Pic. one
pic. two

Pic three

Pic. four

Pic. five Pic six

Hello

Today we visited the Castle Ljubljana. A very impressive structure - located on top of what is aptly called castle hill, it is the highest elevation in Ljubljana. You can either walk up an almost impossible path (iced over) or take the funicular railcar up the side. I walked up (or climbed) and took the railcar down.

The castle itself is a mixture of architecure, from middle ages stone-and-mortar,

Then some more recent buildings.

That's the clock tower, where the flag of Slovenia flies. An impressive view from up there. Sadly, dad's fear of heights made sure he didn't visit.



See also Pics six and five and four - this computer makes it a devil's game to get pictures to the right places. The stairwell down was a long way down.

A 3-D reconstruction of Ljubljana in a multimedia show was next. Pic three. Then a visit to the chapel of Saint George. With me as best man, Jia as flower girl, and Avery as the pastor mom and dad renewned their marriage vows (sort of - there was alot more giggling and wisecracking than in the original version of events I'm sure.) Pic two.

Then we ate in the little cafe. Dad ordered a latte and found that the spoon had a little curlycue so that it would hook on the edge of a mug. Pic. one

Then the railride down. A much better ride than the museum of national history yesterday.

G-man

Closing in

Hello!

We have two days to go until our poll of the oddities of Slovenia finishes! What is it?

As the wise man Confuciousness once said;

You will see yourself in the answer

For those who haven't voted, take that into consideration!

G-dude

Ironing euros while shirtless.

How many steps are there on this blogger's staircase?

Five and one half months...thirty days to a month...one step for each day...

That leads to about 165 steps. Today is step twelve, and I've missed two, so, I have a 16.6% chance of not blogging each day. Not the best odds, huh?

Anyway, Slovenenia joined the European Union not long after achieving independance. The official currency is the Euro (which makes it so much easier to travel from france to germany to slovenia without changing money). The euro is structured a little differently from the dollar. There are still one hundred cents to the euro, and denominations fall out like this: for coins, 1 cent, 2 cents, 5 cents (all copper) 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents (a goldish metal) 1 euro, 2 euro. The one euro coin is silver on the inside, gold on the outside, the two euro the opposite. Then bills; blueish fives, pinkish tens, brighter blue twenties, brown-red fifties, and green hundreds, each with several distinguishing features. Alot prettier than US dollars, I'd say,

Our little apartment is lacking in several things, (I'm not complaining, it's the truth.) Cutting boards, painted walls (bare white) pictures, to name a few. It does have an iron, though, The nice landlord, Gorazd, obviously felt worried that we had an iron and no ironing board and left a large ironing board, brand new, outside our door. Just the thing we didn't need.

Embarrassed in Slovenia is bad today. A few days ago, when I was photographing the apartment for the blog, I walked out to take pictures of the elevator with no shirt on (I would only take a second). I get in the elevator to go down, and then realize that the elevator was already going down when I called it, and there was someone waiting at the bottom.

I was not disappointed. as the doors opened there was an old woman in a fake fur coat with a small four year old girl holding her hand. I said excuse me and bolted for the staircase.

I guess I'm lucky that the landlord hasn't had complaints yet.

G-man

Well hi there!

Who're you? Blog readers? Really?

Wow.

Anyway, bad intros regarding, Slovenia is much more concious about languages than we are. They are so small and so ringed by other countries that to know three or four languages is a must. I feel quite small when I here someone speak slovene, english, and german.

So we all trooped to a language school. After hellos, the owner brought in a woman who was the english, spanish, italian, french, slovene, AND arabic teacher. That's a wow. I was amazed.

Slovenia, in accordance with the languages of it's populace, is a very diverse country. It has mountains, forests, coasts, and plains, apparently with some nuclear skiing sites that I'm dying to try. The main soil type is Karst, a limestone mix that is perfect for caves. Much of North carolina and Tennessee are Karst too. When rain water with even the slightest bit of acid rains, it eats away the limestone, leaving some truly spectacular cave formations (some are so big in Slovenia that there is a CASTLE inside one.

There's also the mediterranean on the south-west side of the country, with all it's charms (no surfing, sadly.) Italy is only a short drive (or sail) away, and Germany and Austria are too the north.

We're hoping to visit some of the sights in these areas as well.

Adijo (goodbye)\

G-man

Lost in the sewer

Hoi!

Today's Embarrassed in Slovenia mixes with the post. A more accurate title would be Lost in Slovenia.

But let's let the writing speak for itself.

