Red, Red Wine

We (you know, people) are not particularly good at accurately incorporating colors into our daily language. Neither white people nor white wines are anything vaguely resembling white. Neither black people nor black lights are black. And red wine wasn't red...UNTIL NOW. Meet Cviček, the Slovenian wine I had with dinner this evening:

That is ruby-red wine if I ever saw it. And it tastes exactly like it looks: very light and somewhat cherry-ish. I had been thinking "watered down kool aid," but a nice Slovenian website advises me to set my attitude straight. It was not watered down kool aid. It was gentle and fruity. So there.

I also wandered by the reworked Swan Lake that's happening nightly this week in Prešernov trg. Every time I hear that music I think of the last scene in Billy Elliot, which would cheapen it, if it weren't such a freakin' awesome last scene. Oh, Adam Cooper: so hot then, so hot now.

And here's a (too light) stormy sky shot from last night. I love the time of day/night/dusk when everything just has a blue cast. And if the sky is stormy then, it's such a nice, rich texture:

Aw, yeah.

Lend Me A Hand

Someone up there is trying to tell me to stop drinking Coke. Today, I went to my lunch place, as usual, got a Coke and a new sandwich, and headed back to the court. I opened the sandwich, forked in a bite, and grabbed my Coke. It wouldn't open. Now, as I may have mentioned, oh, fifteen times, I drink a lot of Coke. Sometimes, if I don't finish a bottle and put it back in the fridge, it can be hard to re-open. But never have I had trouble opening an unopened bottle. I used my napkin. I used a paper towel. I tried using my hand again. Nothing. It wouldn't budge. I walked down the hall and asked one of the other girls if she'd give it a try. She used her hand. She used her shirt. Nothing. I tried some more, to no avail. Yet another girl from down the hall...her hand, her skirt. Nope. Me again: Fail, fail, fail. This was the Coke bottle of doom. So finally I asked my boss, the only man on our half of the floor. He couldn't do it with his hands, but he had a real towel in his office, so with that, he managed to open the Coke bottle. Victory! And that was when I looked at my right hand.

Wow. And I promise, it looks worse in real life. "Won't forget, can't regret, what I diiiiid foooooor Coooooooke. What I did for Cooooooooke..."

Did American research for a case today. I'm still not entirely sure what they want from the quick-turnaround not-quite-memos or the long-turnaround more-like-memos. Hopefully I'll get some feedback, though. I'm enjoying having to be humble about American law. At law school, we get very wrapped up in all the economic sense these laws make, but the rest of the world seems to see things through a more Fissian lens and less of an Ellicksonian lens. "You have a 'property' right to your child's corpse? Really?" "So, if it's not in the Constitution, human rights don't matter? Really?" And of course the answer to both of those is "well, sort of." But it's still interesting. Not as interesting as Adam D.C.'s most recent case, but you'll have to talk to him about that directly.

I also discovered the joys of Slovenian ATMs today. The funny thing about Slovenian ATMs, you see, is that THEY DON'T DISPENSE CASH. I eventually managed to get some cash out of one (of six), with my back-up credit card, but apparently my debit card doesn't function in these things. Lovely.

And the apartment company pushed back my move to the place-with-roommates until June 30th. I guess that means I'll be moving directly into the good room, but it also means another couple of weeks without friends. Or Roberto's smiling face. Eh, maybe I'll hit up the marine happy hour on Friday.

Besides all that it was actually a nice day. Did some reading, had some bad pizza and beer and some good hot chocolate and watched a thunderstorm over the city right after dusk. I have some pictures that haven't yet made their way onto the blog, so as your reward for looking at my hideous blisters, you get pretty scenes of Ljubljana. We start, as always, with the river:

Next up, the view into the courtyard from my apartment:

The beautiful University of Ljubljana. I think over 20% of the city's population is university students:

Here's a great old building in the south-of-center area (which, as you can see, is a lot like South Central):

And finally, sunset over an old building behind a construction site. I love this stuff:


Eso es todo. Goodnight, friends!

Killing, Mourning

Someone in this room is going to die. I don't know where he's hiding, but as soon as he starts flying around or lands against a nice white wall, that will be the end of him. I have become a remorseless mosquito killer since I moved into this apartment. I may not own a single shoe without blood on its sole (metaphorically, that is; there's usually no blood). If reincarnation's true, perhaps I'm killing someone's grandmother. Then again, if reincarnation's true, and they've been a good mosquito, I'm doing them a favor.

