Life in the SLO lane

To je sranje!

2010-02-10T09:25:00.002+01:00

I will leave you to figure that one out for yourselves. Let it suffice to say that it has been freezing cold and snowing since we came back after our New Year's holidays. When we landed, we were shocked to see all of the snow that had fallen, and --at that moment-- was still falling. I have been complaining ever since then, especially as the cold, snowy weather has persisted. And also I should mention that in Ljubljana there is never any sun, thanks to the 'inversion'... Today, again (*sigh*) it is coming down. But Lucy is happy. And so are the birds. No, we did not get birds as pets -- I mean the wild birds. They have been migrating back in this direction (obviously having been misinformed about the coming of spring) and so they are all chattering to each other in the trees, playing in the snowy branches. It is the beginning of carnival, so maybe that will lighten my mood. But I really think it will take a few more degrees and some sunshine to accomplish this... Oh well, off to work now.

Hey! I can see my breath!

2009-10-12T21:43:00.006+02:00

Yep, it has been a loooong while since I have posted here. A whole season has gone by, as a matter of fact....

Things HAVE happened though, contrary to what you might have assumed by my silence (you know what happens when you ASSume...)

-- we went to Sarajevo for a fantastic long weekend, we spent a week on the island Cres, we took some day trips, we went to Bad Durkheim for the WurstMarkt -- most of these with the help of our friends, to whom we are very grateful.

You can go to our Flickr page to see pictures, if you have not already at some point during the summer -- those have been kept up to date (mostly thanks to Joe, who now fully comprehends the frustration of losing your captions before they have been saved...)

During the summer we also moved to a new apartment and now we are on the edge of the old town, at the bottom of the hill upon which Ljubljana castle sits. It is a great location, close to everything, and we love it. No more riding the mobile petri dish* to work! Yay!

(* read ˝city bus˝ )

But now, after seemingly endless --in a good way, mind you--
days of 25 to 30 degree temps (that`s 70 plus degrees for you folks using Fahrenheit!) it is finally Autumn.
Just today the whatever they use now instead of mercury plummeted
and it is only 8 degrees at the moment (again, that`s Celsius -- in Fahrenheit I think it`s about 40 - 45 degrees or so). Brrrr!

But honestly, that`s OK because that means that all of those
Delicious Fall Smells are hanging...
I was out with Lucy for a walk this evening and you could smell LOTS of good things: for example --

roasted chestnuts (the chestnut selling carts have already staked out their street corners in the old town),

wood smoke (from the relatively few people that have not yet converted to gas heating, but thank goodness for those hold-outs because I do love that smell!),

and autumn leaves (they smell *especially* good when you know that you don`t have to rake them!) among them.

This update will be short -- in fact, it will end here! Surprise! I hope you didn`˙t bother to sit down.
But honestly, there`s not too much else going on here ...

....like the rest of the world, there´s been a bit of a financial crisis here, although that seems to be easing up a bit for us personally (knock wood) so we are actually quite busy at the moment...
....flu shot appointments need to be booked....
....we need to get the snow tires on the car (I think by November 15th?)...
....Official Paperwork needs to be renewed again in the beginning of January...
....I need a haircut and color...

You get the idea. The word ˝mundane˝ comes to mind except for:

....Martinovanje (celebration of new wine in mid-November) is coming...
....we will be going back to the US for Xmas holidays....

So, that`s all for now. I hope you have (or find!) something to smile about today :-)

Objem,
-Susan-

May Day, etc

2009-05-01T20:17:00.002+02:00

Hi! It has recently occurred to me that two holidays which were either previously celebrated or begun in the US are no longer celebrated there. The first is Woman`s Day, May 8th. This holiday, if memory serves correctly (and it sometimes still does)was started in the US by women workers in the garment industry sweatshops, I think following such horrendous events as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and not to mention the 12 to 15 hour workdays for next-to-nothing wages. But after it was adopted by the ROW and became embued with a `reddish` hue, it was dropped in the U.S. It is still celebrated all over Europe. Women will usually receive small gifts of flowers. It`s quite a nice idea, and those of you in the U.S. really ought to bring it back. Men appreciating women, women appreciating women - you can`t go wrong there.

Similarly, the May Day holiday used to be celebrated over many countries in the world as a recognition of workers` rights. Before representing workers` rights, it had begun as a pagan holiday but somehow evolved from there. Once again, that same `evolution` eventually took on a rather pink-ish shade...and as you U.S. residents know (unless you live in Minneapolis), May Day is no longer celebrated.

But, we are off today. Go, Workers!... Go, workers!... (but not to work today)

Again this year, we did not go to one of the giant customary booze-addled bonfire-lit events last night... um..(sheepish grin).. I actually DID have to work this morning...

Enjoy your weekend, and don`t forget to wash your hands often! (swine flu alert!)

Objem,
S-

New Stuff, in No Particular Order

2009-03-20T00:10:00.003+01:00

My father is back in the physical rehab place, with his faux kneecap (don`t laugh, they`re all the rage now among the MRSA crowd) in place. Antibiotics are leeching, seeping, and making other such fluid movements, out of said kneecap and into the surrounding area, the rest of his body, etc. Faux kneecap is made of cement BTW, so I believe that swimming is not part of the recommended phys therapy regimen.. More surgery to follow in maybe 6 to 8 weeks.

My friend Nevena had a baby on Tuesday, their second. His name is Vasja. Dobrodšli! :-)

In case you have a short attention span, I added scrolling pictures of Slovenia to this page. No, I did not take them all. If they are on Flickr and tagged SLOVENIA, they will show up.

The annual World`s Largest Ski Jump event and its companion event Winter`s Largest Drinking Binge is in Planica (SLO) this weekend. No, I am not going, just informing.

I learned that the large grey bird that Lucy loves to chase is the Hooded Crow.

We are going to a friend`s birthday party this weekend. He is celebrating at a fantastic private restaurant located in the small 15th century (or 16th?) village of Goče, in the Vipava Valley. We will fill you in on the particulars when we get back. The party is on Saturday and we are going to sleep over at a nearby tourist farm. I will try to remember to bring the camera.

Weather here in Ljubljana has been nice, high 30s to 40s at night, 50s to 60s during the day, sunny....lots of things are blooming. The woods are filled with tens of thousands of crocuses - it seems like many more than last year. Maybe the snow we had this year helped out. Seen from a distance, they are just blankets of purple. It looks like not just the people were impatient for the Spring. The daffodils are also blooming, but we don`t have any of them growing wild so they don`t seem quite as remarkable.

That`s all for now...I will leave you with a favorite joke:

What did the zero say to the eight?
˝Nice belt.˝

No need to knead!

2009-03-18T21:00:00.000+01:00

I have noticed that recipes in Slovene use the ˝we˝ form of the verb (˝We add the flour, then we mix it together....). This sounds much more polite than the form we use in English, which is the command form. (˝Add the flour. Mix it together.˝)

Another noticeable difference is the English use of volume measurements (such as # of cups) rather than weight measurements (# of grams). Also, you will notice that English recipes don`t often use metric measurements at all, especially for volume. Personally I prefer weight measurements, because when you bake it is very good to be very precise. But in the English version of this recipe I give the equivalent weight measurements.

Lately I have been baking a lot of bread. Here is a very good basic bread recipe. it is so good that you will probably find yourself baking a lot, too!

I will give the recipe first in Slovene, and then in English. (This same post is on our company website so that English learners can try to translate the Slovene version into English, and then look at the English one to see if they got everything.) The version in English is a little bit longer at the end because it is easier for me to write it in English, but nothing important has been left out of the Slovene version, I promise. :-)

Slovenščine:
Kruh
V plastičnem loncu pustimo kvas (pol koščka), 5 g. soli, 340 ml vode (na 38° C) in 360 g moke (tip 500 ali 650) ; premešamo skupaj. Pokrijemo lonec s plastično folijo in pustimo vzhajati (2-5 ur). Potem pustimo v hladilniku.

Testo lahko pečemo takoj, ampak kruh bo boljši če počakamo nekaj dni (najbolj je pet dni) pred peko.

Pečico segrejemo na 280°C. Posodo z vodo damo na dno pečice – para je zelo pomembno za narediti dobro skorjo.

Pomokamo roke in mizo. Odtrgamo malo testa v velikosti grenivke. Raztegljimo testo v klobčič. Pustimo vzhajati dobre pol ure.

Zarežamo po vrhu dvakrat ali trikrat z nožem in pečemo v pečici okrog pol ure, in sicer pri 280°C.

Ostanku testa dodamo še 340 ml vode (na 38° C) in malo več kvasa, 5 g. soli in 360 g. moke. Pustimo maso vzhajati 2-5 ur, potem pustimo v hladilniku do takrat ko več kruha.

Če ne pečete kruha v 14 dneh, dodajte malo več moke in toplo vodo masi. (Kvas ki živi v testu zato potrebuje hrano.) Ampak kruh je ful dober ,in sigurno da ga boste pekli skoraj vsak dan!

And now, the English version:
English (non-metric):
Bread
In a plastic container add 1/2 cube of freash yeast (or 1 packet of granulated), about 1 teaspoon of salt, 1.5 cups of water at about 100 degrees F, and just slightly over 3 cups of flour (type 500 or 650, all-purpose white or a mixture of white and wheat). Mix these together using a spatula or wooden spoon.

Let the mixture sit in a warm place to rise for about 2 to 5 hours. After that, put it in the fridge.

The dough is ready to bake now, but it will taste better if you let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days before baking. Personally I think that 5 days of sitting makes the best tasting bread.

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven (the steam is very important for making a good crust on the bread.).

**If you have a pizza stone, put it into the oven before you heat it. This bread bakes best on a pizza stone. I don`t have one anymore, but my bread also turns out just fine. (See the TIP at the end about baking on the stone)**

Put some flour on your hands and also onto your work surface, and then remove a bit of dough from the container – about the size of a grapefruit. Handle it only enough to form it into the shape of a ball, and then put the ball onto your baking tray. The dough will be very thin and sticky, and it will spread out quite a lot (meaning that ´ball` will not hold its shape) and this is OK.

Let it rise in a warm place for about 30 to 40 minutes, then score the top of the loaf a few times with a serrated knife. This helps keep the top of the loaf from cracking. Put it into the 450 degree oven.

Bake the loaf for about 30 minutes. Remove , cool, and eat.

`Feed` your remaining bread dough by adding another 1 tsp of salt, 1.5 cups of water (plus additional yeast) at about 100 degrees F, and just slightly over 3 cups of flour (type 500 or 650, all-purpose white or a mixture of white and wheat). Mix it together using a spatula or wooden spoon.

Let it sit in a warm place to rise for about 2 to 5 hours. After that, put it in the fridge. You are ready to bake again.

If you are not going to bake bread again in the next 14 days (yeah, right!), you will have to remember to feed your yeast, which is living in the dough. Although the yeast is very much asleep while in the fridge, it still needs some food. Be sure to give it a sprinkle of flour and an equal amount of water every 7-14 days. Do not let it go more than 14 days without feeding it. (But this bread is so good that you will probably be baking very day, so that should not be a problem!)

I think that ´perfect´ bread taste and texture is kind of a personal thing. So, if you are unhappy with the texture of your bread, you can always change it by adding more/less flour or water. You can do this either before you are ready to bake it (add more flour to your ball of dough, mix it in, then allow it to rise for 30 minutes before baking) or you can just make the change to your next batch of dough.

Tip: If you have a pizza stone, bake the bread directly on the preheated stone. This will give you better results than baking just on a regular baking sheet. You will need to first sprinkle some cornmeal onto a flat baking sheet or pizza peel and allow the dough to rise on that. The cornmeal then acts like ball bearings, allowing the dough to roll/slide easily off of the sheet/peel, and onto the baking stone.

Comments:
This bread has never been exactly the same twice, but that could be the result of my wacky 30 year-old oven with a door that does not close properly? Yeah, probably.

But overall, results have always been good. Last week I added some chopped olives to a loaf, and that turned out well. I also baked a small loaf in a pan, and found that the crust did not brown at all but the taste was still good. I think I will continue to bake this recipe without using a pan, though. I think it is better, because I like having a nice crust.

By the way, I am a normal, busy person, with a real job. Anyone with 20 minutes of spare time can do this. Well, you need to physically be at home for 60 minutes for the rising and baking time, but it only requires about 20 minutes of work to both form the loaf that you wish to bake, and to create your new mix. There is no kneading involved at all, I swear.

Thai food and more snow

2009-02-01T17:30:00.004+01:00

Hello,

We have recently been frequenting a relatively new (opened sometime in the summer, I think) Thai restaurant on Rimska cesta in Ljubljana. In a rather excessive manner, they call themselves the Thai Inn Pub. Or maybe it's the Thai Pub Inn. Why they didn't just cover all the bases and call themselves the Thai Inn Pub Restaurant and Cafe is beyond me.

Unfortunately, some of the servers are as confused as the restaurant name implies. By this I mean that it is a bit of a crap shoot as to whether you will get your correct meal or not. But the upshot of this situation is that everything on the menu is fantastic, so even if you do not get your intended order, you will still get something yummy. Also, all of the meals are just 6 Euros each. If you live in or are visiting Ljubljana and you have a craving for some good Thai, I definitely recommend it. To me, the flavors are spot-on and properly spicy, not dumbed down for the 'Slovene' palate* as they have been in Da Bu Da. * (Please pardon if I offend anyone. Typical Slovenes don't dig super-spicy food, and we often find that something labeled as 'spicy' does not meet our expectations) As for the new Thai place in BTC, I only know of one person who has eaten there and he got food poisoning...

So, you should go to the Thai Inn Pub Restaurant Cafe Bar and Bistro. I don't think you will be disappointed in the food. The picture above is of one of the servers (one of the good ones), the chef, and the owner.

Another Lj foodie-tip: usually we like to go to Zvezda Bar for desserts, as they are generally out of this world. But last night we went to Dvorni Bar because we wanted a nice glass of wine (or three) and they have a good selection of wines by the glass. BONUS FIND! They have an apple pie/cake that is amazing. It has got a spongy cake-y crust where you would expect a traditional flaky pie crust to be, and this beautiful lemon flavor is infused throughout it. It is excellent. Oh, and it is a huge portion so it is perfect for sharing.

Last weekend we went candlestick bowling, which was a lot of fun. It was strange to bowl with those tiny bowling balls which haven't got any holes -- it reminded me of bocce, but I seem to be better at that. I don't think any of us got a strike (a spare was the best any of us could manage), but I think someone in the lane next to us might have. It was much more difficult than traditional bowling.

Today it is snowing again. It snowed quote a lot on Tuesday of this past week, but then we had some warm weather and a bit of rain so it had all melted in most areas. It has been snowing all day, but since it is only just right around freezing, the snow is only sticking on the trees, grass, cars, etc., but not on the roadways. I suppose now that it is getting dark , that may change overnight.

Tomorrow I am meeting with someone to re-start my Slovene lessons and also get something going for Joe. if you would like to learn something yourself, here is a fun site for you to also learn some Slovene.

And click here to download an online Slovene dictionary.

Hugs,

-S.

Like being inside a zeppelin on roller skates.

2009-01-14T19:56:00.002+01:00

This was my ride home from my morning class today.

I was on one of the older, presumably commie-era buses, in the middle of a snowstorm on unplowed city streets.

My drive home from my late afternoon class some 60 kilometers away and in my own vehicle was not much better. Except I was inside the rollerskate itself.

But, all's well that ends well, as they say.

Hope you are also well,
Hugs,
-S

Life is like Belgium.

2009-01-13T19:33:00.003+01:00

It looks rather like a giant version of the plastic sheet of figures that you must detach from their holder when you buy a new board game – the game RISK for example. And risky is what this new art installation may be.

“What new art installation?”, I hear you asking. I am talking about the new exhibit recently unveiled at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, where the EU's governments meet. This work was commissioned to recognize the Czech republic’s 6-month tenure as President, effective at the beginning of 2009.

Mounting some form of display is customary when taking on the rotating EU presidency, but normally they are uncontroversial. For example, Slovenia now has a small sculpture park not far from the main bus station; each meter-high stone obelisk is carved with a symbol representing each EU member at the time of Slovenia’s presidency. Not only it is not controversial, I would be willing to bet that 98% of Slovenes don’t even know it exists. The only reason I am aware of it is because I walk past it on my way to my dance class … after all, if a group of stones arranged in a somewhat Stonehenge-fashion suddenly appeared in a small clearing on a street corner near you, you might also stop to investigate it further. (Or maybe not. Perhaps that is why Stonehenge itself remains such a mystery: no one bothered to ask what the hell it was.)

But this new piece in Brussels was not installed quietly. In fact, it took three trucks to transport it from Prague to its new (temporary) home in Brussels.

Commissioned some two years ago by the Czech government, the work was purportedly a representation of EU members as seen through the eyes of 27 artists (plus Czerny) coming from those countries. But it didn’t exactly turn out as described.

