Ljubljana, Slovenia (December 14, 2013)

Not the greatest picture, but you get a glimpse of a
lovely near full moon, the fog wisps, the clock tower,
the castle, the hillside of lanterns, the charming
buildings, packed bustle of  the riverfront cafes, the
light adorned trees...

This city, the weeks prior to Christmas is nearly beyond description. Words burst through the mind; enchanted perhaps the most encompassing. Runner up, but not a word, is fairy-tale-esque. Given the Roman road ruins by the city center and the Wikipedia indication that records mention the township as early as 1125, the city is amazingly old.

But around the 15^th century, the city entered its own Renaissance.  The center is a small castle a top what I imagine is a 300-400 foot hill; the hill is nearly surrounded, perhaps 300 degrees around, by a river. The river is lined with charming three to four story, hundreds of years old, buildings.

This time of year, with sun not yet having shown in the days I have been here, the light dim, a cold wet fog resting not far above, the city, at night, is nonetheless cheerful and merry beyond comprehension.

The streets, the buildings, the trees adorned by a spectacle of lights, the spectacle seemingly never ending, creeping upward with lanterns littering the hillside all the way to the beautifully and colorfully lit, though sometimes mysteriously obscured by fog, castle and clock tower.

The City Center.

Despite the 30 degree Fahrenheit temperature, the damp cobble-stoned streets, surprisingly filled with the warmly dressed and merry, are also lined by numerous vendors selling mulled wine, many selling food items, including roasted on the spot, warm, chestnuts.

Shops are closed in the evenings, but all restaurants and bars offer a lovely evening, and a shocking amount of much used outdoor seating.

The sounds are strange and sometimes too familiar. The language, Slovenian, is harsh and sounds to me more similar to Russian than their much closer Austrian neighbor’s language of German. However, the tones are all wrong. The language has all the harshness of Russian in the sounds, but the tone, volume, intonation is much softer to the English speaker’s ear. I would not say it is jovial, even for this time of year, but perhaps matter of fact in tone, contrary to Russian which always seems somewhat assaulting and annoyed. The town square had musicians playing everything from folky Serbian (neighbor country) music to Pink Floyd. Like I said, strange and sometimes too familiar.

Some of the river front around the castle.

The Slovenian’s are their version of meat and potato people.  Friday night, with four native Slovenia’s, we went for traditional Slovenian fare. This basically consisted of pork cook about twenty different ways and a cheese and egg noodle casserole. They have sausage, rolled loafs (a bread with pork throughout, perhaps six different varieties of pork preparation), something they called blood sausage which I would call haggis, a pork concoction which was pork with pieces of pork prepared otherways forced through it. Like I said, pork pork pork. There were consistently hints of Italy’s proximity in Slovenia food. From the very Italian coffee and coffee regiment, to the egg noodle casserole, to the pizza.

The city center from a little bit down the river.

And I am happy to say, the Slovenians love their desserts as much as I do. Again, the Italian influence apparent with panna cotta readily available, but almost everything consisted of a slim light pastry or cake substrate, topped with a nice creamy substance and powdered sugar. Their traditional dessert is roughly this collection of substances, in nine layers, and includes a sweetened poppy seed paste/jelly layer or two.

Finally, with a day off, I wandered the city. I walked into the souvenir shop. The young girl there welcomed me in Slovenian. But while I was there she slipped easily through Italian, French, and English to serve tourists. I asked; she is also fluent in German and can somewhat negotiate Spanish and Portuguese.

Everyone in Slovenia speaks English and not broken tongue-tied, word searching English. They slip into English without a thought and most speak it as fluently as someone who has lived in the US for years.  They start learning in school around aged 10, but I think the fact that nearly half of television and media is in English promotes the fluency. Not to mention almost all tourists speak English, even if they are from continental Europe. English is the somewhat the universally accepted international language.

I do not know why these guys were (fairies
perhaps?) hanging from the trees in the park,
but they were lively and festive.

The Slovenians are hundreds of generations of home bodies. These people do not move. It is unusual at thirty years old to live 15 miles from where you were born and where your parents have lived in since they were married. Most of the parents’ generation live on the land that their parents’ lived on. Non-urban Europeans don’t leave their little bubbles. A friend of mine, who lives in Switzerland, recently said, “I commute 35 minutes to work, but you have to understand, for a European, that is UNHEARD of. That is really far.”  For the Slovenians this is very true. I don’t have the statistics, but it certainly sounds to me that the people here probably spend over 95% of their lives with 20 miles of where they were born, perhaps an additional 4.9% within 100 miles.

Europeans cite language, culture, and international borders as the reason they stay. I understand that for me, moving 3000 miles away is not really a cultural, language or national adjustment whereas for them moving 100 miles might not only mean all those changes, but differs dramatically depending on direction, Italy (west) or Austria (north).  That reasoning doesn't really hold up to me, because they don’t even move to the other side of town.

But this is changing. I don’t think this will be true of the teenagers today, especially with their

The park full of the hanging, um...
I am not even sure what to call them.

expansive multiple language fluency and exposure to media in different languages. When you can watch TV in Italian, Slovenia, German or English…. It just does not seem that strange to move to somewhere where the people speak those languages, especially when German and Italian speaking countries are so close.  (I asked the break down, TV channels are roughly 50% English, 20% Italian, 20% German, 10% Slovenian.)

My time now in Slovenia is short… so I best be getting to breakfast of multiple sausage products and amazing Italian coffee.

A profound thank you to Matej Jaksa, my colleague, for a delightful time, sharing so much with me and enduring my endless questions. (And with the good humor to just start making things up. "Matej, what is the story behind that tepee thing?" His reply, "Oh that is the famous tepee monument, haven't you heard of it?" In reality it was just a covering to protect a bronze monument from the harsh winter cold, something that would never have occurred to this a warm blooded California girl.)

Stupid: The fact that I tried to get out of going to Ljubljana during the cold dark of winter.
Cool: The great fortune to have gone, somewhat against my will, during such an enchanted time.