Ljubljana from above. Photo by Bostjan Burger. Used with permission.

If you love seeing the Internet being used to its maximum potential, go see Bostjan Burger’s absolutely astounding: Virtual Reality Panoramas of Slovenia.

It is hands down the best site about Slovenia on the Internet, and easily one of the best pages I’ve ever seen. Slovenes have a phrase To je zakon, which literally means “This is the law” but actually means “This rules.” Well, Burger is the zakon.

His site has about 12.400 photos and over 3.000 virtual reality panoramas. A good place to start is this clickable map of Slovenia. You can also explore some of the larger cities, like Ljubljana, within an interactive city map. If you want to see what it’s like to stand in the center of Ljubljana, just click here.

You can literally spend hours on this site. With much of Slovenia covered, Bostjan has also begun working on other European countries, like France, Austria and Croatia.

I recently e-mailed some questions to Bostjan. Here’s what he told me:

The Glory of Carniola: What photo equipment do you use?

Bostjan Burger: At the moment:
Nikon F3, Nikon D100, variable set of lenses
Nikon CoolPix 5000 + lense adapters
Manfrotto tripod with several mount heads
Portable ultralight Notebook + GPS unit

TGoC: What made you start this page?

BB: The collecting of data started before 1996, and the first appearence came in 1996 as a provocation to Slovene people who were addicted to money and material things… I had traveled a lot but found out that Slovenia was (still isn’t, unfortunately… ): ) known — even though the geograpical location was one of the most important in Europe So I decided to set up a huge web site representing the country… but not in the usual way…

TGoC: What’s your personal favorite?

BB: The Virtual Reality Panoramas of Slovenian Caves.

TGoC: What’s left to do?

BB: The goal is to cover the whole country.

TGoC: Will this project ever be finished?

BB: I don’t believe so — it’s always on the move…