Dr. Filomena

Ljubljana Lights

Every now and then it really feels good to simply take a walk. If you happen to be in a great town like Ljubljana, even better for you! So after just another fun-filled day at work (BTW, the website is being refurbished completely by a great angelically devilish team as we speak) and an uplifting cup of coffee with my beloved sister, I decided to take a stroll downtown that had just been lit up with a zillion colourful lights and extras, a cheerful reminder of the shopping season that spreads love and wrapping paper all around us.

Exhibition at Mestni muzej

So as not to succumb to the shopping spree completely (whoops, one does require a certain type of paper for that purpose… or plastique plastic), a visit to the museums seemed in order. The artefacts above were excavated at the site of the museum, from the Roman period when this city went by the name of Emona.

Copper Age; style truly is timeless, eh?

Mestni muzej (City Museum) has interesting exhibitions year-round and one of the amazing rooms, at least to me, is the one featuring some of the objects found in the Ljubljana area going all the way back to the period of the so-called pile dwellings (mostišča) at Ljubljana marshes during the late stone age and the copper age (4,500 – 1,800 B.C.), such as the one pictured above.

The many faces of Ljubljana

One does tend to discover many interesting bits and pieces… and people at museums, but one’s uncle is rarely among them. My eye caught a familiar pace and when the monk on the wall projection turned around and gave me that big all-knowing smile, my jaw dropped so low I had to struggle to pick it up. I wasn’t sure if it was just my eyes playing games with my brains on account of the delicious mulled wine I’d just consumed at one of the stands at the Three Bridges as part of the December tradition… Confirmed with a follow-up phone call, yep, that’s my uncle up there, featuring as one of the “many faces of Ljubljana” through the ages. Also re-confirmed, he never really was a monk. Phew.

The new exhibition at the School Museum

Desperately in need of some enlightenment, I swiftly entered not the school, but the next best thing. The Slovenian School Museum where a new exhibition was just presented. With lots of wine available, but in view of the as yet unconfirmed sighting of uncle at the other museum, I decided to pass on that particular temptation. The exhibition “The Teacher in a New Social Reality between 1945 and 1963” makes for an interesting addition to the regular pieces.

We build schools, we build knowledge, we build socialism
(replace with an -ism of your choice any time)

One inscription that stuck was that “any system, anywhere, always wants to claim the society’s children”. Kids, you’re all we’ve got, guys!

Hey, it was time to get some more fresh air.

The festive Three Bridges

What better way to finish a day than to hang out with interesting people. I think the guy in whose honour admission to museums was free of charge yesterday would have approved. Especially if he’d had a chance to share a glass of wine with us. Mulled or otherwise.

Fetalij, the star blogger

Fetalij showing off (ok, so I sorta forced him to) with his own image in the very first printed blogger publication in Slovenia, Blogorola. Grayscale photo per his request 😉

Happy birthday, Dr. Fig!

Photo of the Week in Mladina magazine; visit the author’s blog: Binula

While the Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša struggles to discipline his coalition partners, people still find it difficult to forget some of the recent statements considered to be in rather poor taste.

In our office‘s backyard, my dear colleague (meet Sabina) took a photo of a question posed by an annonymous voter or voter-to-be who apparently dug through the trash container for loaves of bread in vain. He or she most probably came across no milk and honey, either.

Today, Sabina’s photo of the container with the sign: “Janša, where are the bread loaves?” was published in Mladina magazine as the “photo of the week”. Incidentally, Barbara Brezigar, featured to the left of the photo used to share Sabina’s last name. And possibly a drop of blood or two. Hey, it’s a small country 😉

Bravo to Binula the blogger on becoming a published photographer!

This one’s for Luka 😉

The kitchen project, which truly turned out to be one heck of a wild ride for a while there, and the area looking like a construction site for longer than I care to mention, we are nearing some sort of closure 😉

It all started out looking like this:

BEFORE

After which, the sliding glass windows in the balcony were thrown out along with the wall dividing the balcony/loggia from the kitchen area.

