Archives for March 5th, 2004

The winning proposal for Slovenia’s new flag.

Yesterday, I mentioned that something had to be done about the whole Slovenia/Slovakia problem. In fact, Slovenes are already trying to do something about it. Their plan is to abandon the old Slovenian flag, which looks almost exactly like the Slovakian one, and get a fresh one. And they want to do it before Slovenia joins the European Union, which is less than two months away.

As you can imagine, there have already been a million suggestions for the new flag. The one below, for example. It may look like it fell off a Waffen-SS panzer, but it’s actually a suggestion based on the old Carinthanian panther. Its purpose is to terrify foreigners and make them think that Slovenia is full of Nazi pirates.

Set sail for Slovenia, Korporal! Arrrrr.

To solve the problem, a competition was recently held to find a new flag for Slovenia. You can see the winner and runners-up here. The winning flag, by Dusan Jovanovic, is the one at the top of the page. It’s already been derided as a “candy wrapper” by one famous politician. I happen to like it, if only because it’s decidedly unique.

My only reservation is what happens if you connect some of the lines. You get kind of a funky swastika. And that takes us back to the whole “Nazi pirate” thing, which is, of course, no good.

Connecting the lines makes a crooked swastika.

We’ll see how the adventure turns out.

For a good history of Slovenia’s flags, check out this page.