For purposes of clarification and blame-clearing, the contributing artists were quick to point out that the piece was not intended to represent Europe as seen through the eyes of the Czech presidency. Why the hasty exoneration, you might ask?

Let's begin with those 27 pairs of eyes, allegedly belonging to 27 artists whose works supposedly represent their impression of their respective countries. Well, they were actually more like three or four sets of eyes representing -in some cases- an outsider's view…. In actuality this work was the brainchild and product of Czech artist David Cerny and some of his friends/colleagues. Not even the Czech government was aware of the actual contributors (or even the exact content of the piece) until the artist himself was willing to reveal it.

In a foreword to the exhibit's catalogue, Cerny said the projects "share the playful analysis of national stereotypes as well as original characteristics of the individual cultural identities." (Read as “we are taking digs at what each country really thinks of itself, and others think of it – we hope that you can laugh at yourselves as much as you will laugh at all of the other countries.”)

Cerny went on to say, “We knew the truth (about the actual artists behind the project) would come out, but before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself." He added that Entropa, which is the name of this piece, "lampoons the socially activist art that balances on the verge between would-be controversial attacks on national character and undisturbing decoration of an official space".

However, some people may be upset. We'll see. Because....

...Bulgaria is portrayed a conglomeration of Turkish squat toilets. Poland’s Roman Catholic priests are shown erecting a ‘rainbow’ flag, a sort of Iwo-Jima meets San Francisco.

Sweden is represented by a flat-pack carton, a-la-Ikea. Ultra-small, ultra-rich Luxembourg is a golden nugget with a "For Sale" sign prominently attached.

Are you laughing? Of course you are. Unless you happen to be from (insert your EU country name here).

Denmark is made of Lego bricks. Finland is a giant expanse of wooden floor. Germany is covered by a haphazardly interlocked series of plastic tracks of roadway (think: autobahn meets Hot Wheels). Hungary is a bizarre “atom” comprised of melons, nested atop a bed of peppers. Ireland has usurped one of Scotland’s national symbols and is shown as a giant set of bagpipes (albeit high-tech bagpipes).

Britain, as one might expect, is not present at all, with artist Khalid Asadi choosing to express himself through the use of “free space”.

The Netherlands are submerged in seawater, with only the tips of minarets left exposed (awash in a sea of religious controversy? You be the judge.)

Italy is a giant football/soccer pitch complete with players, and goal posts standing at either end of the country.

Estonia has a hammer a sickle (each made of power tools). Greece is burning. Lithuinia is represented by five guys in army uniforms peeing across the border onto its neighbor, Russia.

Romania is a Dracula-based theme park.

The Czech representation features an electronic message board, similar to those on the highway that say OBSTACLE ON SHOULDER or CONGESTION AHEAD. Except this message board scrolls various statements made by notoriously anti-EU Czech president Vaclav Klaus, who has in recent days embarrassed the Czech government by criticizing the EU's new Lisbon Treaty and scoffed at the notion of climate change. (Subtext by artist Cerny reads, "He is OUR president. We elected him, so let's show him off to the world with joy in our hearts. He's not just a skier. He's a great guy!")

Side note: Can you imagine if there had been an LED message board in the shape of Curious George with a rotating series of Bush-isms blinking along the brim of his ten-gallon hat? Oh, the laughs we could have had…

France wears a banner declaring, “ON STRIKE”.

And of course, we cannot leave out Slovenia. “Slovenia’s” description of its portrayal is not for the prudish, and gives a whole new meaning to the word “member” country. Slovenia's contribution is a 3-dimensional outline of the country, as if carved from stone, inscribed with the claim, “First tourists came here in 1213.” (note the verb and read on…)

This statement ostensibly celebrates a claim by the Slovenian National Tourism Agency that the first visitors to the country were tourists, who visited Slovenia in 1213. Apparently, like many tourists of today, they went to Postonjska jama, left some graffiti in the general area, and then departed – never to return. "We view ourselves from the position of foreign visitors," says the text explaining the Slovenian piece. It adds, helpfully: "This is a strategy associated with the delight of masturbation: We view the hand we use in autoerotic stimulation as the hand of another. We view our own national identity with similar detachment." (I personally must comment that it is somewhat true that Slovenes seem to view themselves through the eyes of others, especially in matters of national self-worth.) That being said, I am not yet sure how Slovenes feel about this portrayal, but presumably if they are offended they will, err… take matters into their own hands.

If you would like to know more, or see the countries’ representations that I did not mention in this entry, download the PDF, which can be found here http://www.vlada.cz/assets/media-centrum/aktualne/entropa_1__1.pdf

Oh, and in case you didn’t figure it out, Belgium is a giant box of chocolates.

New Year greetings

2008-12-27T23:31:00.004+01:00

Not much actual news to report from here. Two days before Christmas we took a short trip to Cividale (in northern Italy, about 2 hours away), where we were – thankfully – out of the fog and cold at last! It was fantastic to enjoy the sun again. We brought Lucy with us and we stayed at a small agro-tourism place called Ai Casali, which is located about 3 kms outside the center. It was nothing special, but it was nice. They have both rooms and apartments to rent. It would be more remarkable in summer when you could use the pool outside. It’s also good for kids, with some swings and a few animals you could pet/play with (dogs, goats, ponies).

Cividale is a great old city, built on top of Roman building sites. A lot of Roman-era mosaics, jewelry, weapons, and other finds are housed in a very worthwhile archaeological museum in the center. Also worth visiting are the bakeries – yum! The local snack is a cake/bread called gubana, which is filled with raisins, cinnamon & other spices, walnuts, grappa, cocoa, etc. It is made in a roll, and this roll is then coiled up, kind of like a snake or a turban shape. Although I am sure lots of people make it at home and have their own twist on the recipe, Gubana has its own consortium to ensure that all commercial producers remain true to the original recipe and maintain specific quality standards. It is especially popular at holidays. I cannot confirm, but I think the recipe may have actually originated on the Slovene side of the border, with 'gubanca' being the version on the Slovene side -- 'gubanca' means "wrinkled" for the wrinkled, layered dough.

The area is also known for its white wine, so of course we stopped and bought some “sfuso” on the way home (this is the wine we buy in bulk – ‘sfuso’ just means ‘loose’ and it is the table wine they sell by the liter instead of bottled.)

Not that I am biased (well, maybe a little) but the landscape is a lot prettier on the Slovene side of the border. Cividale and its immediate environs are very flat and not terribly interesting, except for the mountains in the background. So we made a few stops in Goriska Brda just to enjoy the sunshine, and then we continued home. Of course, as soon as we got within 20 kilometers of Ljubljana, we hit the ever-present Wall of Fog. (*sigh*)

Christmas Eve we spent in Naklo with Ernie and Jozi and their families, and that was a lot of fun. We ate lots of different kinds of seafood, from sushi to shrimp to scungilli salad. Christmas Day we spent with one teacher we know from school, who coincidentally is dating a woman who used to live in the apartment next door to us (so we knew her already). Most of the people at that party were from Australia and were not people we had met before. We ate pork ribs, chicken, some deep-fried potato/veg balls, different salads, pasta, and some home-made ice cream.

I’ve managed to post the pictures from Cividale on flickr, so you can check those out.

I will leave you with best wishes for a happy and healthy 2009, and an Italian recipe designed to ensure riches in the coming year:

COTECHINO WITH LENTILS/
COTECHINO CON LENTICCHIE
Recipe by Mario Batali
This is the most traditional dish of all for New Year’s Eve supper. The lentils represent the coins soon to come to all who consume the dish within an hour of midnight.

Makes 4 servings
Ingredients:__8 ounces dried lentils_2 cloves garlic, peeled_12 fresh sage leaves__ cup extra-virgin olive oil__ cup red wine vinegar_salt and freshly ground black pepper_1 large (about 2 pounds) cotechino sausage
1. In a medium saucepan, bring 6 cups of water to a boil, and add 1 tablespoon salt. Add the lentils, garlic, and sage. Cook the lentils at a gentle boil until tender yet still firm, about 20minutes. Drain and place in a medium bowl.
2. Add the olive oil and vinegar to the lentils and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
3. Prick the sausage several times with a pin. Place in a large pot of cold water and bring to a boil over medium heat/. Reduce the heat to a very low boil, cover the pot and cook for approximately 1-1/2 hours. Drain.
4. Spread the marinated lentil on a large serving platter to form abed for the cotechino. Slice the cotechino into rounds, arrange over lentils, and serve.

September vacation - part 2

2008-10-27T22:17:00.000+01:00

So, after a meager breakfast at “the lodge”, we got back in the car to head for Budapest. Mike suggested we visit the castle Visegrád along the way, since we could not check in at our hotel until early afternoon. This castle is a nice blend of preserved areas and reconstructed areas/museum. After the Mongol invasion, King Béla IV of Hungary and his wife had a new fort/castle constructed on the upper hill on the right bank of the Danube. This was built in the 1240-50s, near one that had been destroyed earlier. It has undergone some additions and changes since then, obviously.

From there, we drove into Budapest to check in at our hotel. Based on the previous day’s experience, we were not too confident but it turned out to be a decent hotel. It was clean, recently renovated, and in a good location. It was an Ibis hotel, which is a French chain (part of Accor) having hotels at reasonable prices all over Europe. You can check them out here. It was just a few minutes’ walk from Heroes Square, which is a large (the largest?) square in Budapest, and also near the large City Park with its many attractions (castle, museum, baths, zoo…). There is a subway stop nearby, which made the rest of the city easily accessible. I should say something here about the transit system in Budapest, because it is fantastic. Budapest’s network of public transport services includes buses, trolleybuses, trams, underground trains (Metró) and over ground suburban trains (HÉV). Buses, trams and trolleybuses run daily from 4.30 a.m. until 11.00 p.m, sometimes as frequently as two minutes apart. You don’t buy tickets from a conductor or a driver – you buy your ticket at a station and then you have it validated. A conductor or ticket agent can ask to see your ticket at any time, but I don’t think we actually saw anyone checking. You can buy a single ride ticket, or a ticket that is good for all methods of transport for a specific amount of time. It’s quite a good system. I didn’t see any paper maps of the transportation system available, but they are on every station wall and every train, bus, etc., and they are easy to read. But you can also go here for more information.
Also, traffic is pretty bad so I don’t recommend taking a taxi or driving, unless you have to.

Budapest is lovely: beautiful buildings, interesting history, good food*, good museums, nice people…we’ll definitely go back. *But don’t eat at the Ibis hotel. Breakfast was mostly edible, but dinner was not good—it just went straight from a package to a microwave to our plates. But considering that everything else in the area was booked for dinner, beggars can’t by choosy…. The night before, we ate a yummy dinner at a place called the Owl’s Nest. You should go there! It’s near the fine arts museum and city park, around the corner from its pricier cousin, Gundel.

We also dragged poor Ceil, who had a terrible headcold, out to the hinterlands for a food festival where Joe and I ate a potato pancake so huge and delicious it should be illegal. This festival is called the Etyek Kezes-lábos, or the Etyek Gastronomic Festival. It bills itself as a slow-food festival, and although we didn’t see evidence of that, the food on offer was good and so were the wines (if a bit overpriced).

I won’t add much more here. It’s better if you go to the flickr site, where you can see pictures and also some more comments, including information about a great tour we took in Budapest.

September vacation - part 1

2008-10-27T18:36:00.006+01:00

So, now I will tell you a bit about our vacation. In Croatia, we decided to stay on the mainland. We had thought about going to one of the islands, but the ferry schedule in September requires you to get up at 5 a.m., and we decided that none of us would be up for that (in either sense of the phrase). So, after some online searching we booked an apartment in a private house in Promajna, on the Makarska Riviera (across from the tip of Hvar). The house was about 500 meters from the sea, just up on the hillside. The beaches are beautiful there—small pebbles for the most part with an easy walk into the sea; the water is pristine (but wear shoes), there are cute little bars and cafes right on the beach, with showers and cabanas are conveniently spaced along the length of it. Pine trees grow on the beach providing some natural shade and also make it look very different from what you think of when you imagine a beach – no run-of-the-mill palm trees here. And the big gray mountain, Biokovo, looms over that whole part of the coastline. When you are in the sea, you have a great view of the beach with the pine trees, a little white church up on the hillside, and Biokovo in the background contrasted against the blue sky…it’s really very pretty. I’d go back there again in a second. Well, in season anyway. I hear it’s harsh in the winter. The only unfortunate bits are:
A: the food was nothing to write home about, as they say. But it’s worth blogging about…for the purpose of complaining. With all of that seafood right on their doorstep, most restaurants should be a bit ashamed that they don’t offer more of a selection. But if you personally were going to buy fish in the morning off of the fishermen and cook it later that day, that would let you get around that problem. We seemed to have that getting up early problem, though, combined with the fact that it took us a few days to discover where you had to go to meet the fishermen. Oh well, another time. And the wine offering – same complaint. Good wine is made not very far away, and what they were serving in the restaurants was poor.
B: On the islands you have all of these postcard-perfect little towns, each with a main square where you can linger over coffee, surrounded by beautiful old buildings, or opposite the sea…unfortunately this area on the mainland is not all like that. Oh, there are cute little squares and such, but it’s more congested and feels large-scale tourist-y (big hotels, etc). But of course we expected this, and so with that in mind, I have to say it was not disappointing.

We stopped for the night in Nin on the way down, which was cute. The beaches were not nice (trash!), but there was a very good restaurant just across from that mini-cathedral they’ve got there, so we had a great dinner. And we also made a pit-stop in Trogir, which is a place we like very much. It’s got charm and beauty by the bucketful. It’s a must-see in the area.

By the time we left, after a week of absolutely gorgeous, hot, sunny weather, the tide was turning. A storm came through on our last night that left the entire area soggy and cold – it was about 20 degrees colder by the time we got back to Ljubljana! We were all freezing.

But we put up our umbrellas, put on our scarves and sweaters, and strolled around Ljubljana for the next couple of days. We also made a trip to Lake Bled, but were out of the car for only a few minutes when it started to rain (never mind that it was already blowing a gale and we were cold despite having worn lots of wooly things). Besides, you couldn’t see anything on account of the cloud cover. It’s a good thing that Lake Bled is on absolutely every tourist site or brochure even remotely connected with Slovenia, so that Joe and Ceil could see what it looks like under normal conditions.

After a few days’ rest and roaming around Ljubljana, the plan was to drive to Hungary. Joe and Ceil have a dear old friend, Mike, whom they hadn’t seen in 10+ years and we wanted to drive out to visit him. He lives about an hour north of Budapest. We spoke with him several times over the phone, and he was kind enough to give us directions (we hadn’t bothered to get a map of that part of Hungary—we figured we would just follow what he told us to do) and also to book a hotel room for us at a place near his house. Well. Those two small details sound so insignificant now, but in hindsight they prove we were a couple of morons. Let me explain the drive in brief. It should have taken about six hours to drive from Ljubljana to meet Mike in the small city of Esztergom. But the roads he sent us on were “highways” in name only. In fact they would be described more aptly as country roads. But the fact that they were small roads did not discourage the trucks from driving on them – it was one lumbering vehicle after another (all of them ahead of us!). And for sheer boredom, this ride can’t be beaten. It’s as flat as Kansas and equally riveting (nothing but crops on either side of the road). I would, however, go back there again if it were summertime. Why on earth?!? Because these crops are sunflowers. As far as the eye can see, there is field after field of sunflowers. I’ll bet it’s breathtaking. Unfortunately they were all brown and dried up by the time we drove through.

But I digress. We were supposed to meet Mike at Esztergom cathedral, in the parking lot, at about 1:30. But since we drove there by way of the wagon trail, we did not arrive at the cathedral until after 5:00. I should mention that Esztergom cathedral is absolutely, mid-bogglingly, eye-poppingly big. But the parking lot was deserted. And we hadn’t eaten all day, since we were supposed to meet Mike in Esztergom for lunch. Or perhaps dinner, given the late hour? So we skipped looking at the cathedral and then Mike met us in the parking lot. Hugs and hellos finished, Mike explained that we should follow him to his house, and then we would go right to the hotel where he had arranged for us to have dinner.

