Ring the wishing bell on the island in Lake Bled

In the middle of Lake Bled is a small island, and on top of it the Church of the Mother of God on the Lake. Inside hangs a bell that anybody may ring. The custom is the whole instruction: ring it, and make a wish.

Getting out there is half of it. The pletna is a flat-bottomed wooden boat rowed by one oarsman standing up with two oars, and twenty-three of them work the lake, a job handed down in families since Maria Theresa. It lands at the foot of a Baroque stairway of 99 stone steps from 1655. On a wedding day the groom is supposed to carry the bride up all of them before the bell is rung.

The bell comes with a story, and Bled tells it straight-faced. A young widow at Bled Castle, whose husband had been killed by robbers and thrown into the lake, paid for a bell for the island chapel with all her silver and gold. A storm sank it on the way across, boat and boatmen with it. She went to a monastery in Rome, and after her death the Pope sent the island a new bell. The one there was made in Padua in 1534, and whoever rings it and sends a wish to the lady from the lake is said to get it. Some say the first can still be heard on clear nights.