Back to the EU

It doesn't quite have the same ring as being back in the USSR.

Today was supposed to be a day of catching up on work – both the success stories that I am writing here and a proposal that I am writing in my (not so) spare time. Instead, one of my colleagues from the home office who just started a long term positions in Zagreb called and suggested a road trip – I couldn’t resist. We spent the better part of the day just across the border in Slovenia.

I am embarrassed to admit (and almost did not include this confession), but before I came to the region in November I didn’t even know there was a country called Slovenia. Turns out that it was the first country to separate from the Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991 and it was the first former Yugoslav republic to join the EU in 2004. Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia on June 25th 1991 and the Yugoslav government didn’t take the separation so well and attacked Slovenia. The war lasted just 10 days, but the impact is still visible in the tiny little town where we stopped for tea where there are still bullet holes in the two or three buildings that have not yet been repaired.

This is the fourth international border that I have crossed over by land to or from Croatia and I have been sarcastic about the ‘huge’ differences from one side of an artificial boundary to the other. But in reality there are actually some big differences. In Bosnia, it was a significant change for the worse just across the border. In Slovenia the change was in the opposite direction. Directly across the border the scale of agriculture greatly increased with much larger plots of land being farmed, and with much higher technology investment. The villages we visited were incredibly quaint.

We did learn a couple of lessons from the trip. (1) When visiting an EU country, one should have Euro. Who knew? We had a cup of tea at a café and forgot to ask beforehand if they accepted credit cards. The answer of course was no, nor Croatian Kuna, nor US dollars. Fortunately before we were forced to wash dishes we discovered that the quaint little village that sits on an island in a river had an ATM. Whew. (2) When you do not speak the language and you are driving for the first time in a country – get a map! We spent much of the afternoon driving around trying to find someone who spoke English to give us directions. But we learned the Slovenes are friendly and helpful! (3) The word chocolate is universal, but not always the form. We asked for hot chocolate (in English) at a café and the server seemed to understand us and asked if we wanted vanilla or dark chocolate. A short while later, we were served hot chocolate pudding! Not what we were looking for, but it hit the spot and warmed the bones.