Archives for December, 2005

Hope your Christmas was merry and bright and spinning.

However you say it, and according to this site, it’s "vesele bozicne" in Slovene — which is wrong, but for that matter so are the Serbian, Russian, Dutch, Romanian, and Hungarian translations — I hope you had a nice, peaceful and blessed Christmas.

Carniola will return after the new year. See you in 2006!

The New Yorker’s Nov. 28, 2005 issue.

The Chicago-based Bosnian writer Aleksander Hemon recently contributed a story to The New Yorker about a man’s trip to the eastern Slovenian town of Murska Sobota to buy a freezer. It has some pretty funny lines about the sleepy eastern town, like: "Murska Sobota sounded exotic and dangerous" and the classic: "This is why we say goodbye. You knew that it
could happen when you sent me to the monstrous city, to the endless
night, when you sent me to Murska Sobota." (That line would look great on a postcard.)

You can read the story in its entirety here: Aleksander Hemon’s Love and Obstacles (printer-friendly version)

Marburg an der Drau, ages ago. (source)

The site Toti Maribor has some nice images of Slovenia’s second-city, Maribor. In particular, it lets you see how the city has changed (or hasn’t changed) over the decades. Here’s a timeline:

Maribor Today —> Maribor Back-Then —> Maribor Way-Back-When

(Thanks Mitja!) 

A letter to Slonček from the Slovenian authorities. (full size)

You may remember that the massively popular BitTorrent site Suprnova.org was shut down a year ago. The site’s Slovenian admin, Slonček, has now posted a story about what happened to him during that turbulent time: The Truth About the Suprnova.org Shutdown.

(Via Waxy)

Two Jems and a Gem (source: 1,2,3).

American newspapers generally ignore Slovenia, but every once in a while you’ll find something in a travel section somewhere, like this recent story from the Boston Globe: Slovenia a multi-faceted Jem of Central Europe. Note that the word is actually spelled "gem." Humorously enough, "Jem" is the name of a militant Islamic terrorist organization, Jaish-e-Mohammed. (Army of Mohammed) or the delicious Welsh musician. (See above) I don’t think they meant either.

Otherwise the story follows what seems to be the standard formula for writing about Slovenia, in which the following points are always assiduously mentioned:

1) Ljubljana is a mini-Prague or the next Prague or the sister of Prague.
2) Bled is gorgeous/awesome/bodacious.
3.a.) Everything is small and easy-to-reach, which makes exploring Slovenia easy.
3.b.) Although everything is small and easy-to-reach, the writer still doesn’t travel anywhere east of Ljubljana, ignoring Celje, Maribor, Murska Sobota and half of the entire country.
4.a.) Slovenia is great because it’s "hidden," "off-the-beaten-path," "uncrowded," and "unknown" to the filthy, stinking tourist masses.
4.b.) Although Slovenia is great because it’s off-the-beaten-path and not touristy, the writer only visits the main tourist sites of the country: Bled, Postojna, Ljubljana. At no point does he/she leave the beaten path.

I think that just about covers it. 

(Thanks Jesse!) 

Languages being studied in Eastern Europe. View full size. (source)

About a year ago, The Economist ran a story called After Babel, a new common language, which charted the rise of English as Europe’s common language. While not exactly groundbreaking, it’s still a pretty interesting story. They also ran a nice little chart (see above) of what the Easterlings are studying. It turns out that Slovenes, or at least Slovenian secondary schools, are the most English-friendly in the region. According to data taken from the European Commission, eighty-eight percent of Slovenes were learning English at the secondary-school level in 2000. That’s well above countries like the Czech Republic (64%) and Hungary (58%). But English still dominates in the east. (The only exception being Romania, where the most-studied language is French.)

 Anyone who’s been here knows that Slovenes are shockingly excellent at languages, especially English. They’re also strangely modest about it, so if they tell you they "speak a little" then they definitely speak a lot. And if they say they’re "okay" then they’re probably fluent. However, if they just look at with a strange expression, then they probably don’t speak a word of English. That’s fairly rare though. Especially among the young’uns.

