It's surprising what you see when you are not rushing to work or back again. Somehow you are able to look above street level and see things that you wouldn't normally see. It helps to be in a town that is not that familiar, and if you don't have a normal camera, you can always catch it with your mobile phone.
Here is what I snapped today with my mobile phone:
A hotel entrance, just waiting for the sun to shine. What I liked was the artificial trees with their elaborate topiary shapes (you can just see at the back) and the silly umbrella shades with green "tree" camouflage over wires.
Very delicate decorations in a shop window, made by origami. The shop was selling gold and silver jewellery.
Another shop window, or more accurately a shop door with a clock face. The shop was selling watches.
Not the best name for a shop! It sold men's clothes.
A street musician playing a home made four-stringed instrument.
Two cat signs advertising cafes. The one on the left has luminous green eyes.
Close up of a dragon (Ljubljana's symbol) from a bridge.
I wandered into a courtyard near the Grand Union Hotel and found that there had been a display of ice sculptures. Only the fishes and the sea horse were left. The rest were now a pile of slush on the floor.
Another cafe sign. It's a very thin ragamuffin.
I liked the way these chimney matched the dormer windows.
If all else fails I can requalify at the BA Tango School.
A lady practicing her weightlifting?
Not a ship in a bottle, but a very sad looking ship in an empty house.
Carnival always seems to be a strange concept to the mainly protestant English. I was surprised to find that in Somerset, carnival is held in November, and seems to have no religious background at all, being merely an excuse for dressing up and collecting money for charity.
However, wherever I have lived, there seems to be some celebration at this time of the year, whether religious or pagan.
Shrove Tuesday, (or Mardi Gras) the beginning of Lent, has a religious purpose and so one can understand a little fun goes a long way when preparing for a 40 day fast till Easter. But as always, where there is a fun pagan festival, then the Catholic Church manages to coopt it into the religious event at the same point of the calendar. The Protestants don't manage to have quite so much fun.
Pancakes racing in Britain on Shrove Tuesday Shrove Tuesday is the day you confess all your sins before Lent and get shriven by the priest. It's also a time for pancakes, to use up the flour and eggs, and other rich food which is banned in Lent. Pancake races are thought to have begun in 1445. A woman had lost track of the time on Shrove Tuesday, and was busy cooking pancakes in her kitchen. Suddenly she heard the church bell ringing to call the faithful to church for confession. The woman raced out of her house and ran all the way to church; still holding her frying pan and wearing her apron. One of the most famous pancake races is held at Olney in Buckinghamshire over a 415 yard course. The rules are strict; contestants have to toss their pancake at both the start and the finish, as well as wearing an apron and a scarf. The race is followed by a church service.
But there is also a sadder explanation of the focus on pancakes. Shroving is an English tradition that is several centuries old. It originated as the way the poor survived through the difficult time in the New Year before Spring. Little food could be found at this time of year, even the ingredients for a basic pancake was more than most could afford. There was only one way that the food needed to survive could be gathered; by begging. Not only pancakes were asked for, any donation of food and money was welcomed. Gradually, over years, this expression of the needs of the poorest developed into a more relaxed, and enjoyable, tradition, until eventually it was mainly children who took part in what had become a yearly ritual. On the early morning of Shrove Tuesday, the children would dress up, and go from house to house, singing the local version of the Shroving song, to sing for their Shrove Cakes and other treats. They would call only at the houses of the gentry and farmers, those most likely to be able to afford the ingredients necessary.
After that, one could ask whether this great fast arose out of religious fervour or economic necessity.
Uzgavenes In Lithuania The Lithuanians were the last Europeans to convert to Christianity as late as 1387. This means that today, they still keep some of their pagan traditions. For Uzgavenes the holiday consists of processions, costumes, tom foolery, games, and plays. The main parts are: receiving guests with treats; rides and races; processing the More statue and then destroying her by fire; plays with people costumed as animals, strangers and mythological beings; performing the war of Winter with Spring symbolized by the Lasininis (the bacon-being) with the Kanapinis ( the hemp-being); portraying weddings or funerals; spraying people with water; fortune-telling.
