Sorry, we were on Naklo Time

road from Kranj to Naklo.JPG
Originally uploaded by 2Americans.

Sorry “tomorrow” took so long to get here – we were on Naklo time.

Our big joke when we go to visit our friends just outside of Kranj is that we are then on “Naklo time”. First off I should say that – in general – things just seem to take us a LOT longer here. This is not just because we don’t have a car so we have to walk or bike everywhere in the city. I mean that no matter how hard we try, we can only get one thing done each day. If we can get two things done we feel we should be nominated for some sort of Slovene Hall of Fame award.

But then we go to Naklo.

This is going one step further into the apparent rip in the fabric of the time-space continuum here on this side of the Alps. Whole days go by in the blink of an eye – on this past Sunday I’m sure that somewhere in America someone built an entire house, raised a family and sent them off to college just in the time it took us to have a little lunch and decide what we were going to do with our afternoon (we did not end up doing much – just going for a drive up into the mountains and then to a park with the kids with Jozi and some of her friends)

During that afternoon I had Slovene spoken at me and around me for something like eight hours straight. When your vocabulary is limited to about 50 words (most of them useless nouns) you don’t really know enough to participate, or even understand a conversation. My eyes were probably crossed by the end of that evening! It was intensely frustrating, and despite the nice weather it’s not a day I’d care to repeat. When I got home today I made some flash cards – this time in addition to some more Useless Nouns I added some easy verbs and possessive pronouns. In a few days I will be ready to talk about objects (referring to my mental list of Mostly Useless Nouns) that I have or don’t have, or perhaps you might have. I can hardly wait to run across someone in the park and perhaps ask, “Is that your dog?” and then run off immediately after hearing “Ja” or “Ne” -- before they can ask me a follow-up question.

I’ll tell you a bit about our neighborhood. We have quite a few buildings in our neighborhood – most of them between four and eight stories high. Many have small balconies, and if you are lucky enough to have a ground floor apartment you may also have a small terrace/yard/patio and outside entrance. While we do not have either, at least we can look at other people’s – this is good because out here people will cram flowers and plants into every square cm possible so we got to enjoy lots of other people’s gardens. If there’s a window (“okno”), there’s probably a flower box (“zabojcek za rože”) attached to it, spilling over with geraniums or lobelia or something. The building I look out at from the writing desk in the bedroom is a reddish brown brick building with arched windows. I think you might be able to see it in one of our pictures. It’s about three stories high and it’s a very pretty building. Inside one of the apartments there lives a parrot, or some other bird with similar vocal talents. He can sing the theme from the Woody Woodpecker show and he also whistles a lot. He does a very good imitation of a car alarm being set (“boop!”) When it rains he gets excited and makes a lot of sounds. Most of the apartment buildings are made of concrete, which means you cannot hear your neighbor’s apartment noises, but everything from the ground echoes upwards so you hear a fair amount of street noise.

In between all of the apartment buildings are small courtyards and playgrounds, and lots of walking paths (called the “POT”) that go all throughout the city. We have a very large park, Tivoli, nearby in which there is a small mountain called Rožnik (or large hill depending on your viewpoint) where you can go hiking. In that park there is also a zoo and some other stuff we haven’t seen yet; it’s pretty big.

Most of the time here it has been about 62-66 degrees at night and about 75-80 during the day. It is not very humid. Sometimes we will have a streak of a few days of warm weather (85 or 90) and then we will get thunderstorms in the afternoon -- these usually cool it down for the overnight. Mosquitoes are virtually non-existent here (yay!)

There are lots of stores nearby and a farm market where we do our grocery shopping. We usually go every day or two and get whatever looks good and is in season. Food prices are comparable to the US, and maybe a little lower in some cases, especially for things like dairy. Contact lens solution is absurdly expensive – about $13-15 a bottle!! You cannot get Advil without a prescription. There are cafes/bars everywhere. Lots of people smoke, although you probably already guessed that. We don’t have squirrels; instead we have pigeons. Lucy enjoys chasing them just the same.

The workday starts early here – people think nothing of starting at 6:00 or so. An unfortunate side of this industriousness is that the city workers are trimming trees outside of your window at this early hour. Thankfully the parrot has not begun reproducing THOSE sounds.

Have you ever seen a cat – for no apparent reason at all – suddenly decide, “HOLY CRAP!!!!! I’m supposed to be IN THE LIVING ROOM!!!!!!!” and go tearing off at breakneck speed? Well, that’s how a lot of people here drive. “What the hell street am I on? Oh my GOD, I’m supposed to be on VODNIKOVA CESTA!!!!!!! And they go squealing off in that direction without regard or concern for anyone who might be in the way. Just WAIT until I learn how to express myself better in Slovene – I’m going to give some of these crazies a piece of my mind! Yes, I think some verbs are in order, and especially commands. Commands and prepositions. And reflexive pronouns.

Slovenia is experiencing the same slow death of the small town that has happened in the U.S. There are still small shops and har salons, etc., but you can see it happening: people are flocking to giant outdoor shopping malls with enormous stores. We went to one the other night called Planet Tuš. Inside this HUGE mall was a bowling alley, bars, restaurants, lounges, pool tables, darts, a mechanical bull(!), a movie theater, and then a whole separate side of the mall with just shopping (grocery, clothing, and who-knows-what-else). What was perhaps even more astonishing is that it is privately owned by one Slovene couple. Although I am generally against this type of large-scale experience, I have to give them credit for a job very well done.

On Saturday we went fishing and then went on a picnic. We go fishing at a stocked trout pond in Kranj. This place is a gold mine! It is a lot of fun and there are always people there. You pay a little bit of an entrance fee (about $6.00 for a family or group) and then you rent a fishing pole (also a modest amount – I think it is about $2.25 or so). You also pay a small amount per kilo (about 75 cents?) for what you catch. You clean it right there and then you go home and grill up some delicious fish! They believe that allowing the fish to die a slow death by suffocation in your bucket is cruel, so along with your bucket you are supplied with a small club – really just a heavy stick about a foot long and about an inch and a half thick. After you catch the fish you give him a good “thwack!” on the top of the head to finish him off. I did not think I could do it but you get used to it. Even little Carolina has no compunction about getting in there with her little cudgel firmly in hand! They also have tables there and a bar (of course) so in case you are not having such a lucky day fishing you always order yourself up some of their own grilled fish and wash down your disappointment with a nice,cold beer (“pivo”).

In other local news, but falling more into the “charming” category, we arrived home one day last week and there were Gypsies (from Hungary, we learned) in the parking lot playing the accordion; people would throw down some money from their windows or balcony if they liked a song, or wanted to request a song. It was a great surprise! And speaking of coming to the house, the potato man also comes once a week. He comes in a small truck and rings each doorbell. “Krompir!” he calls, and if you want to buy a bag of potatoes you can go down and get some.

Tomorrow our friends are going back to America for a visit . They won’t be back here until September and they are lending us their car while they are away. Yay! This means we can do some not-so-local sightseeing to places far off the rail lines. Maybe we will also do some camping.

Hopefully our boxes o’stuff will arrive during the next month. It’s a good thing most of it is cool-weather clothing – we’ll be lucky if it is here by September! What we miss most that is not here yet are some key kitchen utensils and also some warm-weather items of clothing and shoes. I could also really, really use some of my English-teaching materials that are not here yet either.

Well, that’s all for now – back to my CNN viewing. It’s been a crazy week between the bombings in Mumbai, the attacks in Lebanon and Israel, the tidal wave in Indonesia – we hardly hear any news from the U.S.


Hugs~ S.


PS: We added a few new pics to Flickr.