Nasvidenje, Ljubljana!

So, this is it. My last night in the beautiful city of Ljubljana. It hasn't quite hit me yet that I'm leaving the place I just spent two months, and I may never return. I'll return. I think I'll return. Exploring with Natalie and getting her reactions to everything in the city has made me see the place with new eyes. It's really a gorgeous town with solidly friendly, relaxed people, good wine and good food (Natalie has called both last night's mushroom soup and this morning's hot chocolate "the best thing [she's] ever tasted"), and plenty of nooks and crannies. We went to Metelkova Mesto again last night, and Natalie agreed with me that it's just about the coolest thing ever. We can't believe we haven't seen a movie about it, yet...it really feels like a sort of fantasy alternative artists' commune—sort of like the one in Berlin in Passing Strange—but it's all real.

Today Natalie and I went up to the castle. Just this week they finally opened the tower, which had been under renovation since last October. The tower looks oddly cheap from far away, as though they put up cardboard instead of stone, but up close it's all a lovely marble. We got a great 360° view of the city, which maximized the red-roofiness of it all and let us see Ljubljana's most important landmarks from above.

And Natalie and I took the requisite "we don't feel like asking these Norwegian tourists to take our picture" picture.

My glasses look extremely professorial. Tonight I'll say goodbye to my roommates, although Roberto may drag himself out of bed to say goodbye early tomorrow morning. Then Natalie and I take the 8:15 train to Zagreb, grab a quick breakfast there, walk to the bus terminal, go to the airport, fly to Dubrovnik, and check into our hostel. I hope this all works as planned. If so, by this time tomorrow I will be in one of the most beautiful places in the world. And I can stop linking everyone to this picture and provide a few snapshots of my own.

I'll miss this place. I'll miss its cheap, flavorless beer. I'll miss the random stuff market. I'll miss the not-quite-car-free cobblestone streets. I'll miss the crummy waiter service accompanied by a willingness to let you sit at a restaurant for as long as you want. I'll miss the guy selling magazines to make a buck in every tourist-filled area of town. I'll miss the phrase "dober dan." Roberto, I think I'm going to miss you most of all.

I'll check in with y'all from EuroTour 2009.

Ah Have Always Depended...

Yesterday, Roberto and I headed up to Šmarna Gora, a large hill about 10 km northwest of central Ljubljana. We spent a full hour waiting for the number 8 bus, the only one that goes out there, before a young guy informed us that it doesn't run on Sundays. Moral of the story: Ask the young guys. Old ladies and bus drivers will just misinform you. So we caught an overpriced cab out to Šmarna Gora. (Yes, it is fun to say! No, you are not crazy if you walk the streets pretending to hex people by looking at them sideways for three seconds and then spitting out "Šmarna Gora!" At least I hope not.) We hiked up the "hill"—2,000 feet is definitely pushing my "hill" limits—and got some gorgeous views of the city and the mountains, including Triglav, Slovenia's highest peak.

I think that's it, at least. They don't exactly have signs pointing it out to you. They do, however, have a cute cafeteria with fried dough and sweet tea, which is much appreciated after the trek. Ah, and I shall post the requisite "We Wuz Here" picture:

As you will recall, we had picked up a cab in Ljubljana because no buses were running, so as we stood at the top of the hill, staring at the mountains, I asked Roberto, "So, how are we going to get back from here?" "I have the number of the company." "Oh, great! And you have your phone with you?" "...." So there we were, miles away from town with no way to get back, and since we're such adventurous people, we went down the hill to the less occupied side, where we found ourselves deep in burbville.

The first thing that struck us was the smell: garbage mixed with cow manure. We got quickly away from the garbage, but the cow manure smell remained, and we soon realized we were next to a large barn filled with (wait for the shocker...!) cows. A dog came running down from the driveway, yapping at us. We walked as fast as we could away from the stench, and the dog backed off, extremely proud of itself for driving away the intruders. We walked along the road that looked most likely to lead to civilization, and after a few blocks, we came upon a few people standing in a driveway, including a woman pushing a stroller.

"Dober dan." "Dan. Do you speak English?" "Eh, a little." Often the answer. We told the woman that we were lost and trying to get back to Ljubljana, and she told us to follow her. We got to her house, where a whole bunch of people were sitting in the driveway. They began to argue in Slovene, and finally the woman's husband (I presume) said, "OK, I will drive you to the bus station!" And he did. He dropped us off at the (functional-on-Sundays) number 1 stop, a few miles away, and actually gave us tokens so we could ride the bus for free.

