Books Archives

Alternately titled: “Life in Provincial Europe Today.”

A long time ago, the blogger formerly known as AZ2SI kindly sent me a copy of John Ardagh’s travelogue “A Tale of Five Cities,” in which Ljubljana is one of the gang of five. The book is the story of five seemingly unconnected European cities and what life was like there nearly three decades ago.

Since Ardagh visited Slovenia in the late 70s, it’s a great opportunity to see how much has changed and how much hasn’t. Overall, Ardagh’s opinion of Ljubljana is a positive one, if a bit schizophrenic. At one point¹ he states that “I have to come to like this the best of my five towns.”

However, in the book’s conclusion, he writes: “So, if I had to live the rest of my life in one of these towns, which would I choose? Stuttgart, definitely.”² Huh? His reasoning: Ljubljana’s “small-town unsophistication might annoy me in the long run.”³ Ohhhh… snap!

On to the similarities…

Things That Haven’t Changed

* Foxy ladies: Ljubljana is “full of some of the prettiest girls I had ever seen.”⁴

* The black market: “Many a worker will conserve his energies during his secure regular job, in order to be strong and fresh for his lucrative free-lancing.” Later on, a building contractor tells him: “It’s so easy to dodge the rules in this country.”⁵

* Shabbiness: In the introduction, Ardagh hits upon one of the oddest mysteries of Slovenia, and the passage is worth quoting at length because it still holds true. He writes:

“The shabbiness is disconcerting. It is an odd reflection on socialism that although Slovenia today is more prosperous and more keen to display itself at its best than ever before in its history, yet its towns look much scruffier than they did under the Hapsburgs. The old Laibach, despite its severe poverty beneath the surface, was a spruce and tidy place, as most of Austria’s towns still are. Today matters are reversed. Ljubljana has acquired a modest affluence: go inside a flat or office and you will often find it neatly and smartly furnished. But down on the street, the façades of public buildings and the entrances of offices and apartment blocks are as gloomily unkempt and unpainted as elsewhere in Communist Europe… It is all curious, in a society otherwise so cultured, so eager to be modern, so proud. Is it simply that the easy-going pleasure-loving Slovenes do not share the Germanic obsession with spruceness? Or is it some flaw in the workings of Socialism, so that public ownership of property leads to a lack of incentive to look after it properly? We shall see.”⁶

Indeed we shall, John, because almost 30 years later the same odd phenomenon is still at work: meticulously kept homes and gardens, flawlessly well-dressed people, and yet: pervasive shabbiness in cities and public buildings. It’s true that there has been a lot of renovating recently, but in many cases the walls are vandalized before the paint has even dried, so that the general sense of neglect remains. Ardagh quotes an Englishman as saying: “I think they [Slovenes] get so used to this shabbiness that they cease to notice it.”⁷

I don’t know if that’s the case. But then again, I don’t know what the hell it is. A lack of community pride? A general consensus of “do-whatever-you-want, just leave-my-shit-alone”? Either way, it’s readily apparent that people don’t particularly care. As far as I can tell, vandalism is rarely punished, rarely cleaned and turns up almost everywhere. But God help you if you park your car in the wrong place for five minutes, because you better believe a pajek will be there to administer swift and costly justice.

Ardagh repeatedly returns to this theme, calling Ljubljana’s scruffiness “irritating”⁸ and, later, “horrifying”⁹.

In one angry passage, that will nevertheless please a lot of Slovenes, he writes: “If you arrive from Italy or Austria, this [shabbiness] hits you like a blow between the eyes — not so coming from Zagreb, which is even shabbier.”¹⁰ It will be interesting to see what the next 30 years will bring. Stay tuned to this space for the next three decades for the answer!

* The people. Slovenes are a “very informal, tolerant, self-satirising society.”¹¹ True, although I’m not sure there are enough foreigners to correctly gauge just how tolerant people really are.

* The sex tourists. “Italians and Austrians come in hordes on day or weekend excursions. In order to attract more of these visitors, the authorities have created casinos and strip-tease night-clubs.”¹² Elsewhere: “live sex-shows… almost exclusively for foreign visitors, notably Italians… Slovenes are not interested in such things.”¹³

Things That Have Changed

* Cheap books that don’t require taking out a loan to afford. “As in most socialist countries, publishing is subsidized and books are cheap: new hardbacks often cost a mere 60 to 80 dinars.” I’m not sure exactly how much that is in tolars or euros, but I do know that today no one ever uses the words “cheap” or “mere” in the same sentence as “books.” Books are outrageously expensive, so much so that there is a movement to lift taxes off of books.

* National loyalty. “The focus of loyalty here is very much the Slovene nation rather than the city of Ljubljana.”¹⁴ So much for that.

* Trst. “The Trieste dispute and the occupation are largely forgiven, if not forgotten.”¹⁵ To hell with that, John! Trieste is ours! Seriously though, “forgotten” is a bit too much. I think the correct phrase would be “accepted.”

(Thanks again to my nameless friend!)

1. (p. 378) [back]
2. (p. 449) [back]
3. (ibid) [back]
4. (p. 380) [back]
5. (p. 392-394) Of course, no one knows how big the black market is in Slovenia but by most estimates I’ve seen, it’s formidable. [back]
6. (p. 379) [back]
7. (p. 400) [back]
8. (p. 378) [back]
9. (p. 399) “Horrifying” is, admittedly, a bit over-the-top. [back]
10. (ibid) [back]
11. (p. 382) [back]
12. (p. 433) [back]
13. (p. 410) [back]
14. (p. 381) [back]
15. (p. 434) [back]

The Transcript logo.

Transcript, the European internet review of books and writing, recently published a special issue dedicated to contemporary Slovenian writers, translated into English. The section Seven Urban Tongues has poetry by: Primoz Cucnik, Taja Kramberger, Brane Mozetic, Peter Semolic, Tone Skrjanec, Natasa Velikonja and Maja Vidmar. (I’ve followed their lead and left out any diacritics.)

There’s also some fiction: A Thin Red Line by Andrej Blatnik, Berlin-Metelkova by Suzana Tratnik, Under the Surface by Mojca Kumerdej (currently unreadable) and The Jump Off the Liburnia by local literary heavyweight Drago Jancar.

It’s a bit difficult to find Slovenian writers translated into English, so this collection is something of a novelty. 

(via CESLIT)

Love Thy Neighor: A Story of War, Vintage, 1997.

Peter Maass is a journalistic heavyweight with a stellar resume: The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and so on. From 1992 to 1993, he covered the war in Bosnia for the Post and shortly thereafter released a book about his time there entitled Love Thy Neighbor.

I disliked Love Thy Neighbor. At first I had trouble putting my finger on why. But rather than toss it in the trash, I decided to conduct an autopsy on it and try to diagnose what went wrong. Here are the results of my exam.
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