The Crni Kal viaduct will eventually (and gloriously) connect Koper with Ljubljana.

If you’ve ever driven through Slovenia and wondered why there are toll booths every 5 minutes, take a look at the picture above. What you see is the Crni Kal viaduct, the problem child of Slovenia’s motorway construction program.

When finished, the Crni Kal viaduct will stretch for about one kilometer, be held up by 13 beams (some of them close to 100 meters high) and be the largest structure in the country. It may not be the Viaduc de Millau, but it’s still awesome; and by awesome, I mean totally sweet.

This map shows what Slovenia has already built or still plans on building. All in all, 518.6 kilometers of motorway will be laid out across the country, at a cost of around $5 billion. This will be achieved with the help of around 20,000 people, both here and abroad. This is an extraordinary sum, especially when considering that the largest firms in Slovenia employ less than half of that amount.

The Crni Kal viaduct under construction. (Awesome.)

The pictures don’t do this thing justice, I’m afraid. It really is impressive. As a matter of fact, it caused a small traffic jam on the way to Koper, after people started slowing down to gawk at it. (Myself included.)

If you’d like to see more, this forum has a great discussion about motorways in Europe, including some great pictures and info by Blaz Ziherl about Slovenia. I enjoyed reading it.