Yeah, yeah, so he told Roberto he's from "not really Italy" because he's from Calabria, in the far south, and he told me that Miami (where his friends live) is "not really the United States" because there are so many Cubans there, but he was a completely random stranger who just gave us a ride to the station and paid our bus fare. That's pretty amazing. In America, I'd be happy to find people who wouldn't walk away before I could ask to use their phone to call a cab. I remember once asking a random woman at a New York flea market if I could use her cell phone to call my friends who had wandered off. I might as well have told her I wanted to call the Messiah. New Yorkers don't touch other New Yorkers' cell phones.

So that was our fun and exciting adventure yesterday.

On a less fun and exciting note, I found out I didn't make law journal. I'm pretty upset about it...it's something I really wanted to do (and, yes, sure, to have done), and I worked very hard throughout the whole admissions process. I had told people I'd be upset if I didn't make it, and there's no reason to pretend I'm not. I've gone through all sorts of extremely mature thoughts—This sort of thing will keep me humble, and humility is a virtue! Bluebooking is a valuable skill, and this process forced me to learn it! I'll have more time for classwork, and I always wish I had more time for my classes!—but really, I just need a little time to be pissed off. The friends I've been bitching to have been wonderful (about this and about other personal stuff), and they're helping me not to think less of myself because of this.

And it's been nice to have Roberto around, who couldn't care less whether I'm on law journal or whether I didn't finish high school. I'm sure if/when I start dating somebody seriously, that person will appreciate my mind (yeah, I know that sounds douchey, but everyone who reads this blog is super-smart, too, so chill), and a large part of our relationship will be an intellectual connection. And there is certainly some element of intellectual connection with Roberto. But there's something very...nice, I guess...about someone liking me just because we share a sort of natural connection and rapport, and it feels nice when we smile at each other. How does the old saying go, "Tell the smart woman she's beautiful and the beautiful woman she's smart?" Something like that? It's an obnoxious saying, but there's more than a little bit of truth there.

Congratulations for making it to the end of the post! As a reward, you get a Wyatt Cenac segment (Cenac is currently edging out John Oliver as my favorite regular Daily Show correspondent) featuring Steve-o* Carter. Enjoy:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Judgmental
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

*Professor Carter: If by some miracle you've made it to this page, welcome! Yes, I am making fun of your (and your father's) somewhat extreme views on formal address. But I hope you will not confuse my editorializing with actual disrespect. Also, a friend points out that you got the parties who appointed Sotomayor to the different courts backwards. I just used Hamer v. Sidway in a gchat conversation, though, so all is forgiven.

Summery Judgment

It is good. It is very good.

Lake Bled ranks high on the Most Beautiful Places on Earth list. We spent the weekend (read: Saturday) walking up to the castle and around the lake, rowing to the island and back (go Dad!) and eating good food including kremna rezina. It was nice to spend some low key time with the parents and commune just a bit with the great outdoors. And now I have pictures of my very own!



I'm working on a memo about certiorari for work...I sort of decided to do it myself, because I think knowing about SCOTUS's system (and why it's problematic but not a complete train wreck) will be important during the court's quest to not decide 2000 cases a year. Also, the first case where I had some mild input was decided last week. The court said that a difference in inheritance law between marriages and same-sex unions was unconstitutionally discriminatory. Did they actually use my work? Good question. I haven't yet been able to find the opinion, but I'll let you know as soon as I do. Meanwhile, I'm happy for Slovenia, which is apparently significantly more progressive on gay issues than America.

And I'm also happy for the awesome small-groupie who was on TV today, behind Al Franken at the Sotomayor hearings!

Go, Beth. It's your birthday. We gonna party like it's your birthday.

Other than that, I've been chilling, working on my paper, and spending quality time with Roberto. I can't seem to take a decent picture of him. I think my camera's cursed or something. I assure you: Roberto is not red, and he does not have bulging eyes. And yet...

I know, I know. As things in life get better, the posts get duller. No more random observations like, "this city is so small that apparently the better-known waiters and hairdressers are the primary subjects of tabloid gossip." Except for that one. Yeah, it's true.

By The Waters

I'm blogging live (unlike most of my posts, which are carefully smuggled past the censors and published weeks later) from beautiful Lake Bled. I have pictures but not the cable that connects my camera to the computer, so you'll have to make do with outside shots. Note: The outside shots seriously misrepresent the current color of the sky and visibility of the mountains. They do not, however, misrepresent the overall gorgeousness of the lake area. The parents and I got here after a lovely hour-long bus ride, which took us through a not-insignificant portion of Slovenia. It really is a beautiful country.

