Melania Trump’s Hometown Offering ‘First Lady’ Tours But since Slovenian native Melania Trump became the first lady of the United States, the country’s popularity — just like President Donald Trump’s wife — is skyrocketing.
And now tourists who visit Melania’s hometown of Sevnica can join a first lady-themed tour around the picturesque hamlet featuring samples of First Lady Apple Pie and a view of the elementary school Melania attended.
National Public Radio reported on one of those tours, a five-hour walking tour, which costs about $90 for two and, like the others, is supported by the city of Sevnica tourism bureau.
“The hamlet of Sevnica, population 5,000, sits right in the middle of the small, alpine nation of Slovenia, in a green valley along the Sava River, surrounded by pine-forested hills,” NPR reported.
Tour guide Lidija Ogorevc takes visitors to a now-closed building that used to be where Trump’s mother, Amalija Knavs, designed children’s clothing when Slovenia was still part of Yugoslavia.
The tour also includes the Communist-era apartment block where Melania once lived and the neighborhood where her parents still own a two-story house.
The town’s Kopitarna shoe store sells “White House slippers” (powder-gray, with white pom-poms) for about $60 a pair, according to NPR.
“We made 300, and we’ve almost sold out of them now,” says the slipper’s designer, Maja Stamol, adding that both tourists and locals are buying the slippers.
“Demand for tours like the one Ogorevc leads has gone up by 30 percent since the beginning of the year, according to the municipality,” NPR reported. “That’s a boon for a town that, until last year, was known mostly for its underwear factory and salami festival, says Mayor Srecko Ocvirk.”
“A lot of people are coming from Europe, Japan, China and the U.S.,” Ocvirk says. “From an anonymous little town, we are now on the world tourist map.”