So. We stuff our stiff limbs back into the car and follow him. More single-lane roads. More dead sunflowers. We were all getting crankier by the minute. I think it took about six and a half years to get to Mike’s house, but my estimation may be off slightly. I was starving and things were hazy. But we finally got to his house, had a mini-tour, met his puppy, his niece, and then got back in the car. We drove through villages that looked as though they hadn’t changed much in 50 years (and probably won’t change much more in another 50). Then, driving on increasingly smaller roads, eventually we took a side road into the woods. We drove past several groups of small cabins (Ceil:“We’d better not be staying there!) and then to the end of the road. Then we turned down another smaller road and pulled up in front of what looked like a large lodge. Since there was nothing else in the area except trees, we figured that was the place. Sure enough, Mike got out of the car, and we went inside. He got us checked in and we went up to our rooms. They were freezing, and had no visible bed linens. We pointed this out to Mike, and he said that he would talk to the manager, and went with us to the dining room. They, thankfully, brought our dinner out right away, along with a much-needed bottle of wine. Dinner was a bit meager after not having eaten all day (just a chicken leg and a side of potatoes), but it was edible so it disappeared quickly. By this time it was about 7:30 or so. We wandered out to the bar area, but no one was there. Mike said that if we wanted something else we had better tell them now since they were closing for the night (!). We opted not to, with the selection being about as spare as dinner had been. We sat in semi-darkness in a small area next to the bar and chatted for a bit, but then Mike wanted to get on the road and drive home. So, there being nothing else to do, and it was getting late (8:00!) we figured we would go to our rooms. They were still freezing—apparently heat is not available in September. We asked for some more blankets, and the manager brought us each a blanket about the size and thickness of a tea towel. We figured this was going to be a long night in more ways than one.

Joe and I started to head downstairs to get a few things from the car (warm clothing…) and just catch the managers/owners as they are locking up. Locking up behind themselves. LOCKING US IN. FOR THE NIGHT. Joe yelled after them as we rushed down the stairs, “Wait! I have to get something from my car!” Scowling, they came back in and grudgingly unlocked a side door so we could run out to the car and grab a few things. Then they locked us back in again and left.

But since the cat’s away…..we immediately raided the armoires in the cavernous hallway upstairs and Joe found some musty, but thick, blankets. We split these up between our rooms and decided to watch TV, which each room (surprisingly) had. It was only about a 12” set (Color!! Things were looking up!) but, alas, no remote, the colors were a strange technicolor orange, and there were only four channels (all Hungarian). But we’ve been well-trained by our years in Slovenia (our motto for most outings to anywhere not in a major tourist center: “Prepare to be disappointed!). So, I put on my scarf and went to sleep.

As usual, photos are on flickr.

Next entry: On to Budapest!

Well, what do you know...

2008-10-08T23:16:00.001+02:00

...there's something new here!

Hi! I guess I am realizing that I either have (or make) no time to update this blog. Sorry about that.

I have added pictures recently, though (on the flickr site). You can click on the last post and it will take you there.

There are some new pictures from the island Cres, in Croatia. At the end of June/beginning of July we went there with some of Joe’s students. One of them has an apartment there, and we stayed with her. The weather was perfect, the food was fantastic, and the company was great. We had a lot of fun and visited the really charming little village of Lubenica, we picked lots of wild herbs, and met some great people.

We also went for a weekend to Goriska Brda, which is the wine growing region in the western part of Slovenia. We went with another couple (Slovene) who, surprisingly, had not previously spent any real time in that area. I say “surprisingly” because they are really into wine, and this is the region where most of the good stuff comes from. And it’s gorgeous – rolling hills, the geometric patterns created by the lines of vines, fields of crops, the mountains in the distance – these all combine to make it one of the most beautiful places one can possibly visit. Our friends were impressed.

And there might be a few miscellaneous pictures from other times of this past summer. Everything is grouped by date.

We also had a visit from Joe and Ceil (hi! If you’re reading this..) which was a lot of work on their part, it being such a long trip, but it was really great to see them. We spent a week in Croatia (by the sea) and a few days in Ljubljana, and then in Budapest. I will write about that at another time, though. I promise. And as soon as I get pictures from Joe and Ceil, I will put them onto Flickr.

Right now I am back in the U.S. because I didn’t feel like I had had enough vacation after those three weeks I mentioned above, so I came here. Kidding, of course. Actually, I had to come and help resolve the current financial crisis. And to try to sell this bridge that has been in my family for years and years.

Seriously, I am here for my father’s knee surgery. Not in a surgical capacity (if you thought that, see previous offer for bridge).

In case you are not following this saga, in a nutshell, the infection that invaded my father’s body last spring (prompting my earlier trip here) took up residency in his artificial knee. Uninvited, of course. And as if that bit of house-squatting wasn’t enough, the infection’s little children decided the knee wasn’t posh enough for them. Too cramped? They wanted to get out of their hometown and spend a year backpacking through the circulatory system? (I hear it’s lovely in the spring) Who knows. Anyway, they emerged en masse, visiting the kidneys, the liver, all the hot spots…and, like so many teenagers on their first trip without their parents, wreaking general havoc along the way. They even invited their friend MRSA to join the party. So, the knee had to be removed. It was replaced with a very unfriendly piece of cement (which had been impregnated with antibiotics) which has been sitting in place of my father’s knee for the past two months. Now that it seems certain (knock wood) that the infection is completely gone, he is going back to the hospital to get his squeaky clean new knee. Because Michele had already taken off so much time from work to deal with all of the previous problems, we thought it was best if I came for this stint. So now we are just waiting for transport to RW Johnson, where he will be deposited into room 752 for this last leg of this journey (No pun intended. Well, maybe a little intended...) Then he will come back to the rehab center (where we are now) for physical therapy, and then back home at some point thereafter. I am sure it is going to be a painful recovery, but hopefully once it’s done, that’s the end of these troubles for him. On the positive side, he has lost LOTS of weight, and looks great!

Well, I will end here. I will post another update soon. Really. I have loads of time at the moment. You probably won’t even have time to read it all.

Ciao for now
-S.

LINK TO PHOTOS

2008-07-06T21:57:00.001+02:00

Click HERE to see new photos

or cut and paste this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/casadecosta_hi/

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

2008-04-27T10:09:00.002+02:00

Yep, it was only a matter of time.

Today we are going to Hell. Hiking boots recommended, marshmallows optional.

Pictures to follow.

Unanticipated lane change!

2008-04-08T19:22:00.003+02:00

Hi,
Things have been a bit surprising lately. Or at least for the past month. This started when I sent an email to my sister, to which I received an auto-reply stating that she'd had to take a short leave due to a "family matter". So I thought, "Ahem, shouldn't I know about any such family matter?" So I sent her another message asking her what was happening.

To make a looooong story much, much shorter, my father had had a mysterious, rapidly spreading infection in his lower leg, and his local physician was treating it. And by "treating" I mean, prescribing some oral antibiotics and the application of some cream. Now I am not one to advocate the non-judicious use of antibiotics, but from what I have heard about the state of my father's leg at this point, I think the good doctor erred a few hundred miles too far from the side of caution. I speculate that perhaps if his lower leg had actually fallen off, he might have gone so far as to ask that my father bring the leg in so he could have another look at it and maybe offer a better ointment. Anyway, once my father described the state of his leg to my sister, she said that she would fly to his house right away, and they would go immediately to the hospital for better treatment. By the time he was admitted, his kidneys were already failing as a result of the infection.

Because I am giving you the edited version, it is now just over three weeks and two hospitals later, and he is being treated for post-infectious glomerulonephritis.
My sister has been here through all of it, not to mention the worst of it, and I came back to the US (Virginia) for two weeks to see what help I could offer. I have been here for just over a week now. We are hoping that he will go home on Friday. He still must have one more procedure, which he should have tomorrow. So his departure date will depend on his recovery from that. It is a relatively minor procedure, but with his kidneys not filtering properly, any sedation could have exponential effects. Although he will likely still be on dialysis at his release from the hospital, it is believed that his kidneys are slowly remembering what they are supposed to be doing, and will continue to improve after that time.

So, that is why things have been so quiet from over here. Poor Joe has been bearing the brunt of things at home, what with working all the time* and also running home to walk the dog. (*why do people say "working like a dog"? -- they really lead quite the charmed life, you know..)

A few observations from Virginia (in no particular order):
1. The climate is almost exactly the same as in Ljubljana.
2. I had forgotten that people have problems getting a signal on their mobile phones, but apparently they still haven't resolved that problem yet here in the US.
3. The Charlottesville area is as nice as I remembered it to be. Very Quaint (uppercase intentional)
4. I don't miss all of this driving.
5. My father, even in his 'condition' is astonishingly good at word jumbles.
6. If you are just some poor schmuck in a hospital, without any connections or anyone speaking for you, good luck with that.
7. Since I am in the 'bible belt' I have noticed a few clever Jesus-related signs, but this bumper sticker is the best so far:
"I hope you follow Jesus this closely"
8. Food (everything except meat and chicken) in the grocery stores is expensive here.
9. I cannot find any of the proper Spanish words when I want to use them. I had better get back into a class PDQ!
10. They sure do grow 'em big down here.

That's all for now. I'll keep y'all updated (see how I am picking up this lovely southern accent!)

Hugs,
S

Well THAT explains it

2008-02-18T12:08:00.003+01:00

Much like Switzerland, Recycling, and some baking

2008-02-17T22:55:00.008+01:00

I am remaining Officially Neutral on
both the declaration of independence by Kosovo, and
˝Barak or Hillary?˝.
Currently living in a not-too-far-from-recently-declared "independent state"
AND being a white female registered-voter (American),
I could claim allegiances and opinions based on inherent bias, but
--and this may be a first, Joe can attest--
I am shutting up.
Let's see where the cookie crumbles for now.

And what of the "recycling" comment?
(see title for those of you with short memory)
Aside from teaching "recycling" as English vocabulary and eliciting opinions stemming from such practices, rest assured, I, myself, am also recycling to the greatest extent possible. And in this spirit I have passed on this Vicious Mother of a Sinus Cold to anyone in close proximity, having previously received it from the petri dish transport company, or perhaps just some sniffly student.

For me, it is finally on the wane, but Joe is possibly stricken now.. (maybe, he WAS was sniffly today). Just in time for our trip to Munich. But maybe not. Again, we'll see how the cookie crumbles.

Speaking of Munich, we are meeting Lisa and Brian there in a couple of days. AND....like our own lovely, personal UN transport vehicle, Lisa&Brian are bringing much needed supplies (sudafed and pumpernickel pretzels and funnybones). Woo hoo!

For our part, we are bringing prosciutto and wine. Yah, yah, I know. We are anti-health convoys, the both of us, but when it comes down to what people genuinely want, is it REALLY 300 kg bags of rice?

Onto baking.
A lovely cookie recipe from one of Joe's students, Vida:

These are called kmečki kruhki. That funny č is pronounced like a `ch`. The name means "little baked loaves of bread", which is what they resemble after baking.

Here is the recipe:

ingredients:
3 egg yolks plus 3 eggs whites (separate them)
250 grams finely shredded (unsweetened) coconut**
120 grams powdered baking chocolate (unsweetened)
120 grams finely ground walnuts (if you grind your own, this is the final weight)
200 grams* powdered sugar

Steps:

1. In one bowl: Mix egg yolks, coconut, walnuts, cocoa
2. In another bowl: Whip egg whites until stiff; fold in sugar
3. Fold egg white mix into egg yolk mix
4. Moisten your hands with water and then form the mix into 2 cm balls (it is important to keep them small, absolutely no bigger than the size of your fingertip)
5. Immediately put the cookie-mix balls into a bowl with some *EXTRA powdered sugar. Shake/roll to cover well.
6. Bake on parchment at 175 degrees CELCIUS for about 15 minutes.

* you will need an extra 50-75 grams or so of extra powdered sugar for coating the cookies. Do NOT deduct this amount of sugar from the mix/recipe.

**If you can only find sweetened coconut you will have to tinker with the recipe a bit so it is not too sweet.

Enjoy! Note: these keep well so you can easily make them ahead or ship them.

*Ja. Shit! Si!

2008-02-03T22:37:00.000+01:00

This phrase* was repeated countless times during our trip to Bologna over the Christmas holidays. We didn’t realize how fixed in our brains the Slovene had become until we had to speak Italian. All that would come out was the @!**# Slovene! If I had 5 cents for every time I started a sentence “Ali lahko…” (which is what we use to begin a request), I could have paid for half of the vacation. Well, maybe not half. But at least for the rental car.

“Rental car?”, I heard you ask yourself, quizzically, “But I thought they had that cute little Opel Agila.” Well, she ain’t so agile when she’s sputtering and gasping her way down the highway, a condition which thankfully occurred while we were still in Slovenia (albeit on our drive to Bologna). To sum up, the experience was completely angst-ridden and we’d not care to repeat it anytime soon. Also, it does not make for a particularly interesting story. So, to make this opus on the Opel somewhat shorter and more bearable, here’s the skinny: we limped to an Opel dealer on the border of Slovenia and Italy, and deposited our car into their knowledgeable hands (“Ali lahko fix it and not charge us arm and leg?” And, by the way, ali lahko rent us a car to use in the meantime?”) ..See how easy Slovene is?

At any rate, they certainly understood our plight because they did rent us a car, and we quickly stuffed all of our belongings -plus dog- into our replacement vehicle and got back on the road. They also promised to call and let us know if the part that needed fixing was merely the 250 euro part, or the 1500 Euro part (which would be saying something, since the book value on the entire car up to this fateful day had been about 1800 Eur…) So, with fingers and borders crossed, we enjoyed our Christmas holiday and barely thought about the car until we had to return home. More on that later.

Bologna was very nice. First, we were completely taken aback by the sheer number of people on the streets. Actually, to be completely accurate, we were first taken aback by the homeless (presumably) man who tried to wash our windshield while we were stopped at the traffic light on the edge of the ring road. This felt so familiarly New York-ish that we of course had no difficulty yelling NO! at the appropriate volume --and in, I should mention, --the appropriate language. This was the last “NO!” that escaped my mouth for the rest of the week, all of the others being, “Ne, oops, shit, I mean, no”.

Bologna. (by the way, click on any of the words shown in the color PINK and they will take you to a linked page)

The streets were TEEMING. When “they” talk about immigrants to the U.S. they always refer to the “teeming masses”. Well, picture those streets, and you have Bologna on the weekend before Christmas. There were people teeming all over the place. Teeming and peering and shopping and talking and teeming and drinking coffee and dodging motorbikes and teeming and gesturing and…. etc. We were a bit overwhelmed, having just come from our recent distress and also from Sleepy Slovenia. But we soon acclimated ourselves and were able to enjoy the lively atmosphere. That’s a big difference between Slovenia and Italy. Here, if voices are raised, one might automatically assume: “drunk Balkan-type, probably looking for a fight, or perhaps another schnapps will take care of the situation” but in Italy, if voices are raised, one might instead assume: “weather discussion taking place, and perhaps whether a second cup of coffee might take care of it”. Also, they have slightly better flea markets. And EXCELLENT food.

Prosciutto. It melts in your mouth. A man in front of us at one shop opined that the piece left at the end of the ham, nearest the foot, is the best, most delicious bit. We concur.

Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. This is, of course, the internationally respected “grana”, or hard, granular cheese produced in this area (Emilia Romagna). By the way, this designation is a protected designation of origin, meaning that all TRUE Parmigiano Reggiano must originate in this area. ( much like Budweiser. The Budweiser beer that you buy here is not that watery beverage in the red, white and blue-labeled bottle, but is instead a Czech beer. This is because Budweiser is actually a designation of origin, not simply a brand name). But I digress… Did you know that in 2004 Parma was appointed the seat of the European Food Safety Authority? And why not? They take their food VERY seriously here.

Amazing seafood options. For Christmas eve dinner we opted for canocchia (in English, the Mantis Shrimp.) over some pasta and a salad.

There is an excellent open-air market in Bologna. We were a bit concerned going in about what would be open on Christmas Eve day, but most shops were open until late afternoon. In this marketplace, most shops were small and specialized in one or two types of foods. In separate stalls you purchase fruits and vegetables, fish, cheese, and meat and salumi (cold cuts), depending upon what is in season (although, since it was Christmas you could find just about anything). The shops are open from morning until 1:30-ish (some close a bit earlier, some a bit later) and then they re-open at about 4:00 or 4:30. One shop that has everything is the alimentari (grocery store) where you can get bread, cold cuts, cheese, and packaged foods. There was one supermarket, PAM, in town where you could shop mid-afternoon hours.

For Christmas day dinner we roasted some vegetables and made a lovely guinea hen
,faraona in Italian. (Then we cooked the carcass and made some stock and made a nice risotto the next day.)

We had many delicious desserts that we picked up around the city..some chocolate, some with apple and a custard-y rich cake, some that were more of a cookie…. But for Christmas dessert we brought with us a dessert wine from a Slovene vineyard, Persolja. Mr. Persolja recommended drinking this wine along with a nice piece of well-aged Parmigiano cheese drizzled with some honey. It was a very good suggestion. The saltiness and the bite of the cheese balanced well the sweetness of the honey and the rich wine.