Two more assignments came down at work today...I actually have a lot on my plate now, but only one due date, which is nice. One case relates to what they call the "Right to Piety." Now, if you were to read "Right to Piety," what would you think it meant? I sure thought it was some sort of freedom of religion thing...possibly the right to observe strictly even if it interferes with other obligations. But no. The woman in the office started explaining to me, "It's like this statue with Mary holding the body of Jesus." "The Pietà." "Yes. It is the translation of that." Right. So apparently what they mean by "Right to Piety" is, like, the right to have an appropriate relationship with your deceased loved ones. The right to mourn and visit their grave, etc. Yes, Google Translate tells me that "pietà" translates as "piety," but good ol' dictionary.com doesn't seem to give the definition they want. I guess "pay your respects" is the most appropriate bridge between them. Still.

Update: The mosquito is dead. Don't worry. It was quick.

This is how getting assignments at work usually seems to go.

Them: Here's a description of this case. We're wondering if there's anything pertinent to this question in American law.
Me: That actually sounds completely antithetical to everything American law is about.
(Pause)
Me: But now that I think about it, there is a lot of stuff that might be relevant. But email me the question.
Me (aside): Because I have no idea if I understood what you just said.
Them: Ok!

So I'm, in some bizarre way, figuring out what European-style rights American courts have created but given American names. ("That's not personhood! That's property!") It's kind of cool.

I should be feeling great right now. I turned in the assignment I had to do for today (still no email confirmation of receipt, four-and-a-half hours later) and had a great dinner (gnocchi with beef, chanterelles, and mushrooms and a glass of red wine at the adorable Le Petit Cafe). I'm even reading a great new novel. But I'm feeling low. I have just two more days in this apartment, and I'm having a bit of an existential crisis about my time in Ljubljana. Why am I here? What did I hope to accomplish? What is the point of leaving everyone you know to spend two months in a 270,000 person city where you don't speak their language? I guess I assumed that if you do something like this you get something out of it, but I still don't know what that is or will be. We shall see.

Plečnik's Palace

In a few minutes I will be committing mass verbicide, brutally slashing 280 words from an essay to get it under word count. But as a feast before the famine, I come here to blog, to spew out words like there's no limit. Which there isn't. Thank you, internet.

I haven't yet posted pictures of the ridiculously gorgeous building in which I work, so here are a couple of shots taken from the staircase:

It was designed by apparently-super-famous architect Jože Plečnik, Slovenia's pride and joy along with France Prešeren, poet extraordinaire. I haven't seen much devotion to good ol' Slavoj over here. I guess they're all capitalists. Anyway, the building is known as Plečnik's Palace, and it's obscenely attractive. And it even has a coffee maker that spits out €0,30 cappuccinos, sweetened to your specification! Who could ask for anything more?

There were (at least?) two Scarsdalians in the NYT wedding section this week. One was something of a friend in high school (very cool girl), but I haven't spoken to her much since. The other was too old for me to have known (although I knew her sister a bit), but I recognized her name instantly from The List. I know, it's pathetic. But you do something like that, too, don't you? And even if you don't, that's the least of my weird stalking of people I don't/hardly/do know. You should know that by now. But congrats to the now-marrieds! And wish me luck in finishing this thing.

Song of the day, for no other reason than it popped into my head: You'd Be Surprised

This Sweet Stone

If I come back from Slovenia weighing 300 pounds, you can either blame the all-meat/bread/cheese diet (maybe that's not fair...they have mushrooms, too) or these amazing chocolate bars. You can probably get them in the U.S., but I've never had one before, and my God, they are delicious.

Today, in the midst of my Court-structure-summarizing (if my boss ever discovers Wikipedia, it'll put me out of a job), the man in charge came in and said he wants me to start researching the origins of two ideas "that have come from this...sweet stone." Considering the amount of English that is bungled in this country (People use the word "accured" a lot. Anyone want to translate?) I would have been justified in asking for a clarification. Fortunately, I knew what he was talking about, so all was well.

Today marks my grandparents' 60th (count em!) anniversary. That's just amazing. When they got married, World War II was a more recent memory than September 11th is today (although my grandfather was already trying to block out those memories), and Korea was still in the future. WolframAlpha tells me nothing useful about June 11, 1949, because it's completely useless for anything other than graphing. But who needs it. My mom's parents met each other on a blind date...actually, it was a double blind date, and they were each set up with the other person. But they took to each other, and pretty soon my grandfather showed up at my grandmother's doorstep holding a bouquet of flowers. "Are those for me!?" she asked giddily. "Nope, they're for your mother," he replied. What a mensch. Anyway, they've been together ever since. They're a great duo...good senses of humor (sometimes punny, sometimes a little off-color), a lifetime of involvement in the arts (Bucky was acting up until a couple of years ago, and Griz is still sculpting), and tremendous affection for each other after all these years. Sure, their age is starting to show more than a little, but I admire and even envy what they have. So cheers to Griz and Bucky and their sixty years of marriage. Woot!