Hopla: One of the cartoons currently on evening rotation.

A long time ago, I posted a link about Cik Cak, the short cartoon program that preceded the evening news in Yugoslavia. This tradition is still alive in Slovenia, although the rabbits have been removed and the show is now (unimaginatively) called risanke. ("cartoons") A ship sails by at the beginning of the show, and it ends with a commercial. The cartoons are mostly from the UK, although there are some interesting exceptions. Here’s what’s currently playing:

Like other parents here, I’m familiar with all of these. (At least I am now.) Until I had children, the only one I could recognize on the list was Simon. (I don’t think there’s a person from my generation who doesn’t know and love the opening song.)

Interestingly enough, though, the best one is the Soviet-era Miś Uszatek. (lit. teddy bear) There’s something immensely satisfying about watching that show; it clearly required ridiculous amounts of time and effort to produce — especially when compared to some of today’s computer-rendered stuff.

If you’re interested, this is a great local resource for cartoon-related things.

Have a great weekend. 

SiOL has at least one very, very unhappy customer.

I usually try to avoid Slovene-only things here, but in this case I absolutely have to make an exception. This audio clip This (fixed) clip (2.59 MB) is a 3-minute long, obscenity-filled diatribe against the Slovenian Internet-provider SiOL, presumably left as customer feedback via telephone. It’s almost like a study in refined, white-hot rage. If you need help deciphering some of the things he says, this page (NSFW) can help you. Otherwise just sit back, turn up the volume, and let the hate flow through you.

(Thanks Podgana!)

UPDATE: Rox has kindly provided an English translation of the rant! Respect!

Lonely Planet shows images of Slovenia under "Slovakia."

When I first toured Slovenia in 1999, I took the Lonely Planet guide with me. It was pretty much the only big-name guide at the time (and probably still is) but it served its purpose well. It’s pretty decent, I have to say. Which is why it pains me to see that they’ve joined the Slovenia/Slovakia Hall of Shame.

This page is supposed to contain images of Slovakia. And yet the first two are from you-know-where. This one is from Slovenia’s Triglav national park; this one is from a fruit stand in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. I wanted to sue them for a billion dollars for the mistake, but they’ve cleverly indemnified themselves at the bottom of each page with a warning about accepting "no responsibility for any loss, injury
or inconvenience sustained by anyone resulting from this information."

Damn.

(Thanks Rok!) 

A Slovenian dialect map from 1935 by Fran Ramovš. (source)

In a recent post about dialects, AZ2SI linked to a write-up he did on Resian, "an unusual Slovenian dialect spoken by about a thousand people in the
Resia Valley of north-eastern Italy." He writes: "Because of the area’s geographic
isolation, it developed separately from Slovene and other Slavic
languages, and is therefore incredibly difficult for an average
Slovenian — not to mention another Slavic speaker — to understand."

I listened to a clip (Windows media) he posted — and sure enough, I understood virtually nothing. (I could pick out a word or two, but that was it. I think I’d have an easier time understanding Slovak or another foreign language.)

It’s always remarkable to me that Slovenia, a country the size of Massachusetts, has such an astonishingly high number of dialects stuffed into such a small place. There are 32 (main) dialects, and they’re not always mutually intelligible. If you’re a fool, like me, who is learning the language, it’s enough to make you want to slit your wrists and let eternal sleep take you to a better place. I mean, imagine learning an insanely difficult language and then going 50 kilometers away and discovering it doesn’t work anymore.

I was recently exposed to some gorenjsko (Upper Carniolan) and I had to summon all my mental powers to understand what was being said. I got it, but just barely. But if someone (anyone) turns on the dialect full-blast, I get lost. It might as well be Japanese.

I better stop now before I demoralize myself any further. But do check out the clip. It’s something else.

(Thanks AZ2SI!)