The town, of course, was decked out for the holiday. There was a large Christmas tree in the main square, and lights were hanging everywhere. There were Christmas markets set up all around, and you could easily spot a Santa or two if you were out for a stroll (one of whom even played the accordion.) There were many, many beautiful churches but I particularly liked Basilica St Stefano, which was built atop and incorporating an Egyptian temple. Bits have been added on throughout the years, making it a very interesting mish-mash of churches and courtyards and centuries of tile work. In one of the courtyards they have a large stone baptismal-type font where had claimed Pontius Pilate had performed his historic ablutions. This claim was disproved however. It was determined that the thing was a mere 1500 years old, and probably only used for baptisms in its early years. It has been relegated to the courtyard where it is once again in use, albeit as a large birdbath. Also, the Basilica of St. Dominic was rather nice, which I understand may be in stark contrast to the man himself. To give him his due, he did come up with the idea of the rosary, which is beautifully depicted in a series of paintings inside one of the chapels, but he also was allegedly instrumental in the start-up of the inquisition. And he was just a teensy bit masochistic – think of the monk in The DaVinci Code and you’re right on the mark: hair shirt, leg iron at the groin, walked about shoeless & such…so he probably wasn’t very cheery either. I imagine him as inspirational, but certainly not a warm fellow. An apt description for more than a few significant historical figures…. But I digress.

To wrap up an already long story, I recommend visiting Bologna, and by all means rent an apartment if you enjoy cooking. We rented through Halldis, and it was a very good experience. We also drove out to Modena one day to visit an acetaia, Villa San Donnino, which is where they make balsamic vinegar (the real stuff, not that sweet-ish liquid you buy at the grocery store). I can write more about that another time. But more importantly, I am going to post this darn thing so that you can read it. It does you no good sitting here in my document file. You'll have to stay tuned to find out what happened with the car. (Oooh! HowEVER will you get any sleep with a cliffhanger like that?)

PS: to look at new pictures on flickr, CLICK HERE
There are 3 new sets, and I also put them in a collection called Oct-Dec 2007, and I hope to get some snaps from NY Eve up there soon, too.
Hugs,
-S

23 Things To Do Instead of Studying Slovene Today

2007-11-27T12:30:00.000+01:00

Clean the dead leaves off your plants.
Walk your dog.
Clean your boots (muddy from dog walk)
Read the news (in native language)
Read the news in Slovene and pretend you're studying even though you're really looking at the pictures and making up your own captions.
Vacuum.
Make a sandwich.
Look out the window.
Eat a sandwich.
Mist the plants (Lord knows they don't need watering; you did that yesterday instead of studying)
Clean out your schoolbag.
Look at pictures.
Browse the internet.
Put up some holiday decorations.
Do class prep.
Check the weather and move plants inside or outside accordingly.
Re-organize bookshelf.
Brush the dog's teeth.
Clean the sink.
Play with the cat.
Put away some laundry.
Think about vacation.
Update your blog.

A holiday I miss

2007-11-22T16:50:00.000+01:00

Thanksgiving is one holiday that I really miss. It welcomes (nay, encourages!) our unabashed love for food and family, and --like so many other holidays now-- does this without at all recognizing its humble beginnings. So, put down that turkey leg, wipe that gravy off the front of your shirt, and reflect with me for a moment....

(if this were TV there would be one of those spirally things at about this point that lets you know we are going to have a flashback....)

A long long time ago in a land far far away from the Americas, some sure-fire reality TV-show candidates took off on an epic and somewhat misguided journey over the sea. I`m talking about that plucky young group of adventurers that arrived via the Mayflower of course. Knowing they`d never return home they took with them all of the most important things they would need to secure their future, things like the clothes on their backs, drinking water, and some soon-to-be mouldy grains and seeds. I understand they originally had two ships but had to ditch one of them because it leaked very badly (which is not something one wants in a ship) so perhaps they did start off with a lot more. But I digress.

The crossing itself was very stormy. At one point, the ship’s main beam cracked and had to be repaired using a large iron screw, which marked the coining of the oft-used phrase, ˝We are so screwed!˝. When the passengers sighted Cape Cod, they realized that they had failed to reach Virginia, where they actually had permission to settle, which marked the coining of Homer Simpson`s oft-used phrase, ˝D´oh!˝

But of course, in spite of the lack of amenities such as roads, buildings, or bathrooms, and nary a Wal-Mart in sight, they decided to stay and began the long, arduous process of starving to death. Fortunately they had some good neighbors--namely, the native Americans-- who took pity on them and brought them casseroles until they could get on their feet. Well, actually I think they showed them how to grow corn and catch fish, but I`m sure it all ended up in a hotdish of some sort. The pilgrims were thankful for this kind help, and the ones that survived the winter had a big bash following the next year`s harvest. They invited the native Americans and everyone partied for three days. This expression of gratitude continued through the generations, first in the form of trading beads, muskets, and snug blankets in a wool/smallpox blend (dry clean only), finally metamorphosizing into the celebration we have today.

So, be thankful for food, for health, for family and friends, and for the native Americans for not grudging anyone a plate of maize gruel, or whatever it was that sustained those first pilgrims -- guaranteed to be a step below what you`re enjoying today! Oh, and thank the turkey, too. And the farmer that dispatched him. Lord knows if most of us really had to wring the neck of their own Thanksgiving turkey, we´d all be eating a lot more pasta.

Lastly, almost everyone learns from their mistakes and the pilgrims were no different. Here is a list prepared a short while after the initial Mayflower landing. Hindsight is 20/20, you know.

"Certain Useful Directions for Such as Intend a Voyage into Those Parts"
By Mayflower passenger Edward Winslow

as published in Mourt's Relation : A relation or journal of the beginning and proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth in New England, London, 1622

"Now because I expect your coming unto us, with other of our friends, whose company we much desire, I thought good to advertise you of a few things needful.

"Be careful to have a very good bread-room to put your biscuits in. Let your cask for beer and water be iron-bound, for the first tier, if not more. Let not your meat be dry-salted; none can better do it than the sailors. Let your meal be so hard trod in your cask that you shall need an adz or hatchet to work it out with. Trust not too much on us for corn at this time, for by reason of this last company that came, depending wholly upon us, we shall have little enough till harvest. Be careful to come by some of your meal to spend by the way; it will much refresh you. Build your cabins as open as you can, and bring good store of clothes and bedding with you. Bring every man a musket or fowling-piece. Let your piece be long in the barrel, and fear not the weight of it, for most of our shooting is from stands. Bring juice of lemons, and take it fasting; it is of good use. For hot water, aniseed water is the best, but use it sparingly. If you bring anything for comfort in the country, butter or salad oil, or both, is very good. Our Indian corn, even the coarsest, maketh as pleasant meat as rice; therefore spare that, unless to spend by the way. Bring paper and linseed oil for your windows, with cotton yarn for your lamps. Let your shot be most for big fowls, and bring store of powder and shot. I forbear further to write for the present, hoping to see you by the next return. So I take my leave, commending you to the Lord for a safe conduct unto us."

Love and hugs from SLO

Trgatev* etc

2007-10-30T19:37:00.000+01:00

Hi,
I will post some pictures later, but I thought I would steal this blog post from one of Joe`s emails. This saves me some writing, and gives him a chance to get his two cents in.

...Last weekend we participated in our first grape harvest.
It was lots of fun. We got to the vineyard around 8:00 in the
morning and started off with a couple ceremonial schnapps. Blueberry,
pear, and a bitter herbal one- all homemade of course. Then when the
group was assembled we headed into the vineyards to pick. First we
picked white and red varieties that we did not separate. These are
crushed together to made a sort of late harvest rose. Then we picked
pinot noir and riesling grapes, keeping them separate. It was a
beautiful sunny morning. It was glorious. As you pick, people are
coming around with wine to keep you refreshed. After picking, which
lasted about 5 hours, we gathered for another ceremonial toast in the
vineyard. We then had an incredible lunch. Started with a pork soup
and went on to various grilled meats, incredible salads, and desserts.
The wine maker then invited us into his cellar and that's when the
fun really began. I was gonzo by the time we were done tasting. I
went back up and had more soup, which helped me get my head
together...and allowed me to drink more wine!

We have two days off this week: 10/31 and 11/1 for
all souls day and the day of the dead. They take that stuff pretty
seriously here. The graveyards are a sight to see as they are completely decked
out with flower arrangements and thousands of candles.

So now you know that we are kicking back and relaxing for the next two days, and maybe --if it ever stops raining-- we will go for a hike somewhere. Lucy`s got some `gastrointestinal distress` at the moment so it`s fortunate that we`re home to give her frequent outings in the yard..

Ciao!

* PS: TRGATEV is the Slovene word for `grape harvest`

New Things

2007-10-17T12:44:00.000+02:00

Well, since I last posted we`ve gone on vacation to ZDA (Združene države Amerike) and come back to Slovenia. Already. It went very quickly. Thanks very much to everyone we got to visit with, allowed us to impose upon them, shared their time (and their cars!) with us, and who made our trip such a fun time. We`re sorry we didn`t get to see absolutely everyone we wanted to, but the time flew, and before we knew it, we had to also.
While we were gone we didn`t miss much in the way of work, since school is not very busy in the beginning of September. We did however miss the grape harvest, which was a little bit early this year. This was kind of a bummer, but it turns out we have a second chance to get in on the action. We are going this weekend to our friend`s family home located in Rogaška Slatina, which is a town situated in the eastern part of the country. This town is generally known for its thermal spa, but they also grow grapes there. They do three grape harvests in this area: an early Autumn harvest (the one we missed); a second, late-autumn harvest (this is the one we are going to - these grapes are used to make a sweeter wine); and a third harvest, which takes place well after the frost (these grapes are used to make ice wine). It`s a beautiful, sunny day today, but I hear we could get our first snow showers this weekend. I hope you can pick grapes while wearing gloves. (˝It`s a fine late-harvest vintage, slightly sweet, with lovely acidity, and...is that a hint of...wool?˝) Here is a lovely synopsis of Slovene wine varietals.

After we`re done picking we will all have a big lunch together, and beyond that we don`t know what to expect but I`ll fill you in when we get back. On Sunday we`re going mushroom picking. Jurčki (large boletus mushrooms) are in season now, as are lisičke (chanterelles) You can click the embedded links for pictures and Slovene practice.
And don`t worry: we`re going with an expert. If I don`t update this blog for a while it won`t be because we`ve ingested some fatal funghi.

-------
Michele has been involved again in the Walk to Cure Diabetes. Here is an excerpt from her email:

I am participating in the Walk to Cure Diabetes again this year. Many thanks to those of you who have faithfully supported me over the past nine years. Covance is again supporting the Walk at a Presenting Sponsor level. Over the past nine years, Covance and our employees have contributed / raised over $250,000 for research to find a cure for Type I diabetes and its related complications such as blindness, kidney failure and limb amputations. My goal this year is to raise $50,000, although I lost one of my very significant sponsors last year, so $50,000 is a very optimistic goal.

For any of you that aren't familiar with my fund raising efforts, I am very actively involved in raising funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and I also serve on the Board of Directors of the Central Jersey Chapter of JDRF. Finding a cure for Type I diabetes is very personal as I was diagnosed with the disease at age 12. I want to see the day when children are no longer diagnosed with a life sentence of insulin injections and blood sugar monitoring and the ever present fear of developing further disabling complications such as blindness, kindney failure and limb amputations. We've made great strides in the management of diabetes since my diagnosis 27 years ago, but we still do not have a cure, and someone still dies every two minutes from diabetes and its related complications.

The Walk is Sunday, October 7th, but I can accept donations until the end of October.

You can make a donation online by following this link:

(In case the link fails, this is the address: https://walk.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=walk.supportwalker&walkerid=86778209)

---------------

Here is a link to an interesting blog, which has recently become a book. People have been illustrating their secrets on postcards for some time now, and sending them to this site, where they are posted every Sunday. It`s definitely worth a look.

---------------

I started flamenco lessons with the group LunaGitana here in Ljubljana. I was worried about the language being a problem, but it turns out that coordination will be the more troublesome obstacle. ;-) It turns out that I am not alone in this, though. I`ve also met some interesting people in the class, one of whom is going to help me with my Slovene in exchange for my helping her with English.

---------

And now I`ll leave you with a link to a really funny mime. Yes, I DID intentionally put FUNNY and MIME in the same sentence. Click here to judge for yourself. PS: It helps if you remember the song, too.

Hugs,
-S

Limber up those fingers

2007-08-26T15:42:00.001+02:00

Lj., tea shop
Originally uploaded by 2Americans

Kick back, relax, make yourself a cuppawhatever and look at the 400+ photos I posted to Flickr. Yes, you and I both thought pigs would fly before I got through labeling all of those, but NO! I have surprised even myself. And so here they are, a little older now, but then again so are we. I believe if you just click on the teapot here on this page, it will take you directly to Flickr. These new photos are in the set labeled Brian's visit.

Enjoy! S&J

And that's about all I have to say about that.

2007-08-15T09:24:00.001+02:00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hot enough for ya?

2007-07-21T12:09:00.000+02:00

In case you were wondering, no one asks you that here. But (in case you were also wondering) it IS hot enough for me here, thanks very much. It`s been 95-100 during the day for at least the past week. At night it cools off nicely, maybe to somewhere around 75 or so, which is perfect, so we open the windows and let the house cool down. During the day we just keep everything closed, which works well enough, I guess.. I mean, hot is hot but it helps to be out of the direct sun, and inside it`s generally around 85 during the day.

Slovene is coming along. I have a new teacher and I`m trying to see her twice a week.

Work is still fairly busy but we`re hoping it will slow down even more for August (or maybe not -- at least it`s air-conditioned!). We hear that the beginning of September is very quiet so that`s when we`re planning a visit to the NJ area.

The image above is from our brief escape last weekend for some sun and swimming. We went to the small town of Baška on the island of Krk, which is about a 2-1/2 hour drive from here. It was crowded, but the beaches and water were clean, and the water was warm. We did a lot of napping and swimming (perhaps `floating` would be more accurate-- we`re lazy swimmers). On Saturday we went to a different beach which is only accessible by boat -or- by a 3 hour hike over a giant, rocky hill and through a canyon and back up and down another hill....Which route do you think we took -- the boat or the hike? It wasn`t crowded at all, and we loved it. Most of the beaches here are not sand, but instead are covered with small, smooth stones. Now that we`ve spent some time at the beach, we`ve decided we prefer the stones to sand. They`re lovely and warm when you lie on them, they`re easier to anchor an umbrella in, and they`re much tidier (they don`t blow around in the breeze and they don`t creep up the back of your swimsuit!)

The area surrounding Baška is a strange looking place -- imagine some enterprising individual established a resort nestled in a valley on the moon, added some salt water, and several thousand scantily-clad people. And lots of gelato stands. Really, it looks just like that.

Today I`m catching up on some paperwork and maybe we`ll take a drive this afternoon to a moderately-sized lake in a nearby town, Cerkno. The lake, Cerniško Jezero, is mysterious: it`s known as The Disappearing Lake. Due to some strange karstic phenomenon, one day it`s there, and the next it`s not. And then one day it`s back again... You get the idea, I`m sure. So we`ll go, but we`ll prepare ourselves for disappointment just in case it`s the Cerkniško Puddle today.

Have a nice day, and a fun weekend!

Hugs,
-S

2007-07-10T15:03:00.000+02:00

Yep, it`s time to get this monkey off my back! I`m just doing a super-short, speedy update just to let you know that we`re still alive and well and still digging life here in Ljubljana. Sorry for not updating sooner, but first Brian came to visit (04 May) and we went on vacation together. Up until then we had been working a grazillion hours and so I just had no time. Then, when we got back (15 May or so), our internet connection was kaput. To make a long story short, we had to sign up for new service and that took another month to get set up. This brings us to almost the end of June. And then my FlickR photo hosting service expired. And then I was thinking about the 9,187,004 photos that Brian and we took since the last time I updated, and that was enough to make me head for bed, crawl under the covers, resume fetal position, et al....

But now I`ve renewed my FlickR account, and I am someday going to label and post those pictures, abeit slowly*. *in between working and completing/submitting all of the crazy paperwork you have to complete if you are a foreigner living and working and owning a company here. And we plan to take some little bit of vacation time here too, of course, although the idea of taking more pictures makes me shudder (pun intended - that one is for you, Bri).

So, patience is a virtue, good things come to those who wait, blah blah blah and so forth. Hope you`re all doing well and enjoying the summer.

Hugs,

-S

Too pretty to eat?

2007-04-01T21:58:00.000+02:00

This is a Romanesque broccoli-cauliflower cross, or, as it's translated here "yellow cauliflower". I've also seen it called other names, but most are similar to 'roman cauliflower', 'mediterranean cabbage', etc...

I'm not exactly sure what it should be called since it's a hybrid, but unless you'll be standing at your local grocer or seed distributor demanding access to this green goblin, the name's not so important. In this picture it looks like a conch shell, and it REALLY does look like that in actuality. It looks like a vegetable that deserves undue attention, such as a song about it, or at the very least, a blog mention.

When we first saw it at the market I genuinely thought it was too pretty to eat. We passed by it for a while, pointed at it, made admiring sounds and nodded approvingly, but didn't buy any right away.