The main foods of the holiday are pancakes, jelly-filled french-fried dumplings and a hodgepodge stew of groats, peas and meat. While driving and racing in sleds, everybody tries to tip over so that everybody rolls around in the snow. Sledding about the village(s), the sleigh-riders splash and spray anyone they meet with water.
Costumed people visit their neighbors and neighboring villages. The head of the household greets the strangers by asking "What are you, do you have your papers?" The costumed people respond with "We are poor people from a land that has been pinched away. This land lies on the other side of running water, two weeks away." In each house the entourage visits, one of the guests steals something from the household and tries to sell it to the head of the household, who buys it with food and drink
The traditional costumes are as follows. To act as crane, someone holds a pole with a beak on the end through a sleeve of a fur coat. The crane hops about and tries to pinch people and peck at them. The goat walks around making goat sounds. Children block its way, asking for milk. When someone tries to milk it, the goat kicks over the bucket. The horse tries to kick people. The Hungarian doctor tries to sell his medicine (bottled water), saying "Whoever drinks my potion will regain health with the sweep of a hand." The Death Goddess, Giltine, dressed in black with a white veil over her face, carries a sickle and tries to kill the doctor. The Gypsy carries a baby and a bottle. The Gypsy asks for alms and predicts the future, while the baby cries ceaselessly and pees (pours water) over everything. The beggars sing songs, carry bags and ask for alms. The soldiers wear straw ties as belts and carry straw swords. The wedding party consists of a small fat woman as the groom, a tall thin man as the bride, and others.
In addition to pouring water on people, the wanderers spew ashes all around, carrying them in a sock, which they hit on people's backs. One person carries around a hen's bone and tries to hang people on it. Someone constantly rattles. A group of children buzz like bees under a cloth, and others sprinkle them with water. Someone sells herring from a vat filled with water, but buyers merely get splashed. People go swinging on swings.
The holiday ends with the burning of the straw More which symbolizes the old and is made from the last sheaves from the previous year. Her burning culminates in the victory of the Kanapinis over the Lasininis.
Maslenitsa (from Wikipedia) For the Orthodox Church, preparations for Lent require a full week. The essential element of Maslenitsa celebration are bliny, Russian pancakes, popularly taken to symbolize the sun. Round and golden, they are made from the rich foods still allowed by the Orthodox traditions: butter, eggs, and milk.
Maslenitsa also includes masquerades, snowball fights, sledding, swinging on swings and plenty of sleigh rides. In some regions, each day of Maslenitsa had its traditional activity: one day for sleigh-riding, another for the sons-in-law to visit their parents-in-law, another day for visiting the godparents, etc. The mascot of the celebration is usually a brightly dressed straw effigy of Lady Maslenitsa, formerly known as Kostroma.
As the culmination of the celebration, on Sunday evening, Lady Maslenitsa is stripped of her finery, and put to the flames of a bonfire. Any remaining blintzes are also thrown on the fire. Lady Maslenitsa's ashes are buried in the snow (to fertilize the crops), all people ask for forgiveness from each other, and the Great Lent begins. This last day of Maslenitsa is also called 'Forgiveness Sunday'. To devout Orthodox Christians, it is the last day on which dairy products, fish, wine and oil may be consumed.
I seem to remember that the film Barber of Siberia has a big carnival celebration for Maslenitsa.
By now, doesn't all this burning of females sound familiar? Must be something to get rid of the old pagan female religion, and bring in the new Christianity.
Carnival in Slovenia Kurentovanje is a ten day long rite of spring and fertility, celebrated in Slovenia. The origins of Kurentovanje are not certain, but it is likely connected to Slavic paganism. The central figure of Kurentovanje are Kurents (Kurenti, singular: Kurent), who are characteristically dressed in sheep skin. They wear masks, which are richly decorated. Kurent is believed to be an ancient god of hedonism. Organized in groups, Kurents go through town, from house to house, making noise with bells and wooden sticks, symbolizing scaring off evil spirits and winter. The rite resembles a carnival and lasts for 10 days.