Speaking of "by the waters," Roberto showed me some photos of his hometown last night. Photos like this. And this. And this. I mean, I did grow up just a couple of miles from the Long Island Sound, so I figure we had pretty much the same experience. Not to insult the Sound—it's quite lovely as sounds go—but it sure ain't the Mediterranean.

Adam came this week, which was a treat. I think at his sightseeing pace he managed to see as much in one day as my parents saw in five. We walked around and chatted, had meals with my parents, and generally had a nice time. It was great to see a friend over here. By the way, if any of YOU want to be that friend, please consider coming to Budapest and Prague with me from July 30th to August 6th. Natalie's joining me for leg one of EuroTour 2009 (Ljubljana and Dubrovnik from July 24th to July 30th), but then she has to "work" (excuses, excuses), so I'm on my own. But I'd love company. Spread the word.

It's great that so much has been going on this past week or so, but I can't help feeling a little sad that it's all happening at once, and so close to the end of my stay. For the first five weeks, I spent pretty much all my time alone wishing I had just one person to hang out with. Now I'm at Bled with my parents, which is great, I've been looking forward to it, but I also kind of wish I was spending the weekend back in the apartment in Ljubljana. I know, I know, your pity is overwhelming. But it's my blog and I'll kvetch if I want to. Pshaw.

Ljubljana: Now With 200% More Jews

My parents are here! I've had a lovely couple of nights eating, walking, and chilling with them. Last night was dinner at Julija and drinks at Dvorni bar, next to the river. A little after 10 (not far from their bedtime, anyway), I ditched the folks to watch an Italian movie with Roberto. The movie wasn't much—sort of like Mean Girls without the humor and with a crazy and bitter father—but it was nice to collapse and watch something for a while. Roberto was heading to Italy at 2 am (certainly my favorite time to head to Italy) and was planning on pulling a relative all nighter of chilling, but I was zonked after the movie and headed to bed.

Tonight the parents and I ate at Ljubljanski dvor (related to the wine bar), my favorite pizzeria in town, although I haven't yet tried Napoli; those two places, along with Foculus and Trta seem to be the big contenders for the "best pizza" prize. My mom and I split two pies: zucchini, garlic, and mozzarella on one and mozzarella, brie, and parmesan on the other. So, soooo good. Then we all walked to the Dragon Bridge and got dessert at Cacao. And now I'm home, finishing up Matt's latest puzzle (I like it, Matt! More comments tk.) and gearing up to book my post-Ljubljana travels. And Adam's coming to hang out tomorrow! Life is rich these days. Woot.

These Walls Can Talk

So, I almost titled this post: "I have a vagina. Not a pussy. Not a snatch. A vagina." But then I realized people might read these posts at work, and titles are big, and not everyone's employer is down with edgy feminist thought that involves discussions of appropriate names for genitalia (relevant link). Had I given the post that title, however, it would have been ripped from this fine piece of graffiti:

I may have mentioned this before, but I love the graffiti here. Some of it is your typical anti-fascist sloganeering, but a lot of it is beautifully and hilariously rude,

and some of it is just downright creepy and beautiful.


I can't get enough.

Tonight I went to dinner with the lovely Roberto at a Serbian restaurant. I went for the "order the thing you can't translate" technique (Plejeskavica with Kajmak), which I've done frequently in foreign countries, to decidedly mixed results. The waiter asked if we'd like to split a salad. Normally I turn down the random waiter-suggested salads, but I figured that whatever I'd just ordered was probably a big plate of meat, so I got us the salad. Then my dish came, and I was shocked to find it was...a big plate of meat! Specifically, an IHOP pancake-sized sausage meat patty, sitting in a creamy sauce. It was fine, but I only ate about half, and I was so glad to have the tomato/cucumber/pepper salad, too.

After the meal, Roberto and I went a'wanderin', which was very lovely. Even with his mediocre English and my non-existent Italian, we managed to talk pretty smoothly. We wandered through the main plaza, down Trubarjeva cesta into a funky little almost-abandoned area, up the east side of Center, and into Metelkova mesto, where I got Roberto to bond with some of the wall art:

Since I seem to have only photographed Roberto at night, the blinding flash hasn't been especially flattering. But if you want to see hotter pictures, here are a few from Facebook.

I just showed Roberto the picture and said he said he looked weird because he was drunk. Then I reminded him we only got drunk after I took the picture. Jalla Jalla in Metelkova mesto is famed for their schnapps. Now, I've never had straight up schnapps before, just a little bit of peppermint in the hot chocolate (highly recommended during a cold New England winter), but that stuff is strong. Sweet (I had asked for honey, but I think I got cherry), but so, so strong. So after a tiny plastic cupful, we were both a little unsteady on our feet. He told me he was drunk, and I told him I'd protect him if any evil people tried to take advantage of him. The nice thing about a bit of a language barrier is you can be blatantly flirtatious and the other person doesn't notice. The annoying thing about a bit of a language barrier is you can be blatantly flirtatious and the other person doesn't notice.

