SLOVENIA ON MY MIND

           

A few observations on Slovenia as we bid it a sad farewell.

·        There is nothing quite so amusing as watching a re-run of the Bill Cosby Show in Slovenian.  Cosby dubbed in Slovenian is like a Bill Cosby routine in and of itself, a sort of MC Escher winding staircase of humor:  Cosby doing Cosby in Slovenian, doing Cosby in Slovenian . . . on and on it goes.  Cosby’s dubbed voice was nothing like his real voice, either; it was a fake hearty voice, the kind where the man strains to make it deeper than it really is.  The Slovenian language sounds like Russian-Polish-Czech, making it impossible to even remotely decipher any of the jokes.  Until the conversation turned to “jumbalya,” which jumped out at me both because it was a word I recognized and because it was so deeply incongruous to hear it uttered in the midst of RussPolCzech.

·        Slovenian is also the best language to hear drunks talk in.  To the untutored ear, Slovenian sounds as if the speaker is already slurring his words a little.  When the speaker is three sheets to the wind, as was the case with a table of men next to us at dinner one night, the result is what sounds like one endlessly slurred single word, a sort of schigelblizelsnarzelflutz.  We were having dinner in Izola at an outdoor restaurant and a group of about 5-6 men plopped down at the table beside us.  It looked like they had spent the day out at sea, perhaps sailing or fishing.  One guy’s pants kept falling down, to his great amusement, revealing a navy blue underpanted butt.  Another guy waxed eloquent while his friends made obvious fun of him, which he stoically ignored.  I realized that it is much easier to be by a table of drunks who are speaking in a foreign language than speaking in one you understand – you can tune them out much easier, while enjoying the additional bonus of snickering at their slurred words.

·        The group of boozy buddies aside, I noticed many small groups of men just hanging out, drinking coffee or a glass of beer, deep in conversation.  It wasn’t the typical male fraternity you see in Washington:  business lunches or overgrown frat boys getting self-consciously drunk.  These were simply friends, enjoying a good conversation.  No one was texting on his phone, ignoring everything around him; there were few cell phones and only one or two people on laptops.  Mostly it was men, and some pairs of women, spending time together, talking. 

·        It seems that much of Slovenian society is built around coffee bars and sidewalk cafes.  We got to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and barely made it out of cafes long enough to even walk around the city.  On a sunny Sunday morning, families with children, couples, singles, groups of friends – everyone was out at cafes, enjoying a coffee, chatting and lingering.  You could spend a week in Ljubljana not because there is a lot of historical interest to see there, but because the pace is so damn relaxing.  My Mother’s Day morning was spent over cappacinos and a lovely fruit salad in a café that overlooked the Ljubljianca River, a clutch of churches and the castle walls crowning the hilltop.  One of the nicest afternoons we’ve had on this trip was spent in Izola, in a waterside café, watching the sail boats, drinking coffee (Jeff and me) or eating gelato (Max), chatting and playing cards.  This is something we never do at home: just wile away a pleasant afternoon by the water, doing absolutely nothing.  There are always house chores or homework; obligations real or imagined, that keep us from the simple, luxurious pleasure of just spending time together in a lovely setting.  Will I resolve to do that more often when we return home?  I’ve already done so.  Will I keep my resolution?  In a city like DC that prides itself on the fact that everybody has a blackberry making him or her accessible day or night, at work or at home, with their families or by themselves, where you can see parents texting on their cell phones while they are out trick-or-treating with their kids, or see a couple out on a date absorbed in texting other people, who may also be out on dates, texting other people . . . . the concept of true leisure time, of dawdling (there’s a word you never hear any more) has been swallowed up by the prioritization of accessibility.  Accessibility uber alles.  You don’t love the one you’re with anymore, to paraphrase Crosby, Stills, and Young – you love whoever is texting or calling or emailing you.

·        The Slovenian coast is a challenge to a sun-loving beach goer because it is all rocks.  As in gravel, pebbles, boulders.  Rocks and also cement since they’ve hardened the shore, to use the parlance of the coastal land-use planners, by cementing right up to the edge of the water and in some cases, down into it.  We bicycled from Izola to Koper, a town with the remnants of a medieval core that’s about 3-4 miles from Izola, and the bike path ran along the sea.  The water was edged in rocks and rip-rap (chunks of boulders intentionally placed along the water to prevent erosion), yet people were awkwardly sprawled on the boulders, soaking up the sun, or gingerly walking, bare-footed, among the pebbles.  Koper has taken it a step further and done away with the shore altogether, building a cement terrace to the water’s edge and then curving it downward into the water a foot or two.  They’ve attached steel pool ladders at short intervals along the curving cement edge.  Koper has managed to transform the wild Adriatic Sea into, literally, a swimming pool.  It is the ultimate transformation of a living, biodiverse coastal ecosystem into a Holiday Inn pool.  Izola and Piran haven’t taken it that far but you won’t find a sandy beach on the Slovenian coast, which doesn’t seem to deter people from bringing their babies and picnics down to the water’s edge and walking tender-footed amongst the rocks.

·        Slovenia feels far from everything, but when you stand by the water in Izola and look out over the sea, you see Italy in the distance.  You can even see the sprawling rooftops of Trieste, the closest Italian city to the Slovenian coast.  Trieste is giant in comparison to Izola, yet it’s only an hour’s bus ride away.  Izola is quiet.  The houses cluster together on the narrow streets, sharing walls and roofs, little back yards cheek by jowl with each other, and yet at night when we sat out on the deck of our house exchange apartment, you wouldn’t hear a sound:  no canned TV laugher drifting out, no music blaring, no cars revving by.  Quiet.  In a place of crammed proximity to one another, privacy.  And peace.