My Screen Is The Brightest Thing In Cafe Čokl

Which means giant bugs are landing on my screen. Lovely.

I got an assignment today from my boss, which was very exciting. Unfortunately one of the questions I was asked to research ("Could you please find some case law from this court for me?") had a somewhat disappointing answer ("Apparently that court has never actually...heard a case..."). And I have an editing assignment for tomorrow, given to me by two women in the legal advisory department, Tea and Lea (seriously). So it looks like my Slate reading is going to take a hit this week, as is my motivation to work on the non-job-related essay I have to finish for next Monday. Ah, well.

As I was researching for the boss today, Robert the tech guy came in and said he wanted to install software that would require restarting the computer. I had about twenty websites open then and was a little flustered, so he said he could come back later. "Is this afternoon all right?" I asked. "Oh, I have to pick up my wife from the hospital this afternoon, so maybe not." "Oh, ok, sometime later this morning then," I responded. Brilliant response to "I have to pick up my wife from the hospital," I know. Fortunately, when he came in later I was able to try to mend my ways. "So is everything all right with your wife?" I started. "Yeah, it was very all by the book," he responded, using his idioms well but showing very little indication of what had happened. "Did she have an operation...?" I prodded. "No, we had a daughter on Saturday." OH. All good things, then.

While the software was installing its slow self, we chatted a bit about maternity leave in Slovenia. Apparently women get a full year of paid maternity leave, and new fathers get eleven paid days and fifty-two days unpaid but with all of their taxes and social security comped. I feel like I've always thought of paid maternity leave as something of a women's equality issue, but he said that the entire purpose of the Slovenian legislation was to encourage families to have more children. According to Robert, when he was born, there were 30,000 babies born in Slovenia every year, but now that number's down to 18,000. Of the women that do have children, half have only one, and a fair number of married couples decide not to have children. He implied that these couples were choosing a more lavish lifestyle over kids (and his implication was that this choice was about money, not time). I'm not sure if I buy it, but it does seem like countries with solid economies tend to decline in population.

So, speaking of choices related to having kids, I was viscerally annoyed by this Douthat op-ed in the Times today. Part of this annoyance comes from him placing himself in the ideological group that irritates me the most: self-righteous moderates. ("Guys, guys, stop your blind extremism! Let's inject some common sense into this debate and acknowledge that both sides have a point. Let's add a little nuance to our thinking, ok?" Ugh, I could spit.) But part of it is the content. I don't think there's any actual contradiction in saying "abortion is a moral wrong that can be the right choice in extreme cases, where there is an extraordinary wrong avoided through abortion, but it's the wrong choice in all other cases." In theory that's fine. It's just the smell test...every time someone makes this kind of argument, all I can hear is, "Ladies: you break it, you buy it." It's this attitude that is entirely a comment on the moral character of the woman involved and completely divorced from the outcome of her action. There's no feeling of "I'm sorry: I know this isn't what you want for yourself, but we just can't take this life without an extraordinarily compelling reason." It's all about these selfish women willing to toss away their kid for the sake of convenience. It's just creepy.

Oh, and someone (Chayes?) needs to create a play based on the foie gras workers in today's Herbert column. There's something awesomely dramatic about the twenty-two day period of constant, extremely personal force-feeding. (The combination of "ducks" and "extremely personal" has recently taken on a whole new meaning.) And there's something horrifically dramatic about the Depression-era labor conditions. But I think Herbert's got that one covered.

The Horror! The Horror!

So, which is scarier: The sadomasochistic skeletons adorning the super-kitschy crypt-themed bar I went to tonight:

or the dolls at the UNICEF benefit I passed by after dinner:

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Not much to report today (please pray to the work gods for me, if you get a chance). I got a new wallet, which is cool. I couldn't shop for it on the weekend because stores are all closed on the weekends (brilliant business plan, Slovenia), but today I found something nice at a non-psychotic price. The change compartment on my old wallet had completely fallen apart...which wouldn't be such a big deal during the school year in the US, but while I'm wearing work clothes every day (read: no pockets) and I'm dealing with €2 coins, I need something that can secure my change. Finished reading the article I was reading, which means writing looms. Maybe I'll get to bed early tonight. Yeah, that'd be nice.