Anyway, my parents are coming tomorrow! I'm very excited to see them. With my roommates, my parents, and Adam (the high school friend math nerd Adam, not to be confused with the law school friend math nerd Adam) coming Wednesday, suddenly I have a social life! How exciting.

233 Years of Awesome

Happy Independence Day, American friends! I hope you are doing American things such as watching fireworks and grilling burgers. I, despite being in a random European country, have managed to spend this weekend doing actively traitorous things, like watching Fry and Laurie's "Marvelous England" sketch, thinking about how I'd edit Francis Scott Key if he were writing for me (Cut the question after "gleaming," and continue, "Throughout the perilous fight, its broad stripes and bright stars were gallantly streaming o'er the ramparts we watched."), and having a beer at England Pub with Roberto (left) and Bogdan:

I'm a bad American.

I also did some decidedly non-traitorous things, like working a bit on my paper and walking through beautiful Tivoli Park. I decided to hike around the nature trails today. I only wound up hiking for about an hour because I was alone and the trails were unmarked (good idea, Slovenians), so I didn't want to wander too far afield. I did, however, manage to run into a gym in the woods, whose mission was apparently to kill the entire exercise equipment industry by spreading the gospel of the log. Everything you could ever want to do, you can do with logs!

You can step up on logs.

You can hoist logs on your back.

You can even jump over logs!


Why would you ever need anything else? It's big, heavy, wood, better than bad, good...you get the drift.

Since it was such a nice day (despite appearances, the weather's pretty good for the majority of each day), I wandered around the park and around town a bit more, taking snapshots, such as this one, of the National Assembly (Parliament) building:

Before heading home, I stopped for a beer by the Tromostovje. As usual, I got a Laško, but this was the first time I noticed something about the glass:

They are so proud of the year they were founded, it gets an exclamation point! "We've been brewing since eighteen-twenty-five, mothafuckaaaaas!" the glass cries.

Finally, one of my favorite couples of all time got engaged this week. I'm very excited for them. All right, kids, bed time approaches. Later, dudes.

All I'm Asking For Is Change

Two types of change, today:

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.

Metelkova Mesto

And to think I had almost given up on finding the cool place in Ljubljana. I had seen all of the bars—indoors, outdoors, divey, classy, casual, fancy—and I knew there were clubs, but these are all standard issue things. They're great, of course, and I will return to the cafes and bars on a daily basis. I had also seen BTC City, the enormous shopping/entertainment complex a short bus ride out of town. And so I kind of figured teenagers and families hung out at BTC, and couples and college kids hung out at the bars, and most people probably spent a bunch of time at home, too. But clearly I was missing something: What about the people who will inevitably, in any city, in any town, gravitate toward something different? Bear with me.

Tomorrow is Ljubljana Pride, so I looked up the parade trajectory and found that it ended at Stari trg (no surprise, it's the south point of the old town), but started at this place called "Metelkova City." "What's 'Metelkova City?'" I asked myself. And then I asked Google.

First, a brief digression on cool places. In New York City, as far as I can tell, there are two ways to make a cool place: (1) You can find a more-or-less safe industrial area and carve out underground clubs, bars, restaurants, galleries, and music venues in its hidden corners until you get SoHo, or you get the Meatpacking district, or you get DUMBO; or (2) you can find an ethnic or cultural enclave, take advantage of its immigrant-low prices and safe streets, and slowly invade with post-college kids and artists until you have Williamsburg or the Lower East Side or Greenwich Village. In both of these circumstances you take something that was built to be functional and you exploit the natural beauty of that functionality. And that works for factories, and that works for middle class ethnic neighborhoods.

But factories and ethnic neighborhood can't hold a candle to 19th Century Austro-Hungarian military barracks.



Yes, Metelkova Mesto is an experiment in what happens when you let a pristine, medium-sized city's alternative community take over barracks just outside the city center and run free. And the result is, frankly, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.













Yes, it's ridiculous. It's a mix of gorgeous mosaics that glisten in the rain and violent graffiti. It's a complex that looks like it could withstand wars but wash away during the next thunderstorm. And its inhabitants are middle aged hobos and 40 year old black men with Che and Bob Marley posters and teenagers (oh, the teenagers!), goths, punks, skaters...anyone who's willing to wear the color of the hour.