In fact there seem to be two sorts: the pagan variety, as at Ptuj, (which is why I want to go) and the dressing up and having a good time as in Venice, which happens in the south of Slovenia, where there is a bilingual population. In practice, they seem to get a bit mixed up.
This is the pagan variety at Ptuj. As well as these hairy fellows with long snouts, there were also cows, (as in pantomime horses) which could also spray you with water from their rear end. All of them had belts with bells on, so it was a noisy procession. Cracking whips also made a lot of noise. There are plenty more official photos here.
When we arrived on Saturday, there was a short procession with these characters, but also with groups of pirates, local farmers, girls not unrelated to American cheerleaders, and local traditional dress and bands. Many of the audience were also in fancy costumes, especially the children.
My photos were taken by a mobile phone over people's heads, as you can see.
But down in Koper (Capodistria), the TV was showing a full scale carnival with everybody in very elaborate costumes. Unfortunately the Koper municipality website has a lot of broken links so I couldn't find any photographs.
Here is what it says about Rijeka and Carnival on the Rijeka (Croatia, but you get the picture) Municipal website:
International Rijeka Carnival City of Rijeka is known for its carnival festivities since the Middle Ages. Carnival customs of Rijeka are a particular blend of European middle-class carnivals, foremost Venetian and Austrian carnivals with elements of old Slavic folklore and mythology. Carnival events traditionally take place in squares and streets of the City regardless the weather conditions.
When in 1982 three masked groups paraded through the main street of Rijeka, Korzo nobody could imagine that in course of some years the Carnival would reach the present day proportions and become well known as the International Traditional Rijeka Carnival. In 1990 the masked parade on Korzo was seen by about 80.000 people and in 1994 there was a truly spectacular masked procession with about 100.000 spectators and 4.000 masks from the country and from abroad, which allowed Rijeka to become a member of the Federation of European Carnival Cities (FECC) in 1995. At Rijeka Carnival 2001 there were 72 children carnival groups with 4.200 participants and 144 carnival groups of adults with 10.000 participants from 12 countries, watched by about 110.000 spectators. Thus, the International Rijeka Carnival has been established as one of the biggest in Europe.
Note the "middle class"!
Conclusion So is the end of winter a cause for celebration or just survival? Is the fast of Lent making a virtue out of necessity, or good for your soul (and cholesterol)? Has the old female religion not yet died out? And don't the traditional costumes look like those that are involved in traditional shamanism?
Or as the days lengthen again, do we just need something to cheer us up, suffering from SAD? Especially if we are middle class?
I've been here for two weeks now. During that time we have trained the cat. Perhaps that should read, the cat and I have trained my sister.
She was not known especially as a cat lover and was rather dubious when I dumped Nibbles, the well-travelled cat, on her, while her (Nibbles) rabies injection matured. However, when Nibbles went home (you can read about that saga here), she felt something was missing from her life.
Just before I arrived, she acquired a young neutered black female cat from a cat refuge, provenance not well-known, and named her Bella. By the time I had arrived, she had been renamed Beastie, as in Beastie did this, Beastie did that, all bad things. The relationship was not going well. She was muttering about Beastie going back to the refuge. Add to that, the fact that black cats are considered unlucky in Slovenia.
As you can see from the photo, Beastie is not a small delicate cat like Nibbles (half Burmese). She has a build politely described as stocky, or perhaps even Amazonian. She believes that the night time is for chasing up and down, jumping around, generally enjoying herself. This usually involves your bed, and also encounters with anything fragile that can be knocked over.
Not having any children herself, my sister still believes she is entitled to sleep without disturbance, and has not developed that mother's ability to wake up at the slightest noise, identify a probable cause and go straight back to sleep if it is usual. To me, the noise of a Nibbles at night is normal, even if it consisted of galloping down the hall with her mum, reaching top speed of 100mph and then screeching to a halt. It was a very long hall, and cats have excellent acceleration. I was trained by this to sleep through most cat noises.
