their peace did not last long: Drunken passersby returning home from the market at night began to suspect that lamps in the cottage had been lit by witches. As rumors of unnatural activity grew louder, Brilej made plans to dismantle the cottage and rebuild it deeper in the forest, further from curious eyes.
Instead, he thought, why not make the rumors true? Out of building scraps and discarded materials, Brilej created a witch, complete with a pointed hat, and hung her in the trees near the footpath. The fear of the villagers turned to delight, and he added more enchanted figures, filling the woods with characters and scenes from beloved fairy tales—all made with his own two hands.
Before long, his forest haven drew visitors from distant lands—and the children who had been his students were bringing their own children to see his sanctuary of imagination and ingenuity.
However fantastical it might sound, the enchanted hillside is decidedly real. Brilej built the cottage—its first structure—in 1967, and in 1990, he opened it to the public. He remained involved in its operations until his death in 2015 at the age of 91. Koča pri Čarovnici (in Slovenian, “Witch’s Cottage”) includes the original dwelling and a winding forest path lined with Brilej’s creations, named Dežela Pravljic in Domišljije, the Land of Fairy Tales and Imagination. In the years since he created his first friendly witch, the park has remained a small but determined part of the tourism infrastructure that now sustains Slovenia’s Podčetrtek region.
Since the country first voted for independence from Yugoslavia in 1990, tourism has risen sharply, most dramatically after Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004. The industry got a head start in Podčetrtek, says Janez Bogotaj, a Slovenian ethnologist, with the area’s early investment in its natural hot springs. In 1966, the region’s long-famed therapeutic waters were made publicly available in Terme Olimia’s first wooden pool, and the spa is now one of Slovenia’s most popular.
As tourism in the area has increased, so has traffic to Koča pri Čarovnici: Kneževič estimates it draws up to 10,000 visitors annually.
In the height of summer, the attraction is easy to miss from the road, with little more visible than…
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