New, “real” windows were put in, with the middle one being sliding as well. This will come in handy later for my idea of placing a high-legged table right next to the windows to allow for relaxing breakfasts in fresh air whilst enjoying the view of the park below. A new wall with appropriate insulation was erected and shelving placed on top.

Waiting for better days to come…

Removing old tiling and top layer of concrete… Zaim in action!

Response to the first complaint regarding the windows (successfully resolved) while the plumber looks on and figures he’d better do his radiator job well…

New tiling and radiator in…

A job well done calls for celebration… Or at least a cup of good coffee for Roki, the master of tiling.

All of the above was done in a matter of five days so it seemed the impossible goal of quick completion of the project was not going to present much of a problem. However. The walls in my home have always been taken care of by a friend I’ve made during my agility days. Iztok is somewhat of an artist and an exceedingly thorough man. Unfortunately, he hurt a leg muscle while training for an agility competition and would not be able to come over for three weeks. Fine, I’d wait. Then an added, potentially fatal complication occurred: thrombosis. Not only is Iztok a friend, but also a father to three children with the fourth one on the way. Some food for thought on the meaning of life right there, but I digress. I decided to wait for Iztok to get better and some six weeks later he was able to come over and finish the walls. In the meantime, dinners were served in front of partly disposed concrete walls with candle light playfully illuminating creaks and holes the old windows had left, the draft moving the flames in an especially romantic fashion.

Thanks to more help from my loved ones, the new TV is up as well. LCD and all 😉 and has been put to use. Now all that is left is to pick out a new couch and to have the custom-made table built by Iztok’s brother the ingenious carpenter (who happens to have been involved in the Slovenian Presidential Palace remodelling this summer, ha! 😀 ). I promise to host the kitchen-warming party before that, though

AFTER

With this project, I’ve learned so much, for example about expansion joints in the tiling between the kitchen and ex loggia, but most importantly, I’ve met wonderful people with fascinating stories to tell and am thankful to the guys who did their job so well. In the words of Zaim, the incredible contractor who found solutions to the problems thought insurmountable by others and did so seemingly effortlessly:

Victory is inevitable – if only we try hard enough.

As today is the Reformation Day and a day before All Saints Day, one cannot escape pondering over some sdeeper issues. I do not consider myself an atheist, but rather an agnostic. To me, faith is a very personal matter. I figure that whoever truly has faith in her or his deity/deities and the related peaceful ideas and notions, is blessed.

There are some places that give me a special feeling and one of them is undoubtedly the chapel in the Trier Cathedral that holds the alleged holly robe. Though it might be easily mistaken for a fortress, Trier Cathedral (Dom St. Peter) in Germany houses an impressive collection of artworks, architecture and holy relics.

It is also of considerable historical significance, as the oldest church in Germany. Today, Trier Cathedral remains a working Catholic cathedral and an important Catholic shrine that still receives pilgrims.

Christianity first arrived in Trier as early as the late 100s AD, although local legend has it that the faith was established in the first century by a bishop sent by the apostle Peter himself.

The history of Dom St. Peter begins in Roman times, when a church was built by Constantine, the first Christian emperor, over the palace of his mother Helena. Construction began in 326 AD, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his reign (he also began St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to mark the occasion).

The Empress St. Helena is known for her pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and pious legend has it that she brought back the Holy Robe of Christ from Jerusalem and entrusted it to her son’s new church at Trier. The Holy Robe is the seamless garment said to be worn by Christ during the Crucifixion.