After a very productive trip to a language school, we mounted a bus to take us to our other destination - a potential rock-climbing wall. The No. 5 bus would take us there.

We rode the bus for ten or fifteen minutes, a long time on a bus. Then we dismounted at a forsaken turnaround at the end of the line. As we walked in the direction I thought we needed to go in, waves of a stink from the sewer plant washed over us.

We ended up in a park between a bunch of concrete block apartment buildings. We embarassedly asked a local which way to Litijska street, which is where the wall was located. After traveling through more dingy buildings we located Litijska cesta and found a bus station right next to the wall.

Then we go in, and it turns out that the wall is in the badminton courts and schools rent it, and one family cannot use it, it is not a public wall.

So we rod the bus home. Total time elapsed: one hour

Well, other than that, not much that is interesting happened.

TTFN, toodles, toodle-oo, ta-ta, (any other T goodbyes?)

G-man

Yikes, Bikes, and Ice

Oy there,

Here's today's Embarrassed in Slovenia: Yikes with Bikes.


Ljubljana is a very bicycle-friendly city, and I wanted one badly. It would help me get around, see the city, and drain the euros from my wallet. So we headed to the bike shop conveniently located right behind our apartment building. Too conveniently, as I was to find out.

It turned our that the shop behind us was the new shop, and the secondhand shop was around the corner. No problem.

We arrived there, and a nice looking man met us with a stream of slovene. He pulled out two nice bikes - 60 and 75 euros. He was obviously very proud of them, and he wanted me to try one out. We politely declined. He insisted, all with an unintelligable commentary in slovene.

So I hopped on one - inside. I rode a meter and hit the door. That made me feel like a dork.

The poor man was so disappointed that we didn't want to buy a bike just then, and I was so red we could have touched up the red paint on the 60 euro bike.

Ah well.

Then we were to try another pastime - music. This time the whole family loaded onto a bus and headed out to the music school. Slovenians do things differently here, and it seems nearly impossible to jump into the music system except in august and january. Same for schools.

Nothing much else happened except that I never could find ice skates that fit well.

What's going on in the US? I want to know.

Oh, another thing to add to my list,

B- (biker) man

Hello there!

Missing a day of blogging is like missing a step. If you're not careful, you'll miss another, then another, then another, then - CRASH!

I'm back with a vengeance, though.

We have two new feature on Ziveti Slovenija - the first being WHAT was THAT?, the game show where contestants try to decide what that thing we passed on the way to the posts was! Vote now to win an awsome prize!

The second is a periodical called Embarrassed in Slovenia, where your host feels the effects of being a foreigner in a country!

What happened this time?

Who uses basil while cooking? Well, Slovenians don't. I didn't find the basil, so I cornered an employee and asked, "Ali goverite Angleski?" Do you speak english?

Nope, she didn't. Then I asked a woman at the bakery.

"I want some basil."

"Basil?"

"Yes, basil. You know?"

"Aaaah, Pesto"

"Yes," I said, thinking that was Slovene for Basil.

"How much you want?"

I looked down and the woman was scooping pesto from the deli bar.

"No no," I said hurriedly.

She looked confused, and went to get the head of the bakery.

He spoke better english, but I still couldn't get him to understand Basil or what is the word for Basil in slovene. My face was so red it must have looked like I had face paint on.

I later learned that slovene for basil is Basilika. Thought i might have found that, but in was in a section for American spices

Well, other than the Basil Battle, nothing much interesting happened today, so you will now be invited to Slovenetour, the only tour guide that never leaves the house!

First, here's the building itself!

Functional, and somewhat comfortable.

Then to get to the floor. Here they don't go B, 1,2,3,4,5...etc. The floors go -1,0,1,2,3,4. Kind of funny.

To get to our floor (two or three, depending on your outlook) you can take steps or an elevator. But here we meet a conundrum.

Here is our floor.

But then, one floor down, it switches!

HMMMMM!

On the ground floor, the plot thickens!

But finally, the solution reveals itself in the elevator.

Take a close look at the buttons in Fig. one...

Now look again in Fig. two!

The answer happens to be that the elevator on the left services odd-numbered floors, while the elevator on the right services evern-numbered floors!

Then, the doorbell (which I thought was the fire alarm)

Then, in the apartment, at the computer, the keyboard is different. Z and Y are switched, and accented letters are on the right side.

Typing looked like this.

"Sadlz, the bookz were dripping wetlz"

So, those are our living quarters, and a glimpse at slovene culture.

Garrett, otherwise known as Basil.