Lake Bled is on my list.
Lake Bled is on my list.
Lake Bled certainly is beautiful. However, the cost of living right around there in real estate is about 4x higher than the countryside 1 hour away. Also, the closer you get to the Adriatic the more prices go up. However, there are places in the mountains to the west right on the Italian border that are inexpensive. Then you are 1 1/2 from Venice. An hour or less from the Adriatic. An hour from Croatia. A 3 hour drive from Vienna. An 1 from Lake Bled.
I think you do need to be careful of some of these old communist factory towns. I was looking at a house online last night in the area I described. The town was the sight of a former MERCURY MINING site. In the US it would probably be an EPA superfund site. In former Yugoslavia, under Tito=, not so much.