It first makes an appearance in written documents in the 12th century; it was first displayed at the church in the 16th century for a period of 23 days, during which more than 100,000 pilgrims came to venerate it. It has been periodically displayed since then, attracting ever-larger crowds. The last exposition of the relic, for three weeks in 1933, drew 2 million pilgrims. In 1959, the relic was sealed in a splendid shrine in its own chapel, where it remains today.
(Source)

The chapel is closed to the public and the shrine is brought out into the main Cathedral area only once in every few years, so I am grateful to the friend who let us in and allowed us to experience the special energy flowing from the shrine and – at least I thought so – crystals, each of them embedded in a beautifully crafted sculpture.

I hope you will enjoy the VideoCard and that at least some of the atmosphere will shine through.

Winners of awards given for best innovations by the LJ section of the Slovene Chamber of Commerce.

EDIT: Supplementing the mobile entry

This was posted from the Awards for Innovations in Ljubljana Region for 2006

For the fifth year in a row, the Ljubljana Chamber of Commerce awarded the best innovators. The awards were combined with lectures of Slovenian and foreign experts as well as representatives of foreign Embassies in Slovenia on possible collaboration in promoting innovations and opportunities for penetration of the market of high technology.

One of the awarded innovators was somebody we do indeed know. The man to the far right of the photo received the prize for the mobile technology software application solution that allows real-time tracking via mobile phones. Such as checking out the location of a particular bus in Ljubljana, for example. Want to catch your bus in the morning? The Radio Kaos CEO developed the application thanks to which you’ll know whether you still have time to take a quick shower 😉

A couple of weeks ago, a friend came all the way from far far away Krško and as he happens to be a blogger (Buba, I have a bad cold myself right now 🙁 ), one keystroke led to another and the “drink” developed into a very enjoyable evening in the company of bright, imaginative, literate, fun-loving young bloggers. Among them, all three newly elected SiOL’s house bloggers. I bow to you, oh majesties. Whoops, the popular vote thing, right… I bow to you, oh blogger celebrities: Fetalij, Irena and Chef; as well as Pi.Roman, Kandela, Mojca, Deus.X.Mashina, Nina, Barbara and last but not least, the infamous Sex.

How could I not love this town? Ljubljana rules! On the way to the bar…

No shortage of drinks… even if the waiter was far more incompetent than good old Manuel. Basil should fix things by the next time.

How’s it hanging?

Wild Ride

High Five

In addition to the cool and very different if slightly spooky environment, a good reason to pay a visit to Pr’Skelet is the 2-4-1 policy 😉

Afterwards, we moved to the Cutty Sark just off the Three Bridges to say hi to another Ljubljana resident blogger, Pengovsky who DJd at the place that night.

Take your eyes off that striped sweater right now!!!

Gotta love those smiling faces!

More bloggers, including a *very* famous one 😉

Photo by Pi.Roman

We finished the night with a slight doubt being raised in our minds regarding Fetalij’s sexual preferences, but the doubt has since been successfully dispersed. BTW, way to go, Fetalij! Grandma’s proud of you… 😈

Here’s to many more gatherings such as this one. Thanks for the good time, y’all!

So many things have been going on lately… but hey, what else is new. I haven’t posted to the blog in a while because I either didn’t have the time to (or rather spent it in another way, say playing squash – yippie!) or being unsure of how to convey my thoughts to you guys.

A week ago I finally got to meet Camille, a fascinating young woman from New York City who’d decided to move to Slovenia… for love. I’d “met” her in the blogging community. Hey, you guys are real flesh and blood! More on that later. Anyway, after having met up with her for lunch and seeing she’s as cool in real life as she is on her blog, I offered to take her out for a night on the town. So last Saturday, we started the evening chatting in my home and finding the right dress etc.. you know, girl stuff… then drove off downtown. My car’s glove compartment is filled with CDs and as Camille is studying Slovene now (go C!!! – you should exchange notes with Adriaan and “the girls”) we opted for Alenka Godec.

