Slovenian hotel discovers communist era spy den

(11 Aug 2019) LEAD IN
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to holiday in Communist run Former Yugoslavia?
Well now a famous hotel in Slovenia's Postojna region has uncovered a spy den, hidden away since the fall of communism and opened it to the public.
STORY-LINE
This secret surveillance room is testament to a more sinister past in Slovenia's Postojna region.
The listening devices date to the Communist-era, where locals and visitors were closely monitored.

Unbeknownst to hotel employees, these windowless hidden rooms were lying dormant in the midst of the bustling hotel.
Old maps still lie on the dusty tables along with plastic cable phones and lamps. On the walls, buttons and black cables stand alongside switchboards used once to transfer calls or report enemy movement.
"This equipment here was used to coordinate certain actions, military actions, to collect the information from the field where maybe the enemy was coming or something like that, and was also used to communicate between the top officials of the government, top politicians, civil protection and military. And this was actually the main reason for the existence of this equipment here," says Nikola Simic a retired expert for telecommunications.
The region is a tourist hotspot due to the Postojna cave being located by the hotel.
Renovation work in 2016 revealed more than the hotel workers bargained for.
"During renovation only one door remained unopened. Nobody wanted to open that door, not even the national telecom operator, so we opened them by force. We found out that in hotel Jama there existed parallel world, a world of eavesdropping," says Postojna Cave and Jama hotel CEO Marjan Batagelj
"Postojna was a strategic point for Yugoslavia. Postojna was the easiest route from Western Europe to the East. Also Postojna cave was the most visited site in Eastern Europe. Some statesmen visited Postojna cave, a lot of tourists, alot of information was available," he says.
This four star hotel first opened its doors during the height of Communism in 1971. As one of the best hotels in the region it attracted numerous and often prestigious clients.
Whomever made these original hotel plans made sure that the rooms were not drawn in.
Today you can ride the underground train in Postojna Cave with little worry that your visit might be monitored closer than you had imagined. It was a very different story in the 1980s.
"It was a little bit of a conspiracy. So when you start to work and you see that people are around and you don't know practically who they are, yeah, you start to be a little bit suspicious but you don't mind. You don't want to know, you just turn your head and perhaps that was the moment that has to remain in that period because we have changed, we changed everything and today it's a little more funny to be here perhaps. But in that period, yeah, I can confirm in the hotel people I didn't know, not guests, people who I supposed should work there but I don't know what," says Saso Adam, tourist guide who worked at the cave and hotel in 80s.
It is thought that the State Security Administration or UDBA of former Yugoslavia were using Postojna as a strategic location. Now a European Union and NATO member, Slovenia was part of the six-member Communist-run Yugoslav federation until it gained independence in 1991. The Yugoslav secret police persecuted critics and political opponents during the Cold War era.
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