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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)
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It was a very good story, and expained the futility of foresight really well. Is that where the Gorenje factory is?
No no, the Gorenje factory was in Titovo Velenje at the time. Now it’s in Velenje. It hasn’t moved.I am wondering why the story is published in the "fiction" section?
Gorenje!Wow, that name (and the flame-shaped logo) brings up such childhood memories.There were even TV ads about ‘gorenya’ (that’s how they would pronounce it) and its cheap, reliable but stylish white series. Eventually my father was tempted, so we went to the local retailer.- Where are these gorenya fridges manufactured?- Yugoslavia.- Ah, like Zastava. Show me the AEG ones, then.(Merry Xmas to you all!)
The narrator says "that the best price was in Murska Sobota, a small town deep in Slovenia, not far from the Hungarian border." How can Murska Sobota be deep in Slovenia if it’s not far from the Hungarian border?
Grega, considering you can drive from one end of Slovenia to the other
in a few hours, all cities and towns are deep in the country… it’s
all relative I guess.
Hotel Evropa? Must have missed that one. I only know of Hotel Diana and Hotel Zvezda……..
Probably the story was published as fiction because he had some true
stuff, but made other stuff up for the sake of the story, for example
the Hotel Evropa…at my significant other’s all the appliances
except the washer were Gorenja, but the washer was from some
place else, I could not tell you since at the time I could not read
Cyrillic at all, I think it was from someplace in Serbia. I called it
‘That damn Ruski Washing Machine,’ because it kept doing wierd things.
I was not expected to use it, which is just as well, since the
instructions were a mystery to me. He washed all heavy items in the
machine and I washed my stuff in the sink. The sibling of the ‘Damned
Ruski Washing Machine’ was in his weekend place and it was an even more
perverted, unreliable piece of machinery. The stove and the fridge were
perfectly decent machines, as was the freezer, never gave me a bit of
trouble, no tricks or trapdoors about them.
Lovely read, thanks for the link Mr. M. Made me feel like 17 again, and
that was surely not because of the fridge brand. The story is great
with not too much of Ex-Yu nostalgia inside. I had pretty much the same
thinking/acting as young boy, I wonder if we are all ticking the same
way?
Once I was cleaning a fridge in a rented flat, Vienna/Austria. The
freezer control had a mark in the mid which said ’sred’ and it keept me
wondering what it means & which language it is. Later on I found
the manufacturer’s post saying GORENJE Made in Yugoslavia. Surprisingly
I figured ’sred’ meant srednje or sredina (middle).
Gorenje was (and still is) very popular in Austria & Germany.
On a side note, I saw an ad for Gorenje’s Pininfarina line-up a few days ago on… CNN!Oh, and Dave, there certainly is a town that isn’t deep in Slovenia. It’s none other than the socialist-gambling mutant of Nova Gorica!
Sretan Bozic svima!
Quite a few plotholes …As mentioned - no Hotel Evropa in Murska Sobota or anywhere within 30 km around it. The room number (504 - 5th floor) implies he was staying at Hotel Diana.The whole centre of Murska Sobota has been closed off to buses since the mid 70s (yet he saw a bus with dimmed lights on Main Street?).The bar had only a frog-faced man in it - but the waitress appeared out of nowhere ….The statue of a partisan is a meter and a half away from the statue of a Russian soldier (so either he was a bit on the drunk side - which would confirm his "Bar" story or he’s making it up ;)). D.
damir, i dont see how the waitress out of nowhere constitutes a plothole.. rather it suggests that there was a door along with a quick moving waitress ;) Anyway none of the aforementioned suspect details take away from an excellent story, I agree with Dragan that the (relative) absence of YU nostalgia is quite refreshing. When I started reading about some comic exchange between loudmouth Balkan rogue types, my mind immediately went to pigeonhole the whole article, whether fairly or unfairly.