However, my sister also believed that a cat sleeping on the bed was one of the benefits of having a cat. She felt the cat needed to feel reassurance in its new home at first, and allowed it to follow her round the flat. This meant it could not be shut in the living room at night, limiting the night time gambolling, and giving her a good night's sleep. I became the focus of her bad temper after insufficient sleep. The cat spent most of the night scratching at the door of whichever bedroom she was shut out of.
Something had to give. Now the cat still rampages at night, but shut in the living room. She is encouraged to tire herself out by playing football. We have a good night's sleep shut in our rooms. In the morning we clear up the mess of the plants knocked over by the football. It's worse than having a toddler, because you have to put everything breakable out of reach, not just up to a particular height.
And the cat sleeps all day. My sister believes she can take the cat for walks like a dog, so the cat sleeps better at night. Wait for further progress on this.
Slovenia is so small it only takes an hour and a half down a motorway to Italy. So after meeting some friends of my sister's in Sezana for lunch and talking to an estate agent about properties in the Karst, off we went across the border.
I realised I had only been to Italy twice. Once on a day trip from an island in Croatia, where we arrived in Venice in time for lunch and left again soon after. The other time I went for a conference in Rome, stayed in the usual business concrete block, usefully situated in a roundabout, and managed a morning of personal sightseeing on top of the quick evening tour provided by the hosts.
As a result, I had no idea what the north Italian countryside would be like, as we drove on our motorway through. In fact it was rather industrial, not pretty as I was hoping. It was a bit like Belgium. However, we got to Udine which was a small town with nice shops.
It was a fairly rainy day, but we managed to explore the squares and courtyards. It was too soon to expect to sit with our coffee and cake outside. Then we drove back to Ljubljana.
The next day we set off again to look at three houses in the Karst, and to explore the amenities. The amenities seemed to consist largely of war memorials for the Second World War when the Italians and later the Germans had fought the partisans. The region had always been poor, but previous views of vineyards and "wine trails", plus guide books saying it had a shortage tourist accommodation had convinced us that it might be a reasonable place for a summer house. However, trying to find some lunch in the only village with an inn settled it for us. When we entered the inn, they could only offer us pizza. We dithered, as it was a gloomy place but finally decided to stay. Within five minutes, I found myself feeling like it was the end of the world and horribly depressed, a mood that seemed to come from nowhere. After our lunch, we both were glad to escape, and Linda said she had felt the same. The locals seemed quite unaffected. We decided that something nasty must have happened there during the war, leaving the vibes to be felt by those who can.
None of the houses were any good, nor cheap. The last was in a valley beyond Trieste, where the plumes of smoke from a chemical plant billowed over the mountain, defeating the hope for good clean air. The village had lost its petrol pump and supermarket, as the Italian border was only 5 minutes away. After some arguments whether it would only be open to locals with special passes, we decided to give it a try. It was more like a level crossing on a railway than a border. No problem at all.
Then we went down the motorway to Trieste. We had both read Jan Morris's book about Trieste, so knew its history. She writes about it being built originally to provide Austro-Hungary with a port. And very busy it was in the early years of its life, shipping Jews to Israel and importing coffee. James Joyce and Rainer Maria Rilke spent time there. But after the First World it stayed with Slovenia in Yugoslavia, and no longer had such a purpose. When it was eventually handed to Italy after the Second World War, it had little use as a port, and has declined into decay.
After the long spiral down the cliffs to the port, I was curious to see what a Hapsburg town which is also a port looked like. The buildings are just as grandiose as Vienna but somehow nothing has been made of the sea.
All there was was a broad rather bleak pier with no pavilions. Like Jan Morris said, rather sad and like everybody left.
It was going dark as we arrived so the photos are also rather dull for that reason. It seems the kids were already practicing for the carnival in their costumes.
