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Eurosport’s best guess as to where Kranjska Gora is. (Thanks Seba!)
The small Slovenian resort of Kranjska Gora hosts a giant slalom every year, drawing the attention of sports reporters from around the world. Unfortunately, whenever journalism and Slovenia mix, geographic mayhem is never far behind. Enter Eurosport, and their depiction of Kranjska Gora somewhere north of Prague. (As a sidenote: Isn’t the Polish city spelled Wroclaw with an "L"? I feel like another point should be deducted from their overall score.)
Otherwise, only minor problems: The Guardian misspells it as Kranska Gora, and The Scotsman thinks Slovenia has less than a million inhabitants. But perhaps most baffling of all, and certainly the most inexcusable: The official tourist organization of Kranjska Gora, in an official leaflet, has trouble getting the colors of the national flag straight. See it here. Oh, the humanity.
(Thanks Mitja!)
UPDATE: Roy Gilbert, the programming director of Eurosport, has issued an apology: "I sincerely apologise for the major error appearing in the map introducing the Kranjska Gora Alpine Skiing World Cup event on December 21st 2005. As a Pan-European channel we are very concerned with this kind of information and we treat each Eurosport country with the same consideration and respect. I have made clear to my team that I will not accept any other mistake of this kind in the future. I feel really sorry for the Slovenian people who have been offended by this mistake and I again offer my apologies."
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So much for the vaunted reputation of ‘The Scotsman’ for accuracy. . .
Another hilarious mix-up! Did they perhaps confuse Kranjska Gora with the Czech town of Kutna Hora? Or does the map just show the location of the recent Czech World Cup skiing event?
Great stuff. Last time I checked Kranjska Gora was still a sleepy and pretty much boring resort. I really hope Slovenian tourist board won’t put the blame for another lousy season on Eurosport. Still, if I remember correctly, they put the blame on the football World Cup in Korea after foreigners failed to appear on the coast (again) in 2002
From the Guardian (Graudian? Given its propensity for typos and spelling errors) article:"The nightlife is far from shabby, with bars or "gostolinas" heaving as punters consume the local, evil-sounding Zlatorog beer."Gostolinas? Zlatorog beer evil-sounding?The description of the cuisine, on the other hand, sounds pretty accurate to me: "The food, a hybrid of Italian and German, might be coined "nouvelle
Slovene mountain fusion cuisine" - typically schnitzel cooked up with
carbonara, served with cabbage. Tasty, if confusing."
i feel ashamed we don’t know the colors of our own flag. But we
certainly all know tito’s flag: rdeÄ?a, bela, plava, je titova zastava!I found a rhyme for our own flag: bela, modra, rdeÄ?a, sreÄ?a opoteÄ?a. So why so sad (Manic street preachers)Another
way, how to remember the color-order: On Tito’s flag no color is on the
same place as on the slovene flag. bela, modra, rdeÄ?a VS rdeÄ?a, bela,
modra blazz
Putting Kranjska Gora in Slovakia would be one thing, but putting it in the Czech Republic (or is it Poland? Can’t tell….) seems to take that extra bit of idiocy…
Blazz: "But we
certainly all know tito’s flag: rdeÄ?a, bela, plava, je titova zastava!"If Tito’s flag is Yugoslavian flag (most obvious) then this is wrong! Yugoslavian flag was blue, white, red (plava, bela, rdeÄ?a; but this doesn’t rime). Colours mentioned above belong to Croatian flag. And since Tito was Croat, yes, probably you are right anyway …
Yes, it’s spelled Wroclaw with an L, or more accurately, WrocÅ‚aw
with an Å?. Also, PoznaÅ„, not "Poznam". I think this map has just made
it into my private collection, although that was originally based
solely on CNN’s marvelous geographical acid trips.
Also, good job not putting country borders on the map so even I
can’t tell where exactly it is they put Kranjska Gora, and I’m Czech. "Another hilarious mix-up! Did they perhaps confuse Kranjska Gora with
the Czech town of Kutna Hora? Or does the map just show the location of
the recent Czech World Cup skiing event?"The
Kutná Hora thing is an astute observation, but I don’t think that’s the
case as Kutná Hora is both closer to Prague and significantly further
down south. Instead, the "hot spot" appears to be somewhere in Krkonoše
or Jizerské hory, the northern border mountain ranges, so the latter is
probably true. Although I neither commit nor bear witness to winter
sports, so I don’t even know there was a world cup gig, let alone where.
Maybe the l problem comes from the dreadful Å? the Poles have over there (Mr. Sfangazutti, could you elaborate?)I
came up with my own mnemonics for the flag, but it involves symbols for
peace and two football teams based on my old neighbourhood in Buenos
Aires. So there :-)
Actually, the easiest way to remember the colour sequence is by knowing what the colours symbolize: white for the Alps, blue for the Adriatic Sea, red for the rusty washing machines at the bottom of the sea.
>>> If Tito’s flag is Yugoslavian flag (most obvious) then this is wrong!
Yugoslavian flag was blue, white, red (plava, bela, rdeÄ?a; but this
doesn’t rime). Colours mentioned above belong to Croatian flag. And
since Tito was Croat, yes, probably you are right anyway …I don’t know if this is still true, or even anything other than a convention used by a few books, but I was taught in a history class (on the middle ages, mind) that flag colours are generally given from bottom to top unless specified otherwise. So in that case the rhyme would actually be right, wouldn’t it?
Putting Kranjska Gora in Slovakia would be one thing, but putting it in
the Czech Republic (or is it Poland? Can’t tell…)Of
course you can’t tell. You see, Krajnska Gora was strategically placed in one of those imaginary
Ruritanias Hollywood uses as settings for spy films: Slobovia,
Slabakovia, Bukarane, Slovetzia etc. Such statelets are usually wedged
between real ones, as is the case of Slovetzia. So, there…
Argh! Why did my comment come out in italics?Help, Michael!
somebody: "flag colours are generally given from bottom to top"According to this Slovenian flag is red, blue, white? I don’t think so. It would be most unusual. Even our government says white, blue, red. And one more example.
notice how there’s an easter-egg slovenia/slovakia mix-up in the poland section of the guardian article? the article states “slovenia may have the slowest lifts…”, but this is actually atributed to slovakia a few lines higher up…
most: Thanks for the informative comment! I did a little bit of googling to try and guess what might be there but ended up empty-handed.Keeping track of the Slovenian flag’s colors is a challenge, but I think only a genius could keep track of the flags of the former Yugoslav socialist republics.Also: Big hat tip to Cornelius and Jean for spotting some other humorous holes in the stories. It’s incredible how poorly most stories stand to close scrutiny.
Not that Eurosport hasn’t been spit on quite enough - but doesn’t the picture say Poznam instead of Poznan?Real shame that the map isn’t big enough to feature Londom or Berhin…
Eurosport appologized for Kranjska Gora mistake, RTVS reported yesterday.
This year on La Vuelta, Jani BrajkoviÄ?, slovenian cyclist, didn’t have Slovenian flag on television schedule, but Slovakian flag. And he did have it not just for one day but through all La Vuelta. Organizers didn’t see the mistake.