We got over that.

We bought some a while back and cooked it up; it was very good -- more flavorful than cauliflower but without the tell-tale broccoli taste (I find that broccoli can sometimes taste like cabbage, especially if it's old).

When raw, this remarkable veggie's chartreuse green color is arresting, and the whorl pattern is hypnotic. Unfortunately this color fades to a light yellowish green when it's been cooked, but that doesn't make it any less desireable.

I hope it makes its way to the U.S. at some point. Or maybe not, so then you'll have to come here and find other astonishing things, in addition to odd edibles.

You can go HERE to read a good article on the fractal nature of this vegetable. I thought it was interesting.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/Romanesco/

Now playing at the Theatre of Pompey, "The Liberators"

2007-03-15T15:00:00.001+01:00

It was a day of sweaty palms and throat-clearing if you happened to be a particular Roman ruler in 44 BCE. Yes my friends, today is the famed Ides of March. This is lucky for me, as I had absolutely nothing to blog about today. Nothing at all to give me an excuse to fill you in on our sometimes hum-drum lives, and then I looked at the calendar. I realized I had a bill to pay, AND that it was a day of somewhat historical significance.

Weather here is spring-like, as it is all over most of this part of Europe right now. On Sunday we went to the coast and were treated to one of the last gasps of this year's burja (sp?). The burja is the chilly wind that blows out of the north, across the Adriatic, and up under your jacket.

It was a sunny afternoon, and we did eat lunch outside, but the wind made it noticeably cooler. After hanging out and having lunch in Piran we headed slightly south and then east, along the Slovene side of the Slovenia/Croatia border. Our destination was this little village of Krkavce. Krkavce is a medieval village, as are many of the hilltop villages in this area. Many of the buildings date from the 1600s, including this great place where we stopped to taste some olive oil. We passed quite a few farms that produce their own olive oil, but (don't ask me why) we only stopped at this one. It was not a huge operation, but they have been producing olive oil there since the mid 1600s. They do not necessarily have the original trees from the 1600s, since a killing freeze comes along every 30 years or so, but the building where the production is handled is original. The equipment, of course, is considerably more modern -- or at least I assume it is since it is all shiny stainless steel. The olive oil is produced by the family Carcauec, and it (the oil, not the family) has a nutty sort of a zing to the finish. It's very nice. And so was the family. They also shared some of their homemade sparkling wine, Malvazia, with us. It was also yummy. After buying a bottle of oil, we drove on to Krkavce, which was just a few kilometers away.

In Krkavce there is a baroque church which contains a baptismal font from (let me make sure I get the date exactly right here...) oh yes, sometime in the previous millenium. The font is sculpted from one solid piece of marble, and has the head of Medusa in the center, although I must say it's an extraordinarily flattering portrait of her since she looks rather like a folk-art depiction of the sun, and not at all like the serpent-headed monster we usually imagine.

We also visited a carving of a man; this carving is reputedly from the 1st or 2nd century. You would normally be impressed by its age (or not, you jaded bunch of stinkers), or at least I was. But this impact is somehow diminished by three things:
(1) The carving itself is pretty funny. It looks like a man wearing a feather headdress -- it looks very Mayan, and not at all like a depiction you would expect to find in this area. And it's funny looking.
(2) It's just standing out there on the side of a path. It's large, about 1 meter tall, but it's completely unprotected from the elements, theives, bird poop, dog urine, you name it.
(3) The small directional sign for the carving says "KAMEN". This means "ROCK" in Slovene. No special description, just "ROCK, 300 meters --->". They do everything except post an additonal sign to say, "but don't trouble yourself too much; after all, it's just a rock."

We were all thinking, if it really IS that old, it should be in a museum somewhere, right? It was puzzling.

You can read more about Krkavce here.

One thing that's not included on that webpage is the fact that there is a "living house" (sort of like a living museum) there. Oddly enough we didn't see another living soul during the time we were there, but there were LOTS of plants including massive trees of bay laurel and rosemary. There was also a cold, delicious natural spring, and some astonishingly large cacti. They must have been very old, too, but in a place that won't even acknowledge a carving from almost 1000 years ago, what would they have to say about a measly cactus? A dinosaur could have stubbed a toe on one of these very same plants, and there would just be a sign that said "CACTUS. 300 meters--->"

Well, that's all for now. I've got some prep to do before my next class, which is in two hours.

Hugs, - S

Smarna Gora

2007-03-10T17:33:00.000+01:00

Hello,

Today was a nice sunny day, which was a welcome change after rain for most of the week. We went to the farm market in the morning and bought some veggies, fresh yogurt, and a chicken. In the afternoon we took Lucy to Smarna Gora. (there's actually a Sloevene character to be used in place of the "s", but the blog won't display Slovene fonts correctly. It's pronounced like "Shmarna Gora"). Anyway, it's a good steep hike (669 meters) up a trail comprised mainly of tree roots which form natural steps. At the top there is the obligatory small restaurant/bar/cafe and also an old (13th century) chapel. It's the reputed site of a pilgrimage by Mary, and also another saint whose name escapes me at the moment... This website will tell you more about it. You also see people somewhat more, err.... "motivated" (read "masochistic") than us RUNNING up and down the mountain. Apparently there is an annual race for this so presumably they were training. A video clip from one of the races is also available on this page.

click HERE to view the page about smarna gora

Kurentovanje - part 2

2007-02-24T18:18:00.000+01:00

As stated earlier, we arrived SUPER early for the festivities, but this ensured us a good spot along the parade route. We were patient, there were things/people to look at, and eventually it started to get pretty crowded. A little witch (not in costume only) elbowed her way in next to me along with her mother, and continued to prod with said elbows for the next 30+ minutes or so. Now I wasn’t minding the crowd because a bit of body warmth was welcome, but the mother-daughter tag-team next to me was out to inflict internal injuries.

Then the parade began and except for the occasional toe-crunch, I was able to forget about them for the most part.

The highlight of Kurentovanje is the presence of the Kurentov. The creature in the picture posted here is a “Kurent” or “Korant” - the main carnival figure. (Kurentov is the plural form in Slovene for “Kurent”, or at least I think it is. I'm sure if more Slovenes read this blog there would be a correction posted in comments before you could even finish reading this sentence.) You can click HERE after you finish reading and see more pictures of the parade.

The carnival in Ptuj is the largest and oldest carnival in Slovenia, and it is named after the Kurent. It’s also a traditional carnival figure in other neighboring parts of Slovenia, and we also saw some similar figures from other countries, too.

Although the costumes vary slightly from one group to another, the general costume is made up of a massive sheepskin coat, and around the waist there is a chain with huge (and LOUD!) bells. They also wear heavy boots, and sometimes wear furry sheepskin gaiters (think Ugg boots), and their head is covered by a giant mask. The mask is also made of sheepskin and is about two feet tall, at least. Many of the masks have horns on top, some real and some made of long twigs decorated with colored streamers – when the Kurentov dance in the parade they will sometimes run towards the people in the crowd (imagine a bull charging) and then the streamers fall all over you. They also have a large beak-like nose, complete with sheep’s wool nose hair (!) and tusks, which I thought made them look a bit like an Alaskan totem. They also carry a wooden club in their left hand. When they dance, the sound from the bells is deafening! The “purpose” of all this showing off is for the creature to chase away winter.

Traditionally, the Kurent's outfit used to be restricted only to unmarried men, but we even saw entire families of Kurentov, including lots of little boys (so cute in their furry costumes!) and even several women. I asked a woman how much her costume weighed and she confirmed it weighed 30 kilos (about 65 pounds), and I can’t imagine how hot it must be inside all of that sheepskin! Many pictures you’ll see of them dancing will show them without their heads, which makes them look even funnier –- kind of like oddly shaped chickens. Click HERE to see a short video -- I hope it will remain posted for a while. In case you don't see the 'play' button you should click on the word 'predvajaj' to play the video.

While we were in the castle we saw another tour group. They were speaking French but we did not know where they were from. Some of them were wearing Carnival costumes and were obviously here for The Event. We later saw them in the parade and noticed their banner advertised they were from Brussels, from some international carnival committee. Many of their group were dressed as red-and-white jesters, and the seeming-head of the group was an older gent wearing a cape and a hat with two extreeeeeeeeeeemely looooooooong pheasant (?) feathers. He was accompanied by a very robust-looking fellow dressed as a sort of a nobleman/king (picture Henry the 8th, but without the big turkey drumstick you’ll inevitably picture him holding.) He was was escorting two younger women, who inexplicably looked like they'd have preferred he brought the drumstick instead.

There were lots of other characters, too: There were wagons of people dressed as gypsies, with all of them drinking and smoking and holding ‘babies’ (even the ‘babies’ were smoking! No worries about political correctness here!). There were these incredibly frightening devils from Austria, with red faces contorted into gruesome gestures, giant horns and long black outfits, writhing their way along the parade route. There was a kurent group from Bulgaria with towering headpieces, MASSIVE bells, and large tusks. There were groups of young men dressed in black pants covered by a long white tunic, and over their shoulders were several plaid, paisley, or floral scarves – on their heads they wore large, triangular hats covered with flowers. Together they pulled a wooden plow, also decorated with flowers, and at the back of the plow there was a figure of a bride and groom, which would rotate as they walked. Women sowing seeds sometimes accompanied groups pf them, and they were occasionally chased by men cracking long rope whips, who would perform a sort of a dance. The *crack!* *crack!* sounded like a fireworks display, it was so loud! There were also people in various costumes (clowns, medieval costumes, etc).

There were also some people dressed as animals (cows, goats) The animals had a large cylindrical body, usually with two people inside, and (of course) a head and a tail. One animal -- a goat-- approached us, and my friends with the sharp elbows petted it for a minute, after which time it turned promptly round 180 degrees and peed on them! Right in their faces! And I saw the whole thing (including their priceless reactions). Granted, it was only water, and the mother was a good sport about it eventually, but the 10-or-11-year old witch girl was obviously MORTIFIED. And I laughed and laughed and laughed…

And I kept a wary eye on the cows when they came past later on.

Kurentovanje - part 1

2007-02-23T15:44:00.000+01:00

On 18 Feb we went to our first Carnival celebration here. It was NOT disappointing! It seems to be a mixture of the typical Carnival pre-lenten hullabaloo mixed with a healthy dose of pagan celebrating designed to scare off winter. And anything that’s designed to scare off winter is a helluva good thing, of course. Well, now that you mention it, you’re correct in a meteorological sense when you say that we haven’t exactly HAD a winter this year, but let’s not split hairs. After standing parade-side for three-plus hours in 30-something degrees, our extremities were well-frozen and that’s close enough to winter for me (laugh away, cold-weather friends – our blood is thin again and you are clearly envious).

We arrived a bit too early for the parade, thanks to our largely ineffective translation of the festival event schedule, but at least this meant we got a very good parking spot. We also had a chance to tour the castle. The castle was well done, although not depicted as being as old as it actually is -- construction began in the early 1100’s but most of the rooms were represented as they would have been decorated during the seventeenth century. Besides the furnishings, also worth mentioning are the large ceramic stoves in every room. You can still see many of these stoves in homes today, usually covered with flat or very simply decorated ceramic tiles, but the tiles in the castle, and the stoves themselves, boasted very ornate decorations and were designed to complement the rooms.

The plaster carvings on the ceilings were fantastic and in great condition. There were loads of paintings, and although they weren’t done by any world-renown artists (unless you count the somewhat prolific ‘painter unknown’, who received most of the credit) they gave a visitor a wonderful idea of what people were wearing at the time, or at least what they thought was fashionable. In one building there were even pictures depicting people in their Carnival costumes; worth mentioning is the surprising fact that the native American costume enjoyed as much popularity back in the 1700s as it did at this year’s parties.

The tapestries were also well done, and given the chill of the day, a person could gain a real appreciation for such cozy wallpaper. Since it was an active residence fairly recently, the tapestries gave way to painted canvases and printed linen wall coverings in the other rooms. There was a lot of Asian influence in several of the rooms. In the room exhibiting the serving plates et al there were several very nice Chinese serving pieces, and even an impossibly small silk slipper. Yes, it WAS a strange juxtaposition next to the dinner plates, but even imagining a foot that small (4 inches at most) is strange enough, so why not?

I’ve posted some pictures from the museum, so you can check those out HEREwhile I find a bit of free time to work on my post about the parade and upload those pictures as well.

Take care ~S

Carnivale

2007-02-18T07:25:00.000+01:00

..Today we're off to Ptuj. It IS pronounced just as you think it is, and although we enjoy going there just so we can tell people where we've been, this time we're going for carnivale. In case you're unfamiliar with it, carnivale is the Euro version of the Minneapolis winter carnival, which I'm sure was the inspriation for ALL other pre-lenten festivals great and small, right? (Minneapolis friends are nodding vigorously at this point).

Carnivale in Slovenia is called 'Maska', which is short for 'Maskarade'. In Ptuj, the oldest city in Slovenia, they celebrate in their own way and their festival is called 'kurentovanje'. Follow the link to learn about/gape at the kurentov. I've been told that their costumes weigh more than 60 lbs/30 kilos, so we're off to verify ;-)

The best part of waking up...

2007-02-13T07:59:00.000+01:00

...is a mass of coffee sludge in the bottom of your cup. Really. Read on.

Sure, we have them new-fangled cofee makers here, too, but almost everyone drinks turkish coffee. HERE is a great post describing the method. We've been known to take some liberties and so we always don't follow these steps exactly, but you get the idea. But be 100% sure to follow the last step. Leaving your Turkish unattended will mean you'll need to use that caffeine-fueled cleaning spurt scrubbing your stovetop. Don't say you haven't been warned.

Ahem.

2007-02-12T18:23:00.000+01:00

I conducted a transaction at the post office ENTIRELY in Slovene today. I had to buy postage in the name of our company (and have them enter our company in their system)

and pick up a package that was addressed only to Joe (he was not with me). And I did it! I used no English! Woo hoo!

January showers bring flowers too!

2007-02-04T16:58:00.000+01:00

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We’ve seemingly slipped from an Autumnal sort of winter right into an autumnal sort of spring. We’re all confused, even the plants. We have lots of flowers making an appearance: the Primrose (Primula Vulgaris - top right picture) is in bloom everywhere, even under the shady pines, and there are crocus and snowdrops, too. The Forsythia shrubs are blooming in the sunny areas, but they are a bit show-off-y (I think I just made up a word there) anyway, having also bloomed back in early December. In the fields, the Dead Red Nettle (Lamium Purpureum - picture top left) and Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium) never stopped blooming, but they look a bit weary. The slopes in the woods are covered with a more recent arrival: hundreds upon hundreds of Helleborus Niger (picture bottom left), with the Winter Heath (Erica Carnea - picture bottom right) keeping it company. In people’s gardens the irises are well up and so are the daffodils; the pansies also hung right in there since the autumn and are still flowering.

As I started typing this update, we were having a thunderstorm. It’s a far cry from a Minnesota winter, that’s for sure! Right after the thunderstorm it turned colder for a few days and we finally saw some snow. It was one of those clingy snows that sticks to all of the branches. It only accumulated on the grassy areas and it was gone by the end of the day, but further northwest of us they got quite a bit more. We went up that way, to the little town of Planica, last weekend for some sledding (for the Minnesotans: ‘sledding’ = ‘sliding’ in your parlance . There are no snowmobiles involved.) Planica is the site of the world’s largest ski jump, but I am just mentioning that by way of information – we didn’t do anything crazy involving our toboggans and the ski jump. At Planica there's a few feet of snow on the ground. We walked for about an hour up a hill to a small gostilna where we had lunch. Then we sledded down the hill. It was fun, and Lucy had a blast running around in the snow and chasing the sled.

Now the temps are in the mid 40s during the day, and the sun is very warm. We went for a walk today and I think it was about 50 degrees or so; you just needed a light sweater. This is not typical, but the whole of western Europe is experiencing some unseasonably warm, or at least strange, weather this year. I understand El Nino is to blame (oh sure, always blame the foreigners) I think it’s affecting U.S. weather too, but you, my tens of readers, would know this better than me. In London a few weeks ago they had some very heavy rain and high winds. The wind knocked down walls and trees, and some people were killed. On the news they showed people hanging onto lampposts so they wouldn’t be blown away. We haven’t seen those here, thank goodness!

Hopefully our good weather will hold at least for a few more days. On Thursday we have a public holiday and it would be nice to go somewhere for the day and soak up some sunshine. 08 Feb 1849 is the date of the death of Slovenia’s national poet, France Preseren. While he was alive, Preseren was in love with a woman named Julija Primic. She never returned his love, even though he was not a bad-looking fella, not to mention he wrote her some kick-ass sonnets. Preseren Square in Ljubljana contains a statue of him which forever gazes on a bas-relief of Julija high on the wall of a building across the square. The seventh stanza of Preseren's poem “Zdravljica” (“A Toast”) has been the Slovenian national anthem since 1991.