I'm getting rather ahead of myself blogging about Slovenia, since I haven't finished all the stuff from my visit to Vilnius, especially Burns Night and other cultural offerings.
But here (by request) is a photo of the Ljubljana Opera House. It looks better when you click on the photo and get the enlarged version. Unfortunately it is being renovated, so I cannot visit it. The renovations leave no impression on the outside, so it is hard to work out how extensive they are. Nice pictures on the opera website but nothing to say what is being done.
Performances are now held in the Cankarjev Dom, a modern congress hall, and this situation is expected to last for some time. However, I can report that opera features rather rarely in the monthly calendar in Ljubljana and currently Don Quixote is all you can see. For ballet, the menu also offers Don Quixote, (but no two for the price of one). For this, one goes to the Fairgrounds (sic).
Faced with this "choice" we will opt elsewhere: Fire of Anatolia is also on offer at the end of the month.
Classical concerts are also a bit thin on the ground in the official tourist information but Lithuanians (David Geringas and Tatjana Geringas) to the rescue on 26 Feb.
For my contribution to (or should that be consumption of) Culture Day I went to the National Gallery.
At least I went to the Modern Gallery first, but it was full of those tedious video installations. Don't get me wrong, I like modern art, so I would normally go there first, but I really hate most of the video installations I see. I don't have the patience to sit through 15 mins of someone talking on a screen. We all once went to a gallery in Berlin and sat down on the floor where everyone was watching a projection on a blank wall. There was a group of normal-looking people camping by a lake, probably in Scotland. Suddenly a traditionally robed Jesus rose from the water and ascended into heaven, (in about 5 seconds, blink and you would have missed it). Then everyone got up and went, leaving us. New people wandered in and sat down too. We had to watch for about 20 mins, as the normal people on the screen arrived, pitched their tent, changed their clothes, made a fire, pumped up their lilos, did all the camping things people do, and then Jesus ascended again. What the hell was all that about?
So to the National Gallery, which it seems I had already visited but didn't remember anything. It was rather full. In one room there was an excellent display of hand-made books. They had all the characteristics of ancient handmade books: neat gothic handwriting, illuminated capitals, hand-painted illustrations, hand made paper, leather covers painted and with that 3-d sculptured effect. But all these books had been made by school kids. That was great. There was even a book aiming for the Guinness book of records in that it was 2m long and 1 m wide. Impossible to turn the pages, not just because of the weight, but also because they were made in 3 sections and sewn (rather loosely) together.
To celebrate writing there was a table where kids could try using quill pens and ink from bottles. Now imagine this was in the UK. All kids would have to wear aprons, there would be special non-spill containers for ink, and all parents would have to sign a form saying it was OK for the kids to ruin their clothes with ink and damage themselves with the nibs in the quills. But there was none of this fuss here. Ordinary bottles of ink were waiting to be knocked over, and even small children were let loose to have a go. It looked great fun.
Older kids were going round the gallery with a white piece of paper and some crayons. On the paper was a coloured detail from one of the paintings, which they had to find and then draw their version of the painting, with the detail in the right place. You can see their dedication here.
Some of the adults were also going round with their "homework" ticking off the paintings they had to find.
The best bit was a special show of Plecnik's architectural drawings which needs a separate post and some pictures I need to find, but I managed to get round the permanent collections as well. The usual portraits of smug looking bourgeois families, (not so many royalty), lives of saints, still lifes (lives?) and gloomy landscapes in contrasting colours. You can see where the painters for tourists get their inspiration. There were some paintings from the Antwerp school who managed some really slimy fish and a rather chirpy looking crab, considering it was dead. There were some winter scenes from post-impressionists, which I would like to collect one day, to make a change from all those flowers. But the painting which puzzled me most was a tryptych by a Marx Reichlich from the turn of the 15th century. I don't usually look at those in any detail, but this one really caught my eye.
