Change One: Slovenian merchants, waiters, and the like, are really, really reluctant to give you change. Not that they want to cheat you, or anything...they just get so annoyed if you give them substantially more money than is required. I know this happens in the U.S. too, but here are a couple of examples: I bought a 2,50 € hot chocolate at a cafe and all I had was a 20. The waiter gave me a look like, "Are you kidding me?" and asked if I had anything smaller. He proceeded to dole out the change, muttering and shaking his head the entire time. Today I bought a 1,20 € ice cream. I had a two euro coin. "Do you have twenty cents?" the ice cream seller asked. "No, I just have fourteen cents." She motioned for me to give her the fourteen cents. She would rather be sold short six cents than, heaven forbid, have to give 80 cents (three coins!) in change. I wonder if this is related to the problem they're having in Argentina with monedas. Supposedly, Argentina is so short on change ("How short on change are they?"), that coins are worth more than bills of a nominally higher value. It's pretty much the craziest thing I've ever heard. Anyway, it sometimes feels that way around here.
Change Two: I'm in my new apartment! It's on the top floor of this great old building on Dalmatinova ulica. I'm in the red room (one wall is painted red, although you can't see it in the picture), and I have a skylight and plenty of space and a bed underneath a low wall, which is kind of fun:
I spent a little while this evening talking to one of my roommates. His name is Bogdan, and he's a Romanian student here for an electronics/telecommunications research internship. His favorite television show is Seinfeld, which speaks highly of him. The internet, however, blows. Supposedly it's in a slump tonight, which is good, because if it were this bad all the time, I'd never be able to watch the Daily Show again (until August).
Work today was fun...not especially work-ful, but not boring either. I spent nigh three hours chatting with another woman in the department about whether the Court acted as a positive legislator in a number of cases. That conversation quickly devolved into differences between Slovenia and America (namely that large corporate entities aren't actively trying to screw you over in Slovenia, like telecommunications companies and health insurance companies do in the ol' ZDA). Then it re-evolved into a discussion of Slovenian law in general.
I found out that Article 55 of the Constitution does indeed give women an affirmative right to have an abortion. No messing. In your first trimester, you can walk into a state hospital, and they do it for you, no questions asked. Apparently after the first trimester, you need to appeal to some government board and they have to approve you (and they almost certainly do). I thought it was kind of strange that you had to go to a board to exercise a right that's affirmatively granted in the constitution, but Katarina said nobody's ever complained. Perhaps they could use some of that American complaining spirit.
The real political battle is apparently over single women getting in vitro fertilization. The church is super-opposed to IVF for women without husbands, and since the right is much better at turning out the vote than the left, they've managed to keep it illegal. (I think I'm recalling this all correctly.) And the issue of surrogacy has never come up in their courts, but Katarina expects it will soon.
All right, moving (even across the street) is exhausting, and I need to catch some mad z's. There are more things in the news and NY Times op-ed page that I wanted to write about—people being openly critical of mothers, climate change, Ricci—but I'm tired, and the internet's too slow to call up the articles within a reasonable timeframe.
As government officials say to each other before signing their letters (which I found out today doing my proofreading duties), please accept the assurances of my highest consideration. I'm not sure it means anything, but I hope you feel important now.
I always feel out-of-place commenting on blog posts when the blogger has already moved on to a new topic, but here are three things I have to say:
ReplyDeleteI love your bed, and I'm glad you feel good about it too. A lesser person would feel claustrophobic. The bed that I am about to get into has no ceiling so close to it, but then, it isn't really a bed either. It is a camping mat on a hardwood floor. And I have two pillows, but they have roughly the thickness of napkins, so I am in the market for a new, great big pillow.
Second, the change situation sounds very frustrating, but I do declare there are American cashiers with the same grumpiness about change. Pisses me right off. But I have read that some European cashiers are in trouble because a euro coin has nickel on its surface and one in twelve people is allergic to nickel. Let me tell you that I am allergic to nickel, and therefore most stainless steel, and enough exposure can make me break out into a horrible rash, mostly on my lower back and ass. So maybe that's why they don't want to break your twenty?
And on Slovenian abortion law, what interests me is that they go by trimesters. Did they copy us? Isn't that an arbitrary division? Or did I make that up?
Hello, Eli! Yay for commenting. Responding to your points in turn:
ReplyDelete1. I'm sorry your bed isn't more bed-like. Did you ever get to give the father-daughter team that took back their offer a piece of your mind? I hope things aren't too bad.
2. And yes, there are some American cashiers with the same grumpiness, but I'd say in America (a) they are overwhelmingly more mechanical, more likely to see what a cash register says and give it to you (I feel like a grumpy old man, but I think the cash registers that automatically spit out the change for the cashier are a low point in civilization) and (b) most of the time when they get grumpy you're, like, paying for an $0.85 candy bar with a $20 bill. If you buy something for $8.25 and pay with a $20, they very, very rarely blink.
2.5. I had no idea so many people were allergic to nickel! And that exposure on your fingers could cause a butt rash! Did I ever tell you about the time I had red squares on my butt for two years? Another time perhaps. But that could make sense...except the $10 and $5 bills don't have nickel, so breaking a 20 is no different from breaking a 5, nickel-wise.
3.You know, I looked up these laws, and I don't think they really do use the trimester system. Some sites said you have to go to the board after the first 10 weeks -- less than one trimester. So maybe she was just trying to put things into terms I understood, or something. I don't think the trimester division is arbitrary, though...I think doctors use trimesters as a heuristic for miscarriage risk and some other stuff, although obviously time is continuous and things may differ slightly in individual pregnancies.