God's blessing on all nations,
Who long and work for that bright day,
When o'er earth's habitations
No war, no strife shall hold its sway;
Who long to see
That all men free
No more shall foes, but neighbours be!

Not many exciting things happened over the holiday season. Here, the month of December is “Happy December” and there are Christmas markets and mulled wine to enjoy. We were battling some never-ending colds/viruses all through the holidays, and right through New Year, so we were not your usual party-loving couple. We dragged ourselves down to the castle for New Year’s fireworks (which were worth the effort) and then back home shortly thereafter. We’re feeling much better now, thanks to massive doses of vitamins and the large quantities of oranges and clementines we’ve been eating. It’s my New Year’s resolution: I Will Not Get Sick in 2007.

We have recently gotten a new neighbor. They are two roommates and they both are members of the orchestra. The boy (age 17 or 18) is from Romania or Lithuania...I’m not sure exactly -- someplace small with an ‘ia’ on the end. He plays the violin. He practices here at the house sometimes although we haven’t heard him much since we don’t always have the windows open. Joe met him the other day. He speaks English well and studied in Michigan for a while. The other roommate plays the viola, or at least I think that’s what she plays – she hasn’t been practicing here since she doesn’t carry her instrument back and forth. She’s 18 or 19 years old and is from Russia. I haven’t met either of them yet but I think I saw them at the bus stop at the corner. The boy was young, wearing very pointy cowboy boots and carrying a violin, so I guessed that was probably him. I based this on the violin he was toting -- the cowboy boots could mean anything. The girl wasn’t carrying anything outwardly musical but they were obviously together, and they were paying with bus tokens (a sure sign of a recently arrived foreigner). I would have introduced myself but the bus was just pulling up as I arrived.

Speaking of the bus, let me just say that there are few sights more depressing than that of your bus pulling away from the stop as you run down the street. On most days I take the bus four times a day. The least number of times I’ll take it is twice, and the most is six. One ill-fated day I missed the bus five times out of five. The only reason I didn’t miss it six times that day is because Joe gave me a ride for trip #6. Some days are like that. On the other hand, some days I stroll to the bus stop taking my own sweet time, lah-tee-dah, and there it is, just down the street and I only need to wait half a minute or so. I love those days. The bus at our stop is a bit capricious. In spite of the encouraging timetable posted at the bus stop, there doesn’t seem to be an actual schedule..it seems to show up whenever it pleases and you just thank your lucky stars if you were fortunate enough to be there when it did. In its defense, it does show up every 15 minutes or so, but I’ve been left staring at the back end of it often enough that I feel entitled to complain a bit. (sigh) I feel better now.

Work is still busy, so that’s good. Our school hired a new batch of teachers to replace some of the ones that moved on. We were the last group of non-EU citizens to be hired, so it’s a good thing we made the move when we did. All of the teachers now must be from within the EU, so all of the native English speakers will be from Great Britain.

I’ve got to do some class prep now, so I’ll end here. I’ll try to update more frequently, even if it’s just a few words.

Ciao

And now you can consider yourselves FULLY updated :-)

2006-11-16T21:57:00.000+01:00

Another note to say "hi". No, nothing new has happened since I last posted, since that was just two days ago and life is just not that exciting.

Since some of you have been asking, I'll tell you a bit about my classes. I teach mostly adults.
For adult students I have:
-one group of seven students who are studying for an English certificate examination -- on a scale from level 1 (beginner) to level 7 (advanced) they are about a 4.
-one individual level 4 student,
-one individual level 2 (barely!) student,
-one group of three people at level 2 (this group is quite clever),
-one individual level 1 (VERY beginner!) student,
-another individual level 2 student who is also quite clever

I teach two childrens classes:
-one class is just two girls, ages 8 and 11, who are about a level 2 (but slightly more advanced). I really enjoy this class.
-the other class is a group of seven kids, all age 7 (5 boys and 2 girls), beginning level 2. I pretty much dread this class - sometimes they are monsters and making sure I have enough interesting stuff to keep them from being monsters takes a lot of time.

Most students' classes are 2 hours and 15 minutes, and most of them meet twice per week.

At the beginning, class prep was taking a lot of time, but that has gotten better. Since some of my students are learning the same things, and they are not all at the same pace, that means I can sometimes re-use lessons. You'll have to ask Joe about his classes/students since I don't know much about them. I mean, I have an idea what levels he is teaching and I know which ones he complains about, that's for sure (!), but mostly I think he has a mix similar to mine. I know that his kids class (he has just one) has kids in it that are about age 11 or so, and they can be a bit bratty sometimes, but that's about all I know about them.

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Tomorrow we are having Thanksgiving at Ernie and Jozi's house. I am making a sweet potato and carrot puree and I am really not sure what anyone else is bringing. Ernie was supposed to find a turkey somewhere, and he was also making some pie. Hopefully someone will bring a soup -- the soups here are the BEST! I made a KILLER sour cabbage and vegetable soup last week - YUM!

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I started taking a Slovene class. It's just one hour, once a week, but it's better than standing at the bakery or deli counter pointing at food and stammering out numbers for the rest of my life. It was tough to cram it into my schedule but I figured if I forced myself to study and to go, I would make myself find the time for it.

Speaking of grocery shopping, if there had been such a thing as a prize for the Most Dairy Purchased In One Shopping Trip, I would have won it tonight. I bought two packages of butter, one tub of sour cream, heavy cream, kisla mleko (which is sort of like sour cream/creme fraiche but not exactly), three hunks of cheese, yogurt, milk, and cream for coffee. Somewhere, there is a very tired cow.

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This past weekend we went to Martinovanje. This is the celebration of the new wine for St Martin's Day. So where else would we go but to the village of St. Martin? Actually, we went to the next village down the hill, but let's not nit-pick. First we went to a small village, Brje, where we saw a presentation for Gregorciceva, a famous slovene author/poet who died 100 yearts ago. He was born in Brje and they put a plaque on his house, which is now a museum that houses many of his original manuscripts. There were some speeches which I am sure were very interesting (although I can only guess what they were about in a general sense) and some singing. Then we all went down the hill and had a little bit of food and tasted all of the wines they make in that village. I think there were about twenty of them. I lost count after I tasted the tenth one or so. Ha ha. I really only tasted a couple because the night was still young!
We then went to a fabulous restaurant called Arkade, in the village of Crnice. We had a typical Slovene dinner for St Martin’s: duck, red cabbage in a sweet kind of sauce, and some noodles with gravy. It was fantastic! This restaurant was written up in Gourmet magazine last February, and I would love to go back there to have something off of their regular menu as well.
Then we went back to the tourist farm where we were staying the night and we danced up a storm. I haven’t laughed that hard in such a long time! The next day, we had breakfast – well, lunch, to be honest (we got up late since we stayed up dancing until 3:30) and then we visited two great wineries in the area. We spent a long time talking to the wine makers and they gave us snacks and tours and samples and loads of information. It was a great weekend, and now we are well stocked with good memories and good wine! Oh, and we can go back to either – or both- of those wineries to help them harvest next year. Harvest time, although it’s hard work, is kind of a party in itself, and also earns you an invitation to their big, private shin-digs for next Martinovanje.

So, that’s all for now. I have a few more pictures, mostly from Halloween, to upload to Flickr and then I’m going to call it a night. I hope everyone is doing well and has a happy Thanksgiving of their own.

Hugs, -S

OPROSTITE!!!!

2006-11-14T23:17:00.001+01:00

This means "SORRY!" I haven't been able to post anything in a while. We have been super-busy with work and haven't had much time. A good deal of the time we spend at home is doing lesson prep, which means that one of us is using the computer for work and so we can't kick the other one off for non-work-related things (i.e. blogging). I did upload some new pictures to Flickr so you should take a peek in there and look at all of the things I uploaded on October 30th and so far in November. I also had some time to add a few comments along with those so you'll get an idea of some of the things we have been doing in our spare time (read "Sundays").

For those of you that had our old address on Ane Ziherlove and don't realize or remember that we moved in August, please remember to send us an email asking for our new address. For obvious reasons, I don't want to list our address here.

Weather is still decent although we've had a couple of frosts. There are still flowers blooming here and there, and the grass is still green so I can't complain about the weather, that's for sure!. We put the snow tires on the car today. Hopefully it won't snow anytime soon, but if they're not on by tomorrow we'll get a ticket; I also drive up and down a pretty steeeeeeep hill/mountainside to go to and from a client so there's that to consider as well.

The city will put up all of their Christmas lights on December 6th. An interesting thing I learned today: almost all of my students will put up their Christmas tree on Dec 24th. Most of them will leave it up until Feb 6th-ish as they generally take it down on 3 Kings Day, unless they have a live tree and it is just too crispy to leave up without people making fun of them. I told them that Joe and I usually put up our tree in the beginning of December and take it down in the beginning of January -- this was astounding to them! We're not sure what we will do about a tree this year since I don't like the idea of buying one at a grocery store. Maybe we'll just go into the woods in back of us and cut some branches.

I'll end here since it's very late (midnight) and I have an early morning (8 am) class. This weekend our friends are hosting Thanksgiving at their house on Friday evening so we'll be squeezing in yet another USA holiday (we did Halloween at their house, too).

Hope everyone is doing well.

Hugs, -S

Otliško okno September 2006

2006-09-04T21:21:00.000+02:00

Otliško okno
Originally uploaded by 2Americans.

(This post was started on 30 August)
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything --- sorry about that. We’ve been caught up in the day-to-day things and I’m sure you don’t want to hear about things like bedsheets and table lamps again, do you? Nah…I didn’t think so. We DID successfully finish our car shopping expedition, settling on an Opel Agila. I will post a picture here once we pick it up so if you happen to be driving round the roads of Slovenia and you see us, give us a honk and a wave, okay? Hey, I just thought of something funny to tell you: instead of a normal wave like we might use to say “thanks” to another driver who let you merge, or maybe if you are crossing the street and someone yielded for you, they use something different. Instead of an open hand, pretend like you are making shadow puppets. You remember: flashlight or campfire against a white background…well, now make the little duck head with your hand, and make him go ‘quack quack’ – that’s the motion they use here instead. So now you are ready to fit in!

Back to sight-seeing. Up north a bit is a town called Slovenj Gradec where they have preserved the older part of the city, especially two old churches (circa 1630). One, St Elizabeth, is still in use and is very baroque; it’s very pretty in a cluttered, ornate sort of way. It had some stone carvings/plaques on many of the walls in old german, most from the 1600s and some very attractive statues carved in wood – the colors are a bit muddy but overall they are still in very good condition – certainly much better then I would expect to look after 4000-some-oddd years. The other is no longer in use, but I preferred because it seemed more authentic for the date, having some original frescoes (in very good condition) covering one full wall near the main altar. Many Roman ruins, some as old as from the 2nd century CE, were discovered in this part of Slovenia, and especially further southwest near Kranj. One of the museums in Kranj is built in a similarly old building (vaulted ceilings, lovely carved wood work inside from several hundred years ago). Most of the town of Kranj is built on top of a cemetery; these cemeteries surrounded the two churches in town – one for the poor, and one for the rich. The museum is located over the ‘rich’ area. When they were excavating many years ago they moved a lot of the graves, but some they left where they were – they put windows into the floor of the museum and also into one outside courtyard so you can look down and see the remains of the skeletons! It’s somewhat ironic that the ‘poor’ cemetery has no remains on view for gawkers like us…

We also saw some fantastic costumes and gowns designed by Alan Hranitelj, one of the local Slovene costume and theatre costume designers (he was born in Croatia but worked here for the last twenty-something years and is quite famous). They are fantastic: a mix of classic styles and also something out of a storybook – very fanciful and loads of fun. Several that he designed as costumes for the Millennium Ball were on display – I would have felt very special to wear one of those!! Imagine if one of your parents made your Halloween costume for you, but she was really, really REALLY talented and imaginative, and also had a lot of time on her hands to sew on all of those fun little decorative bits, and make sure that it really suited YOU. That is how all of these outfits made you feel when you saw them: like whoever was fortunate enough to wear them was elevated to some privileged and extra-special status because of the outfit itself. When you looked at them, you felt the love. Unfortunately I could not find any pictures to post here, but perhaps you will have more time than me to delve further into ye olde internet.

We also took a great trip a few days ago in the southwestern area of the country (see new photos posted with tag "Ajdovscina"): Ajdovscina, Vipava, Otlice (no, I am not bothering to download and add the Slovene fonts to this post, sorry, it’s getting late, but they are correct on the photos) . Ajdovscina has many old Roman ruins, but we did not have a chance to spend a lot of time in the towen itself – we’ll have to go back for that. The people at the tourist office were so helpful that we left with at least a week’s worth of things to see and visit. We took a ride up up up the mountain toward the snow and ice cave “Ledenica” but did not go hiking all the way there since we could not go in because we had the dog with us. We also had lunch at one of the most beautiful places I have EVER had lunch, and it was just a picnic table on a hilltop. You will see the pictures and get some idea.

We also hiked across some rocky, windy plains at the top of a ridge to the Otlisko okno, which is a natural window carved by wind* into the rocks, forming a natural window into the rocks below. *Legend has it the devil was trying to steal the nearby mountain-tops and he tripped and fell into that mountain, causing some damage (the hole). I don’t think our picture will do it justice or give you the sense of scale. We had seen one picture before we set out, and when we finally came upon it, we gasped -- it was so incredible, it actually looked fake, as if someone had painted a really fantastic trompe l'oeil on the side of a mountain. The terrain in this part of the country was quite unique and I have never seen anything else like it here. It looked very much like some parts of Scotland, and it was very pretty. Green grass, scrubby little shrubs such as wild roses, leaning, windblown trees, large and small whitish-grey rocks scattered across the landscape; flowering plants growing out of some of the larger ones, and a deep ochre-colored lichen of some sort growing on many of the others. We had about a 20 minute walk through this area to get to the window. I was about to say it was a beautiful end to our afternoon in that oart of the country..

..but wait!

We also managed to nip into a winery on our way back home. We got started chatting with the people that managed the place and some of their friends and we quaffed some yummy sparkling wine (not yeasty like traditional champagne – very fresh and crisp-tasting) as well as a nice beli pinot (dry white wine) and we bought some of the sparking wine. One of our new pals also gave us some of the local sivi pinot to take home with us. We will have to go back there, and also visit the other 90-some-odd wineries that are also in that area. Not a bad goal, right?

Closer to home, we have been checking out some of the stuff at this local festival (“Trnfest”) in the Trnovo neighborhood (see posting re Macedonian band of many notes) and we went a few nights ago and played some fun games. Last Wednesday I was looking forward to seeing a band called Gogol Bordello, but unfortunately the drummer was injured/sick and is in hospital in Paris, so the show was cancelled. Bummer. So we went grocery shopping instead, which we needed to do anyway, and we went to our new local store, E. LeClerc, where we found ….. cilantro! Here I was at my wits' end, thinking I could never again complete a proper Thai or Mexican dish because I could not find cilantro anywhere, but God bless this excellent French grocery store for putting their one and only store in Slovenia right in our neighborhood. I cannot possibly communicate my relief in such a way that would make sense. Imagine if you could never find, I don’t know..basil again? That’s how I feel about cilantro.

*Whew*

Then this past weekend there was an evening festival in the center of Ljubljana with lots of music and food; it was great fun with some fantastic music, and also some very, very baaaad music. The highlight was late Saturday night: we saw a band called "Langa". They were from Murska Sobota, which is a Slovene city in far northeastern corner of country. Their music was very gypsy-esque; the two main guys who sang (and what voices!) were brothers. One brother played a bongo sort-of sounding drum that you play while seated, and he also played violin. The other brother played a stand-up base. Also in the band was a guy on clarinet, a guy on accordion, a drummer, and an acoustic guitarist. They were EXCELLENT, and the crowd leved them too - lots of dancing and singing. Hopefully we will have a chance to see them again. Actually they are playing another music festival up north this weekend but I don't know if we will go since it's kind of far and we can't stay the night. But there will also be a klezmer band, and who wants to miss a chance to see both a gypsy band AND a klezmer band at the same gig? Plus who-knows-who/what-else? We'll see..

Well, it’s back to work for us – it had to happen eventually…we start at _______ (for privacy I am leaving out the name) next week. That ought to change the content of these pages a bit, or at the very least we will stop showing you yet another quaint stucco house and/or gratuitous maintain-top view. Yes, we will be able to talk about our STUDENTS! Mwah hah hah hah.

Ciao for now ;-) I am not proofreading so please pardon any typos - I'm very sleeeeeeepy.... Oh, also posted in flickr are pics of our new flat - these are tagged 'doma'. Hopefully you won't confuse them with the pics of the old flat marked with the same thing. if I have a chance I'll go back and mark the old ones "old".

Hugs, -S

mid-August already!