The left hand panel had a lady saint with pre-raphaelite long hair and a sword, who was reading a book. In the middle panel was Mary with Jesus being held (at arms length) towards the nanny. Male saints looked on approvingly from both sides. Lower down, a bourgeois couple were protrayed together with a leopard and a very black king (some distant relative?). At the bottom were two coats of arms (presumably for the couple). The right hand panel also had a lady saint, with more restrained hair. Although the artist had gone to great lengths to emphasise her figure with a tiny waist, he had draped her garments in such a way as to suggest she was pregnant. She carried a goblet which had a luminous ping pong ball on top (or perhaps it was extra icecream) and also (and this is what really made me start looking) a scimitar. It was rather long, but it was definitely curved and not a normal sword. Perhaps at the end of the crusades, there was a bit of technology transfer and scimitars were fashionable in the west for a time.
I wish I had time to do a course in art history and know what it really was all about.
The changeover to the Euro (from 1 Jan 2007) has gone well so far, with no big scandals of overcharging. Clearly lessons were learnt from other countries, with dual pricing for six months before and six months afterwards.
However, clearly there was some strain at the Bank of Slovenia, where four characters like this are taking the weight on their shoulders.
Today is Preseren Day (after their famous poet) but also Culture Day. Can't imagine a holiday called that in Britain. What would they celebrate? Football?
Anyway, all the museums are open for free today.
The Preseren statue had a red bouquet:
and someone was reading his poetry. Since I don't know any Slovenian, I can only say that it was the sort of poetry that rhymed, but not so serious that there wasn't a laugh every now and then.
Just had a day upgrading the technology at home. We went by bus to the sprawling BTC shopping centre on the outskirts of Ljubljana to get the kit. It was a wet and miserable day, but the shopping centre is dire. It's hard to find which shop is where, and you have to walk miles if you come without a car.
When Linda told me it was converted from the old Yugoslav warehouse centre, it is clear why everything is in two-storey concrete buildings and looks old and tired. None of the sparkling new shops as in similar places in Vilnius, where shopping malls have been built on green field sites as in Acropolis, or the old buildings were razed as in Siaures Mestelis, which used to be the old Soviet barracks. Admittedly when I went to the doctors in Vilnius there, I got lost too, but only because I hadn't been for 5 years and hadn't realised how much it had grown. The market is housed in BTC too, which adds to the downmarket feel, as do the shacks that seem to house the only places to eat.
Ljubljana doesn't seem to have as much building going on in the centre, and you have a sense that everything is considered good enough. Although there are always complaints that the Mayor of Vilnius is making money for himself out of all the changes, there is a vision for Vilnius and it is being implemented. That makes it a much more exciting place to visit, since there is always something new.
Anyway the result is that after a trip to "Big Bang", the local emporium selling all white goods, phones, computers, tvs, hi fi etc, we now have a working DVD and a wireless system connected to the cable modem. I even got the security working on the wireless.
As you probably gathered, my sister is not much of a techie. I hate using other people's computers. I hate not having all the toolbar buttons and widgets etc that I have lovingly installed on my computer. At first you don't notice that they are not there, until you need them and then there's nothing much you can do. There's only one thing I hate more than sharing someone else's computer, it's having someone share mine. They always save their own passwords and then you can't find yours. Skype is particularly unfriendly like that.
Before I had time to finish blogging from Vilnius, I found myself making a quick pit stop in the UK then dashing to Ljubljana.
Got here on Friday, but don't yet have a proper broadband connection for my computer, and my sister has to work on hers. But I hope to have wireless before the end of the week.
In the meantime, here is the view from our flat in the middle of Ljubljana, though this view makes it look like from a village. The Julian Alps are maybe an hour away. We are busy cursing because we should have bought a flat one storey higher and had an even more spectacular view. Ljubljana is really close to the countryside. We walked for 10 minutes this morning and were out in the woods already, yet we can walk into the centre in 30 mins (10 mins by bus).
I'm planning some trips out at the weekend so hope to report from somewhere new. Photo quality not so good as it's the mobile phone. Had to leave the camera behind for the GCSE art.