After a stop at Cutty Sark to say hello to another blogger, Pengovsky who DJd at the place that night, we made a tour of the most popular places, such as Global. More on that later. On our way up we shared the lift ride with four young bouncer types, one of them lovingly holding on to a large cut of red meat in a plastic bag. What gives? The place being empty, we were instructed to go to Opera Bar first. Lo and behold, there she was. The lady from our choice of CD in the car. Alenka Godec.

An old friend of mine turns out to be the new assistant manager of the place that was just celebrating its third anniversary… above is the photo she took of “Camille and the two Alenkas”. Alenka has an amazing voice and came across as a really nice lady as well.

Afterwards, we returned to Global, where we wished we’d brought along our own DJ from Cutty Sark or, alternatively, that C’d been given a go at it (her brother is a DJ, too!) Still, the music was at least ok – at least at times – so we actually got to dance a little bit. I do believe C had a bit of a culture shock with the way people danced. “Dirty dancing” was not all that dirty in comparison to a few of those couples. Thanks for the good company, C, hope to do that again sometime soon.

A day later, I found out about the (probably same one who was nice to us) bouncer at Global beating a young man just a half an hour or so after we’d left the place. He died in hospital on Wednesday. This photo was taken yesterday on site where he lost his life. Such a senseless waste.

On a happier note, yet another blogging friend, buba švabe, came to town from Krško to see us on Friday. The visit turned into a real bloggers’ gettogether with 14 bloggers present, among them all three of SiOL’s new “in-house bloggers” (the top bloggers hosted there per users’ vote who’d been given contracts now), namely Fetalij, Irena and Chef.

Photo by Pi.Roman

It was such a pleasure to meet a bunch of interesting young people in one go, all of whom can think, write and actually have fun in real, offline life. Pi.Roman took a zillion photos before Kandela finally took his toy away, and among his subjects were Mojca, Deus.X.Mashina, Nina, Barbara and last but not least, the infamous Sex. We met up at the Skeleton Bar and then moved on to Cutty Sark. This ‘event’ deserves a separate post someday…

All in all, it’s been quite a week, meeting so many interesting people, among them an incredible number of bloggers. Seeing a vibrant young lady move from one continent to another for love, taking a pic with a local celebrity, partying at a place that effectively became a murder scene a half an hour after we’d left, playing squash, travelling to Slavonski Brod for a day (seeing houses still heavily damaged by the gunfire of a decade ago was slightly surreal), hanging out at an ad hoc bloggers’ meeting where I realized half the people were political science majors, enrolling in the second year of my Political Science MA programme and last but not least, spending a wonderful Sunday in equally wonderful company and enjoying the fact that He Cooked Again.

Stuffed tomatoes for a refreshing dinner snack: fill with the extracted tomato pulp, young cheese, cottage cheese, a bit of olive oil, chopped up fresh basil and salt/pepper to taste. Chill in fridge for half an hour.

Having just had a glass of Los Pagos Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile, all I can say is that I have no idea what the meaning of life is, but what I’m sure of is that we should all do our best to enjoy the ride while it lasts.

My condolences to the family and friends of Goraz Čamernik who died so needlessly at the hands of the club bouncer. May he rest in peace.

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of meeting Raf at the Ahráyeph concert at the Lido in Leuven, Belgium.

What a great guy!
Note: He even mixes a fine daiquiri.

You might at times be able to find him at the Bar 33 in Leuven (Eng. Louvain), the cozy and picturesque capital of Flemish Brabant a short drive from Brussels.

The 33 is part of the longest bar in Belgium, which is composed of roughly 40 bars at the Oude Markt (Old Market). It rolls alternative rock music and while – obviously – serving good beers and other drinks including good whiskey, offers excellent cocktails at friendly prices in an equally friendly environment.

Proud owners of the bar who’d just taken over a month ago. I’ll have to go back just to see what more they’ve done with the place! I’m sure it’ll look great!

EDIT: Here’s a clip from the Ahráyeph concert:

A short video clip from the Cow Ball in Bohinj last weekend.
Enjoy.