Dr. Filomena

More secrets await beneath the rocks to be revealed when time is right.

DJs usually hate music requests, but dr. Fil grants Mr. Pengovsky his photo wish 😀

The second most sacred place to Muslims.
Meanwhile, we are cruising around looking for a way to the hotel around the roads closed due to the US President’s visit.

Pass the checkpoint first. Behind the walled divide: Bethlechem

Ambassador of Slovenia to Israel

Good morning, sunshine 😀

Good night from Istanbul

Getting ready to fly south in search of sunshine and warmth, my blood pressure was raised at the airport successfully without coffee abuse. A man stranded here en route to England due to car breakdown was trying to call home to Albania to let family know he’d be flying the rest of the way, but it turns out that on a Sunday, one cannot purchase a phone card anywhere at the Ljubljana airport and the cards are the only way of using the pay phones.

Duh?!

Just a few photos from the opening of the Technology Park Ljubljana in December 2007 as correcty determined by Fotoholik in response to my “guess where” post.

I must say the opening ceremony was impressive and done in style. Way to go, Technology Park and the City of Ljubljana! This is exactly the type of an environment we need to secure for the future development of the country. The park’s vision is to become an internationally recognised support environment and commercial centre for the flourishing of globally competitive innovative technological entrepreneurship by ensuring a top-quality business support environment for the transfer of research findings and innovative commercial ideas to successful and internationally competitive technological entrepreneurship.

A new quiz might be in order: how many of the people in the pics do you recognize? 😀 Let’s see some names along with their titles… Fotoholik has yet to claim his free drink

In her article published yesterday in the Spiegel, Marion Kraske brands Slovenia as Europe’s not-so golden pupil. She analyses the situation in the country at the time of assuming the presidency of the European Union, noting that rampant inflation and journalists’ concerns about government censorship are causing problems in the country.

She goes on to present examples of people who’ve found ways to apply their entrepreneurial spirit very successfully in the ‘new’ environment and then describes some of the current hot issues in the country. I found her conclusion to be an interesting closing of an article on Slovenia in one of the leading German magazines:

“Critics believe that Janez Jansa, 49, is the real problem. A former journalist who was involved in the communist youth organization in the 1980s and became an authoritarian conservative after the fall of communism, he has only one goal, says Spomenka Hribar, a respected Slovenian philosopher: “that the state should control everything.” It is because of sentiments like these that many Slovenians see the EU Council presidency as an opportunity for more democracy.”

I have not come across the abovementioned /rather naive?/ sentiment thus far and have also not heard of anyone else refer to Blaz Zgaga as “the Robin Hood of the Slovenian media community”. Things become increasingly interesting as Europe’s eye does seem to focus more on Slovenia than it did before, contrary to my personal expectations.

Miss Slovenia 2005 Sanja Grohar performing semi-live at Ljubljana’s Opera Bar last Saturday night.

The video sound is rather poor quality, but it will at least give you a general idea of the singing performance. She did seem to rather enjoy it… and the predominantly male audience appreciated her attitude. I think she could easily make it to Mr. P’s Friday Foxies’ section 😈 Humm, maybe she already has…