Just a correction: most castles are in ruins or nonexistent anymore, few are renovated. (there was more than 250 castles in Slovenia, not super many remained, since they were first robbed by Turks, then destroyed in WW1&2, and at last devastated (or even burned) by socialism (which tried to erase quite a lot of history in YU area) before 1991. What wasn’t renovated has been neglected (many many listed buildings in Slovenia, not just castles) by primarily the State (over-regulation, absence of the owner (the state is considered as a non-existent owner), postponing renovation of gov. owned buildings to next term,…) or by, in a similar way, making it very very difficult to handle bureaucracy for normal folk (or there is so many owners so far removed from original owner, that none of them even know, that they are part-owners to a building, or if they do, they can’t reach a settlement, because courts are too slow (are they even moving?) and the real-estate would never fall into “abandoned” category (if one even exists) so nobody could clame it. And even if one would clame it for rebuild or restoration, the law and over-regulation of listed buildings is so absurd, one would never even go into a project (also the ruins tend to be overpriced). Furthermore the real-estate is becoming more and more taxed and owning big even if you are not there, costs you a lot of money… just so many waste because of Big Government).
Notice also, that Slovenia has (from above statement) an over-regulated everything. On the index of Economic Freedom it was listed as the last in EU, ranking at 97 from 152 countries, wherein it was measured. That means, that prices are high, taxes are big (VAT is 22%, … for a typical working man, the State, with all of its taxes and tariffs, takes around 63-70% of an income supposing that one spends all of their leftover). Regulatory power of Big Government makes it difficult or sometimes, many times, impossible for anything to be done (there is around two dozen of “building holes” just in Ljubljana – someone destroyed a building and wanted to build something new and either quit because of bureaucracy, or bankruptcy, or they started but something (usually on the regulatory side of things) went wrong and the building is stagnate).
Furthermore there is pretty much no prospect for young people to work here, since the “work-market” is also too regulated and monopolisticly guarded by the corporate power which is in bed with the state, so that rules and regulation can be applied, which benefits only the big firms, but makes it improbable (or often impossible) for small business to succeeded (in the last decade business – big and small – mostly closed, very few (if any?) opened, and few seek workers, to whom the pay would be equal to input they provided. Moreover Slovenia is the only country in EU, that is still in a deep recession (nobody really fully or even partially recovered from it, but most countries did at least go onto the path that might lead to it) – which doesn’t surprise me. I say that because Slovenia still really is politically and economically socialistic – though perhaps (I could argue that too) not totalitarian, but semi-democratic socialism (it looks democratic, but really isn’t since you really don’t have much choice, nor is there much possibility for a different political party to form).
Overall Slovenia has huge internal problems, that many don’t notice, because all they see is a nice facade of what is left of our heritage (I anticipate that many buildings in old city centers will eventually fall into ruin, because not many people afford or want to live in city centers…) and openness of the people. Those who do notice some problems, are just skimming the surface and for some reasons draw wrong conclusions, bust most who do see them clearly, are usually either not heard, or people shut them up because many prefer to live in lie which is literally borrowed on next generations’ expense.
On the other hand Slovenia has big spiritual problem as well. In the past majority of Slovenes claimed to be culturally christian (Catholic), but now even this number is steeply falling. Most seek New-Age-isms to tune down the daily problems, some seek radical -isms, but most just follow the scientism (the belief that science is all that is and whatever scientists say must be true…) and thus find themselves to be atheistic or sometimes agnostic. Because they believe only the government, the TV media and what media releases from the side of science and religion (which is pretty much null), they will most often not consider (also for economics ans politics) that someone with the Bible in the hand might just have the logic and the truth they seek to tell.
So you can pray that those of us, who speak the truth might be lead to do it in a way so that God would be glorified (on Jesus or whatever truth there is), and also pray that people would listen.