2006-08-20T22:10:00.000+02:00

Stari Grad.JPG
Originally uploaded by 2Americans.

Today it is the 20th of August. Wow, time flies! We moved into our new place and spent a few days doing some necessary shopping. These things take a bit longer because of crazy Things you don’t think about:

Thing #1: Sheets are sized in cms, not “full”, “queen”, etc. And they are not sold in sets. You can buy a fitted sheet, and separately you can buy a duvet cover, which comes with only one pillow cover (unless you are buying the largest size, 200 cm which equates to a king size bed, in which case you generally get two covers) . So you are left to find a coordinating pillow cover separately as well. And, for the life of me, I cannot find any top sheets (a.k.a. flat sheet in the US) and I think they just do not sell them here? It doesn’t seem worth it to try and translate into Slovene my explanation of a 'top sheet' so as to differentiate it from what they normally use, so I just buy a thin blanket and use that instead.

But I am getting ahead of myself: first off we measure the mattress, which is 140 cms. We know this when we go to the store, but we buy a fitted sheet that is too small anyway because we are completely overwhelmed after looking at ten thousand different sheets and we get all bleary-eyed and crabby in the process.

But we buy a duvet cover in the CORRECT size, 140 cms (with one pillowcase, AND we find another set that matches - this is quite a coup) and we go home cheerfully.

We open it to discover that they mean it measures EXACTLY 140 cms, which (use your imagination to picture this) means it covers only exactly the top of the mattress. For example, imagine if you bought a tablecloth and it covered only exactly the top of the table, with no overhang – you’d be a bit disappointed and confused, right? Right.

So we went back to the store but could not find the same pattern in a larger size, and could not find anything under 140 euros (gasp!) in the 200 cm size (which probably would have been too much overhang anyway…and there was no size in-between. We tried three stores and then gave up. We have already spent a ridiculous amount of time on this bedding matter and I am not going to spend any more time typing about it, don’t worry, you can stop skimming this blog entry.

Thing #2 is trying to find a cabinet/closet (“omara”) suitable for hanging long coats inside that will also match the décor (1970-something? Commie lite?) of this apartment so that perhaps we can leave it here and sell to the landlord when we move on, and not have this monolith to worry about finding a new home for. This has been fruitless so far and it’s not for lack of trying. We are also being very price conscious of everything, having learned the hard way that you will never recoup that money spent, and – oh yes, you’re right, thanks for mentioning that we haven’t had any income for the past month or so, but we ARE going back to work, we've said so and you have to believe us. ;-).

Aside: I am not exactly a model of stoicism when it comes to shopping but I don’t mind doing what has to be done – Joe has a bit less patience even than me, and I really have to commend him on his tolerance, gamely trudging from store to store to offer his opinion and carry various packages.

Thing #3 was that we thought we needed a futon for the place (because we know you will all visit eventually, right? RIGHT?) so we finally found one we liked (see above situation concerning décor) and bought it. We were two days from delivery when lo! and behold! It turns out that not just one but THREE of the existing sofas in the apartment all open up into beds! Only two out of the three are comfy, but that is beside the point. The point is we did not need this now-superfluous couch. We had to go back to the store and request a refund. Getting a refund is almost unheard of in Slovenia, so that took a lot of complaining on our part, but we eventually were successful. Kind of off-topic, but we have also heard this is the best way to get out of a traffic ticket here: just jabber incessantly in English and they eventually go away (apparently not many of the Police speak English here). We are not planning to try this, but we have heard it from various sources so it's good to have that idea handy in case we should need it someday…

We also went plant shopping, which was much more fun and rewarding than buying things like flatware and a colander and a mop and bath towels (blah blah blah). We went plant shopping because we now have an excellent terrace where we can lounge outside, and so can our new plants. And so can the cat and dog. We have exchanged our tree-house-like bedroom on Salem Ave for something even more arboreal: Surrounding two sides of the terrace and growing partially above our heads is an enormous pear tree. It grows in such a way that Izzy, should he choose to climb up, is still only above the terrace and so he cannot get away from the house. Should he choose to climb down – oh, wait…he CAN’T climb down – evidently his brain is not wired for that direction! This means he can relax outside, and watch the birds, etc, which is all he ever wanted to do anyway. And we can relax outside, knowing that he can't run off and get hit by a car or something. Did I mention that just a few days before we left our last apartment (third floor) he pushed out a screen and jumped out a window, landing on an awning two stories below? I don’t think I have told you this story yet, so I'll go on: He got stuck there on that awning, and was sitting up there when we got home that afternoon. I’m sure the initial jump was enough to scare the crap out of him and he would go no further. I had to climb on top of a chair to the top of a big recycling bin and reach up to drag him down. I can still hear his claws screeeeching across that metal awning –aaagh! Like fingernails on a chalkboard! But, we got him back inside safely, and of course the little bastard bit me today while I was brushing him, so that’s gratitude for ya.

We also found a decent vinska klet (wine cellar) which was quite near our old apartment, but may be worth traveling back to that neighborhood for (it’s also next to the library). They have seven different varietals, and the malvazia and merlot are a good quaff. They cost something like 1.20 euros per liter. Yes, per liter. Wine here is cheaper than absolutely everything else, including bottled water. You go to the vinska klet and bring your plastic bottles, and they fill them there out of these enormous stainless steel vats – they measure about eighteen feet tall and three feet wide and who-knows-how-deep. If you have a place to keep it at home, many people buy a cylindrical stainless steel canister (usually about 30-50 liters) with a lidded top and a spigot on the bottom. You first pour in the wine (via the lidded top) and then you pour liquid paraffin on top of that. The paraffin floats on top of the wine and keeps the air out, so it stays good indefinitely*(*Who knows? Who ever has wine hang around that long? ) It’s a good system, especially when you consider that there are many such wine cellars/sellers around the city and country where you can buy in bulk, and the wines are good.

Other than these things we have not been doing anything very exciting. Our move was timed perfectly in that our boxes from the US arrived last week with all of our stuff we decided made 'the cut", so we delivered them right to the new place. It was like Christmas to see some of our things again! We did not take a lot with us when we left, and there are some things we would do differently if we had known what prices were like and that some things are a lot easier to find than we thought, but overall I think we chose well.

It has been raining a LOT so that is why we haven't been doing anything much. We also don't have auto insurance to drive our friends' car out of the country so we are staying in Slovenia on our ramblings for the moment. We did manage to spend one day at the beach at Lake Bled, and also did some various hiking trips around the arboretum and some other places in that same area (“Kamnika Bistrica”) on other days. I have posted some photos with the tags “Kamnika Bistraica area” and also “Arboretum”. We have also been doing some car shopping.

Last night we went to a good performance: it was a woman doing Edith Piaf songs while accompanied by her friend on the piano – there was also a back-story to it but, our Slovene not being what it should be, we’re not quite sure what that was…but it was a lovely night under the starts and it was held at the foot of Mali Grad (“Little Castle”) in Kamnik.

Today we tried to go to a bread-making performance/demonstration-thing at this small town in the mountains but we couldn’t quite find it (the little village was not on the map?!? Anyway, we encountered a problem finding it, even though we brought our trusty bread-sniffing dog with us) and we also tried to go to this partisan hospital hidden in the mountains, but it was so well-hidden we could not find it.

Ha ha, kidding. Actually, we DID find the hospital museum, but due to a serious rockslide a few months back, it was closed for major repairs to the footpaths and bridges by which visitors access it. In the recent pictures (that one labeled ‘zanimivo’, which means “interesting”) you will see a photo of a sign meant to discourage people like us from visiting during this time of “technical difficulties”. Not easily dissuaded – after all, we’re seasoned walking professionals after our recent treks through the retail world of Slovenia - we tried to hike up to it anyway so that we could at least see the exterior. Unfortunately, once you got to a certain point on the trail, there was a tall iron gate across the path and trespassers like us could go no further. So, we had some disappointment in that we didn’t actually do anything today that we set out to (sounds familiar – a bit like the home furnishings shopping experience) but at least it was a very pretty drive up through the mountains, and overall a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We also had some yummy pizza and home-made beer at the castle in Idrija on the way up.

And now I’m going to sleep. We’ve got to turn in a bit earlier at the new place since we are on the border of the city (we are now about 5 km from the center) and there are farms in this area. And by farms I mean they have farm animals. Farm animals that make farm-y sounds, like roosters and dogs and goats and chickens. Those roosters start pretty darn early, lemme tell ya. But I think it’s better somehow to be woken at 5:00 with a rooster as opposed to motorbikes and people dropping their recycling underneath our bedroom window. I’m not sure why, but it is preferable.

Hugs, ~S

Natural air conditioning!

2006-08-07T22:09:00.000+02:00

one last glimpse before I head back down.JPG
Originally uploaded by 2Americans.

Natural air conditioning

“Up!” – yes, we surely did go “up” on this day (about a week or so ago..). We drove up high enough into the hills that it already was a good 15 degrees cooler, at least, plus there had been a recent thunderstorm and some intermittent showers so everything was wet and cool and lovely. The forest smelled like cedar and fresh rain. We’d packed a lunch and started walking up to another waterfall. We’d never seen any pictures of this one, we only knew about it from a signpost on the trail. To look at pictures, these are all tagged “Jezersko” on Flickr. I have also posted many comments under each picture.

After we ‘d walked for maybe 45 minutes (all uphill but not too steep of a grade, and winding through beautiful sunny meadows along a brook, and then up into the woods..) we found a big rock and sat down and had a picnic lunch. We’d gotten our energy boost none too soon, because the trail soon became much steeper, and in time became increasingly narrow. We then emerged from the woods into an area where a lot of trees were down – it wasn’t clear if they’d blown down and someone from the park had cut them to clear the trail, or if someone was in the middle of cutting them and then suddenly had something better to do. (A lot of them are pine trees. It turns out that rocks from minor rock slides fall from the hillside and mountain above, and gather in their boughs – this weight begins to eventually pull down the tree. I guess they were cutting some of the ones that did not look so well as a result, and maybe also to clear a trail? The trail was non-existent at this point – we just knew to go ‘up’!)

We climbed up it for some distance, but it became increasingly difficult. When you looked up we were still about a 1/2 mile to one mile from the mountain face (presumably where the waterfall was) but we couldn’t go any further. Between bad footwear (Joe: sneakers, Me: sandals) and also we were dragging the poor dog along (footwear: none! She’s a dog, not a mountain goat!) we decided we should turn back. After all, we’d already gone about two hours and we still needed to get back down. The views from where we were perchedwere astonishing, and I think that was enough. We’d already seen one disappointing waterfall, and I don’t need to try out my new health insurance just yet, thanks very much. Getting back down, since there was not visible trail, was also a bit of a challenge, but we came across a large ice field at the edge of the rocky area, and that was a great surprise to find ice and snow somewhere at the end of July in the middle of such a scorchingly hot couple of weeks.

Eventually we picked our way back down the rocks and found the trail. We didn’t see anyone else hiking during the entire time we were up there.

On our way back we stopped at the river to check it out and to feed Lucy her dinner. It was clear and ice-cold; I don’t even think Joe would be crazy enough to try swimming in there, no mater how hot the day was! Next to the water the air temperature was probably ten degrees cooler, if not more, than up above by the road – a great place to have a picnic and cool off!

The next day we went “down” instead of “up” but this was in search of guaranteed cooler temps –- the caves of Postojna. We arrived there at about 2:00 and killed a little time in the obligatory café/bar while we waited for the 3:00 tour. Since it’s cooler outside the city anyway, this was nice, but the added treat was the cool breeze that blows out of the mouth of the cave, giving you an occasional “aaaahhh” while you are sitting there.

In this cave it is always about 45 degrees F. Other than preparedness for the temperature, we had no idea what else to expect. When you enter the cave you feel like you are going on a Disney ride – you line up and get into open tram cars. Then you enter the mouth of the cave and travel in the train at a fairly good clip for about one km, all the time with your mouth hanging open because it is absolutely fantastic inside. I have been to a fair amount of caves and caverns, and this one is the most astonishing I think I will ever see. The formations are beautiful, and so incredibly large, and then these passageways open up into these cavernous rooms (they called them “halls”), and a lot of the colors are white (from the limestone) and reddish (from the iron oxide). It’s amazing what nature can put together if you give it enough time, undisturbed except for the presence of water...some of the largest formations are 50 million years old!

After the 1 km ride you exit the train and get into groups according to language preference. You then are on a guided walking tour for about one hour, going up and down through the cave and through different rooms. In the next to last room you can see the Proteus, which is an amphibious creature that lives only in these caves. This little critter looks very much like about a 10-inch-long salamander. It is completely white, with no pigment whatsoever, and breathes through external gills and lungs (so it can live both in and out of the water); it has a very slow metabolism and can go for years without eating, which is handy since there really is not a lot to eat at the bottom of a cave with almost no other life forms.

The last room you come to is a concert hall – the echo in this chamber lasts for six seconds! To give you some idea of the size, they have chamber concerts in there with up to ten thousand people (this must absorb some of the sound I am sure) but the acoustics for such a performance must be amazing. Then you get back on the train for another 1km ride up and out.

It really is fantastic, and you can visit the website here:, but I don’t think it does the cave justice – this is one place you really, really must see for yourself. many spelunking terms and scientific names for cave formations are Slovene words -- it really is THE place for this sort of thing. We talked about how it would be fun to get a small group together to go on a private tour of some of the places not on the general public tour – you put on a helmet and a lamp and some overalls and go climb around for a while – I think it would be great fun!

I have lots more to tell you, but I'll end here. The next fun place we went to was Radovlice (I have to re-check the spelling before I post..) and then it rained for the next week(!) so we went apartment hunting (this one we're in now is a bit too loud and busy to suit us very well)

I'll try to enter some more tomorrow or Wednesday (when it's supposed to rain again).

Hugs,
-S

..in search of cooler temps..

2006-07-27T01:27:00.000+02:00

Lake Bohinj -waterfall 'Slap Savica'.JPG
Originally uploaded by 2Americans.

Hello … it’s been a few days and you guys (and this blog) are all a bit behind on our travels. It’s late but I thought I should write before I forget everything.

After our underwhelming experience at Velenje (and those pictures are posted to FlickR now – if you have access to our account you can see them labeled as such) we decided to go someplace better the next day. The tried and true, undeniably gorgeous area for scenery is the drive from Lake Bled to/through the Bohinj Valley, so we went there. We were not disappointed. I am not going to do it justice, but I’ll try my best. Other than ours, there are some lovely photos here:

Lake Bohinj is on the southern end of Triglav National Park (Triglav is the highest peak in Slovenia) and is part of the Slovene Julian and Kamnik Alps. First of all, you should know that the lake, and the entire valley, was carved by a glacier. All around this area there is forest littered with these fantastically huge, white, moss-covered boulders that were left behind by the glacier. They are everywhere: in the woods with trees growing on top of them, in the river with water rushing around and over them..

Once we got to the park, which is west of the lake itself, we stopped at one of the gostilnas there and had some lunch. All of the rivers in this area are known for trout (see previous post about fish-bashing) and so I had some for lunch, along with some potatoes. The trout is always served with this olive oil and garlic and parsley mixture on the side that you slather over the top of the fish. This love of garlic may explain the popularity of chewing gum here in Slovenia (did I tell you that gum is even on some menus? More gum per capita is chewed here than anywhere else in the world.) Anyway, my trout was super-yummy; Joe had a brat and some kraut, also yummy but somewhat heavy and regrettable on the hike up to the waterfall. After lunch we hiked up to the waterfall. It is not a terribly strenuous walk, about 20 minutes’ walk straight uphill, but I must say it is a bit of a disappointment when you get up there. It’s a lovely view and all that, but you are not actually that close to the falls, and the falls are not really that big or remarkable…so, it was pretty and a fine way to work off some of our lunch calories but don’t feel too badly if you’ve never seen it (other than the picture posted here). And I’m not being a grouch – I’ve heard Niagara Falls described as a let-down as well. Then we walked down and Lucy and I dipped our toes in the glacial river – brrr!

We left the park and drove back towards Lake Bohinj with the idea that we might find a good place for a swim. Given the fact that it is high tourist season and there was not a lot of parking, this turned out to be a challenge. We did eventually find one place and we parked, but the lake bottom was a bit too filled with leaf litter and branches so we decided to press on and look for a better place. We found another place, a rocky beach across from a small hotel, and hung out there for a while. Joe went fully in for a swim, but for me it was…while not bone-chilling or teeth-chattering…it was a good bit more than goose-bump-eliciting COLD so I only went in part-way. Lucy was not digging it very much – I don’t think it’s so much the cold in her case, but rather that she has not figured out how to swim yet (and she doesn’t seem too keen on learning). She goes in up to her shoulders and then once she cannot touch bottom she jumps out again – it’s funny how she picks up and places her feet very carefully until she get to that point. Equally funny was her giant fluffy body (dry) and her skinny wet legs!

After we left there we headed home, driving through Lake Bled along the way. We did not stop because it was very crowded and also we have seen it before (without the crowds). We will go back in the Fall once everyone else has gone. It is absolutely stunning and it has it all: the lake itself, the white mountains framing the background, the castle on the hill, the church on the island in the middle of the lake…you just can’t beat it. Here is a fantastic picture here:

I would like to go back to Bohinj/Triglav Park and do some more extensive hiking once the weather is cooler, and once my better shoes arrive. Hiking in sandals is okay, but not the best thing.

Speaking of cooler, now we will talk about the weather for a few minutes. In Ljubljana the past week it has been well into the nineties every day. Since we don’t have A/C, we have been heading into the hills to try and cool off. Invariably, Joe will say, “Where do you want to go today?” and I will say, “Up!” On Monday we had some errands to run so we stayed sort of local and went to some stores and lingered in their air-conditioned splendor. Then we had a thunderstorm in the afternoon that gave us some relief for a few hours and into the evening. That was the only day recently where we haven't really gone anywhere so I guess we were due for a rest.

The next day we again headed “Up!” and went well north, just a few trees shy of the Austrian border. Unfortunately, you will have to wait to hear all about those adventures, because it is just too late now and I would have to wake up Joe by turning on the bedroom light while I look for the camera cord in order to upload the pictures. So, sorry, you will have to wait until tomorrow, but it is worth it.

Kamnik.JPG

2006-07-23T21:58:00.000+02:00

Kamnik.JPG
Originally uploaded by 2Americans.

Hello again! It’s Sunday night here and not much is going on. Today was not a good day for activities involving movement of limbs…., no, we’re not hung over or injured -- it’s extremely warm outside and as a result we’re not motivated to do much of anything. It’s been increasingly warm throughout the week, and today it finally got the better of us. We tried to make the most of the evening’s necessary exertions (walking the dog), and so we rented a video along the way. Unfortunately the box for the movie was somewhat incorrect -- there are no English subtitles (Slovene and Croatian only) so we cannot watch it; well, technically we CAN watch it, but I think we will miss some of the key bits such as when the characters are speaking to one another. We’d go back to the store except there’s a thunderstorm brewing so we don’t want to walk, and it doesn’t make sense to give up our great parking spot to walk six blocks. So, I guess you get another blog entry.

“Parking spot”, you might ask? Yes, I said, “parking spot”! These past few days we have had some wheels, so we are travelin’ and we are happy!

Earlier in the week we went to a town called ‘Kamnik’, which scores VERY high on the ‘quaintness’ scale – I’d give it eight or possibly even nine ‘Q’s on a scale of one to ten. It’s rural, but not in a “boy, it sure does smell like cows around here” kind of way, and it’s in a valley so it’s very pretty. The town itself is well kept and looks fairly busy, it’s got some galleries and of course the compulsory café/bar scene is well-represented. It is about a 35 minute train ride from the center of Ljubljana so it’s got a good location.

In mid-June they have a medieval festival of sorts in Kamnik. The towns of both Kamnik and nearby Skofja Loka are a part of an international project called ‘the Path of Venus’. According to website Matkurja, a professor at Klagenfurt University (Austria) was inspired some years ago to organize a reenactment of the poem "Path of Venus," written by Styrian knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein in the 13th century. The poem tells the story of von Liechtenstein's travels through 52 towns in Central Europe, dressed as the goddess Venus, fighting in tournaments all along the way. Was this the very first Gay Pride parade? Who can say?…But today, towns in Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Slovenia are all involved. Von Liechtenstein traveled through six towns in what is today Slovenia: Brestanica, Stanjel, Postojna, Ljubljana, Kamnik and Skofja Loka. Kamnik, a town with a medieval core around Stari and Mali grad (these are two small castles, “Old Castle” and “Little Castle” are literal translations of their names -- I think..) has participated in the Path of Venus since 1997 and it includes a medieval market, complete with wandering minstrels and craftsmen. Traditional crafts associated with Kamnik, including blacksmithing, leatherwork, and iron working are also on display. Knights come from all over Slovenia and sometimes from abroad to participate in knights' games (presumably jousting, and the ever-popular pushing each other down, running away and laughing as the knight cannot get up because of all of that armor). The program is rounded off with medieval song and dance performances. This takes place in June, so we missed it this year, but I’m sure it probably raises the Q-factor up to that desirable ‘10’.

Anyway, on account of a late start – the pressure of our first Completely Unfettered Day (read: first day with a car!) and a whole country to visit caused some overloading of the synapses – by the time we got all of the directions sorted out on the map and discovered what there was to do in the area we had only time enough for lunch, to go to the small castle “Mali Grad” and also to wander around the town itself for the afternoon. General gaping and snapping pictures also took up a good portion of the day. If you have access to our Flickr account you can look at all of the pictures tagged 'KAMNIK" and see all of them from this day.

That night we walked up to one of the cafes on the corner for some ice cream . Joe placed his order (some sort of fruit sherbet-thing – I understood what he wanted) and they brought him a bottle of Coca Cola
*sigh*
This happens fairly often so we have taken to ordering verbally and also pointing to the item on the menu. I don’t think our Slovene pronunciation is THAT bad, but then again, how would I know? One guy we know has been here for more than ten years (I have it on good authority that he speaks Slovene passably well) and when he orders a pizza they still have him repeat it in English.

********

The next day we headed out a bit earlier and set our sights a bit further on the map. We went to a town called Velenje where there is also (surprise) a castle. This castle was a bit of a disappointment. Firstly, it must have stood unconquered for a long time simply because it is nearly impossible to find. You could see it easily from down at the bottom of the hill, but “Tourism Be Damned – mwah ha ha ha!!!” must be the motto of the Velenje Chamber of Commerce, as the castle and anything else of interest was astonishingly difficult to get to, and the town map was printed in letters so incredibly minute, the street names were just a blur. Or maybe they were just in Slovene. But I digress…

We persevered. (read “I pestered Joe so he kept driving until we found it, even though that vein bulging in his forehead would have told a sane person who values her happy home life to shut the hell up”) and eventually we found our way to the castle. From the exterior, the castle is built like a basic military/residential fortress, and is accessed via a wooden bridge which replaced the drawbridge (removed in the 19th century).

The castle of Velenje bills itself as the best-preserved castle in Slovenia. Well, it is still standing, and is indeed in remarkable condition, but what they fail to tell you is that it has been continuously inhabited since its construction (circa 1270), right up until the time it was turned into a museum (late 1970s). Since 1270 it has undergone a series of poor add-ons, reconstruction, and suffered other general blights to the interior, essentially rendering it charmless and stripped clean of most of its character. Sadly, I think that throughout most of its life the castle was defended well and withstood damage by invading Turks and angry peasants. Surely the worst of it was done after the State took it over after WWII, at which time it was turned into apartments for families connected with the local (flourishing) coal-mining industry. In case anyone is wondering, let me just say it here: linoleum floors do not belong in a medieval castle.

Various rooms in the castle have been turned into galleries of the museum (which are well done, and our tour guide did a fantastic job) but they might as well be in any modern building – there is no point to most of them even being IN the castle as nine out of the eleven galleries have nothing at all to do with the history of the castle itself… But, as I said, as a museum it was well done. There is a wonderfully extensive collection there of African Art collected over a period of 20+ years by local artist/sculptor Frantisek Foit. Unfortunately Mr. Foit was killed in a car accident just a few weeks after his return, so he never had a chance to give anyone the history or significance of any of the pieces, so nothing is labeled.

(Ed. Note: a lot of the “s” letters in these few paragraphs are supposed to have the little inverted roof symbol over them , meaning it is pronounced like “sh” instead of “s”. I am having some trouble with my Slovene fonts at the moment so in case you are someone who would notice that they are missing, you’ll just have to pretend they are there. Thanks.)

There is also a lovely collection of baroque church art from the 8th century to the 16th century — these items were rescued from a church in the nearby area of Skale. Much like our hopes for the town of Velenje, the church and most of the surrounding village of Skale were quickly sunk – in both cases, the result of extensive coal excavation. In the event of Skale's fate however, the Chamber of Commerce was on the ball! At that lake (and several others which occurred in much the same manner) you can enjoy a great holiday including boating, fishing, water skiing, horse-back riding…you name it. Just don’t attempt an outing from there to the castle unless you pack a lunch. I’m willing to bet the Rosetta Stone you need in order to read the COC map of Velenje is somewhere at the bottom of one of those lakes as well.

We would have attempted to locate a small waterfall in the area but the girl at the Tourist Office, when she gave us the inscrutable map, pointed in the general area on the map where the waterfall is supposed to be and said, “You won’t find it”. Given her broken English, we thought she mean we would not find it on the map. After our castle excursion we of course realized she actually meant “You will not find it.” and decided to leave the town.

We headed for the old section of town in nearby Celje, where we wandered the streets (Q factor? About a 5, maybe even a 6) and thankfully quaffed some refreshing beverages at a café/bar.

Later that night we went out to walk the dog and sat down outside at a local place for ice cream, and I ordered a bowl of water for the dog (yes, in Slovene) AND…she brought a bowl of water! Woo hoo!

That’s all for now. It’s getting late (I actually typed “getting latte” and had to go back and fix it – that must mean it’s time to head for the café/bar!) hahahaha

The next day we made a fantastic trip to the Bohinj Valley that I’ll tell you about next time.

Ciao and hugs,
~S

Sorry, we were on Naklo Time

2006-07-18T10:25:00.000+02:00

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.

We're here!

2006-07-13T10:40:00.000+02:00

Cool building and cafe.JPG
Originally uploaded by hfrstanjel.

No, this is not our building -- that would be too much for my poor brain to handle. But we are finally here, living in Ljubljana, and here is the place where you can read all about our new adventures (as well as see pictures via our Flickr account).
To see our pictures, simply click on this picture (or the description below it) and it will take you to our account. I have pictures loaded there from our trip, captions, etc., and you can leave your comments there for others to read -- they will be attached to each individual photo. Or (this is preferable) you can leave comments here on this blog for everyone to read and reply to further.

Well, tonight I am staying up late to tell y’all about our adventures here so far. For those of you with whom we haven’t had much of a chance to speak, or maybe just read my blog, I’ll start at the beginning (but spare you TOO many excruciating details..)

We left MN shortly after our closing; we had to wait for the new homeowner to meet us at the house to give us a check for some of the furniture that was staying with the house (we’re glad some of it is staying since it’s like leaving a little piece of us there) but we were on the road by 1:00 or so. We drove through flat landscapes and other visual and cerebral monotony for the next God-knows-how-many hours. The wrist-slitting boredom was finally relieved by some jaw-dropping traffic somewhere east of Chicago and west of Urine Streams, Indiana --- we sat in traffic, in darkness, for about 90 minutes with only the soothing inhalation of carbon monoxide and other exhaust fumes to steady our nerves. And then, zip-zip, the traffic suddenly eased up and we were at our crap-bag of a hotel. Lucy slept better on the floor than I did in our bed. "Nuff said about THAT evening.

However, I should mention the critters at this point: they did VERY well on Day One. We shacked up Izzy in Lucy’s crate along with his litter box, with the idea that should he feel the call of nature while we were on the road, he was all set. Evidently nature called him into the box just to sleep, so he spent the entire Day One asleep in his litter box. Yes, it was clean, and he never did use it – he just sort of shut down (after he stopped yowling, that was..). Lucy mostly slept and looked out the window., and we took her out a few times to stretch her legs, snack, etc – pretty much what we were doing.

Oh, and thanks (sarcastic and genuine) to our friends who gave us some things to listen to on the road – some of you made us get a bit tear-y more than once.

There’s something about driving away from a place as opposed to flying. Flying is a quite abrupt departure --*SNAP*-- and you’re off the ground and away, and before you can say "I miss...", all of your friends and their houses and the parks and roads are the size of Monopoly pieces…

...but when you drive, it’s another thing entirely.

It’s as though you are pulling on this looooong rubber band (not the short, thick ones like the ones that come on the broccoli, but a really long skinny one like maybe would come around a large bunch of mail after you’ve been on vacation for a week). And this rubber band keeps trying to pull you back and finally you get far enough away that it cannot stretch any farther and finally it breaks but it doesn’t go *twang* all the way back home – it more just lays there like an old rubber band that maybe you left on a package or a book for a few years and no longer has any elasticity. It lies there in the road like a strand of unraveled yarn, making you feel guilty for a few more miles yet. Yeah, Day One was tough in a lot of ways.

On Day Two we woke up early (thanks, Lucy – at least SOMEONE got a good night’s sleep) and were on the road by 8:00 or so. Before we left I gave Izzy a natural ‘soothing agent’ – some sort of Triptophan or however you spell it (it’s that substance that is produced in turkey that makes you sleepy after you’ve eaten it) Anyway, he snoozed (outside the litter box) for most of the trip. Lucy was a good dog and did not get whiney until somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania, at which point we were pretty whiney ourselves. We thought she needed to go to pee, etc and had to pull over on the edge of Route 80 with the 18-wheelers screaming past, but she did nothing but run around and look for field mice.

Twice.

It turned out she just wanted to crawl into my lap and go to sleep. This is no small trick for a 60-pound dog but it made her happy, and once my left arm finally fell asleep I thought it was very cute, too. Not to mention thankful that I was not driving at the time.

Day Two also sucked, by the way, but in a more conventional road-weary sense. We drove for about seventeen gumptillion hours before we even saw a hill. Then the scenery started to change and we FINALLY got to Pennsylvania, but our happiness was soon squashed under the heel of the realization that we still had another fourteen frazillion hours to go. Onward, gritting our teeth and blinking our bleary eyes in determination (much as I am doing right now, come to mention it - JEEZ, this is a long post), we finally crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge, and about an hour later we arrived at Mom and Dad’s in Barnegat

*whew*

We had some peppers and eggs and went to sleep. At least that’s what I think we had – it’s still foggy.

-------------

The next week was a bit of a blur. too. We did not DO a heck of a lot, but somehow the week absolutely FLEW by -- we did some visiting (actually, most people visited us) and also blew two days taking the beasties to the vet and getting their USDA paperwork done. Most of that time, unfortunately, was also spent driving around, with an extra round-trip across the state thrown in for fun and variety because the vet filled out the paperwork incorrectly (!!!!) We also went to the beach one day and went to M’s house in western NJ (and Philly in the evening to see a band) and then back to Mom and Dad’s the next day. Oh, in case you are wondering, please only use first names or initials on this blog – this will keep everyone’s privacy (we hope).

The drive to JFK took three-plus hours (another cause for “!!!!”) and also we were a couple of Nervous Nellies about Lucy and her travel arrangements, which were slightly less plush than ours. NB: This is probably the only time you will see a reference to coach airline travel as “plush” so it’s worth noting.

We were told to stay with her until the last possible second before check-in ; this did not help with our nervousness, let me assure you! But we did it, the flight was fine, it went quickly, I dozed for an hour or so, and before we knew it we were picking up our bags in Vienna. We had a brief moment of panic when Lucy was not waiting where she was supposed to be, but they unloaded her after the luggage -- we were very, very happy to see her being wheeled down the ramp, and she was very happy to see us, too! Izzy had traveled in the cabin (drugged, asleep) and so he was fairly ignorant of any goings-on.

Zip-zip through customs and we were on our way to get our rental car. Holy cow -- it was 90-something degrees outside!!!! We loaded up the car. We spent another few profanity-laden minutes trying to figure out the trick to get the car into reverse gear (FYI on a Renault: lift up the ring on the gear shift knob) and finally we were off! You can check out the photos on Flickr to see some snaps but I didn’t post that many of the early part of the drive They are not that spectacular until you start getting closer to the Slovene border, although I must say I saw the TALLEST pine trees in my entire life (sorry, could not get them on film) When you looked down from the road, I swear they reached up hundreds of feet – I’m not kidding! Did you ever wonder where telephone poles come from? Well, these trees could make several each and have some left over to whittle a canoe or two.

Our friends picked us up in Klagenfurt -- after another few minutes of consternation when we could not find the street for the rental car drop-off; it’s amazing when you are tired, you make these odd mistakes (and BTW a big THANK YOU to the makers of Red Bull, for making the last leg of our journey possible) but it was very good to see them and a huge relief! E & J took us to our new home, which they had decorated and supplied with some Slovene basics (cheese, prosciutto, bread, beer, milk, cereal, Commie Cola “Cockta” and this funny little snack puff-thing that tastes like peanuts instead of cheese, like we are used to) and we had a beer and kicked them out so we could go to sleep – ha ha.

Much like I am kicking you out now. Let me get the light for you. No --thanks -- Just leave everything - I'll clear it away tomorrow.

Oh. About tomorrow: more then on the apartment and Ljubljana Life. Right now I think I’m too tired to do any of it justice.

Good night ~ Hugs

.S.