I walked over to Metelkova Mesto tonight unsure of what I'd find. I grabbed a half-liter of the cheapest beer in town (only €1,50 for a Laško;!) and sat on a picnic bench and read my newest novel. This one's the result of walking into a bookstore and saying, "Hi, do you have any Slovenian books in English?" Thus far the book is entertaining enough; we'll see how it shapes up. So I read outside for a while, and moved under a roof when it started to rain. Then I wound up talking with Thomas, an extremely drunk and high Slovenian who told me that he used to work in a Duty Free shop on a cruise ship until he got off in Los Angeles with a joint in his pocket and was immediately sent back to Slovenia.

Speaking of joints, I was shocked that it took me over an hour to catch a whiff of pot in this place. For an open-air alterna-teen's paradise it was surprisingly low on drugs. I also realized that I really like the smell of marijuana. Not because it's an especially beautiful smell (although it's wholly inoffensive), but because I associate it entirely with good things. I'm in a dorm room and my friends are smoking up. I'm at a concert on a field and people are smoking up. I'm in some crazy alternative neighborhood on a summer night in a strange town and people are smoking up. The smell of people smoking pot a few feet away from me now gives me a visceral feeling of mellowness that has nothing to do with the actual mood-altering properties of the drug. Clearly this plant is going to be more wily in its plan for world domination via relaxation than we ever anticipated.

Tomorrow: I report on Pride.

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!

In Former Yugoslavia, The Laundry Does YOU

Back in fabulous and modern New Haven, Connecticut, laundry nights would go something like this:

T = 0 min: I sling my laundry bags over my shoulder and head down to the laundry room, using one washer if it's a light load week and two washers if it's a heavy load week.
T = 3 min: I put in my quarters and press "colors" or "whites," depending on the content of the load. I do a little work or futz around on the computer.
T = 30 min: I retrieve my laundry from the washers and put the clothes in the dryer. I clean off the lint board thing and hope that there's no actual consequence to slightly over-stuffing the machine.
T = 32 min: I press the "delicates" button. Then I do some actual work or some very involved futzing.
T = 98 min: I pull my clothes out of the dryer and check that they're dry. Unless I've hideously overstuffed, they are.
T = 103 min: I return to my apartment and begin to sort.

The end! After about two hours, my entire laundry process is done.

Not so here.

Today, I did laundry from 1:15 pm to 7:45 pm. I borrowed a set of keys to the apartment where the washer/dryer is located—the same apartment I'll be moving into in a few weeks—and headed up to the place. When I got there, there were clothes already in the wash. I noticed the timer had eight minutes left on it, so I wasn't too concerned. I heard someone vacuuming upstairs (still within the apartment), so I went up an introduced myself to Claudio, an astronomy student at the University of Padua here through the end of June (so he'll be my roommate for about two weeks). He showed me around the apartment (which, um, didn't take long) and pointed out his room to me. "Oh, this isn't small at all!" I said. "Well, I have the biggest one. That one's tiny," he responded pointing to the room in the corner. Five seconds later, I asked if he knew which person was leaving mid-June. "Oh, she is," again, pointing to the room in the corner. Greeeeeat.

By that point his clothes were done, so he moved them into the dryer. The machine was too small for both whites and colors, so I started with the colors. On this machine, when you play around with the settings, you can see how long the load will take. I started with delicates in 30 degree water, because I figured that was appropriate for new, brightly-colored work shirts and bras and such. Fifty-three minutes. "Seriously?" I thought naively. "There must be a faster option." No no no no. Fifty-three minutes was far-and-away the shortest option there. "At least Claudio's drying will be almost done by the time my clothes are washed," I thought, but in the back of my head, I already knew better.

I sat on the spiral staircase reading, and my clothes finished after 53 minutes, as promised. There's no timer on the dryer, so I just had to wait it out. The hour rounds itself out. Then an hour and fifteen minutes. An hour and a half. An hour and forty-five minutes. And shortly thereafter the dryer gives one last shutter and turns off. I run upstairs, knock on Claudio's door and tell him his clothes are done. Hooray! He empties the trough of water (there's no actual drainage system), and I put my whites in the washer and colors in the dryer. After setting my wash for synthetics at 60 degrees (an hour and forty-five minute wash time) and setting the dryer the same way Claudio did, I headed out for a bite to eat and some walking around.

When I got back an hour and forty-five minutes later, the wash was almost done, and, as with Claudio's clothes, the dryer finished a few minutes later. I opened up the door and grabbed my clothes. You know what comes next, right? I'll give you a clue. It rhymes with "schmy schmlothes schmere schmill schmet." Nearly two hours in the dryer and they were soggy as all hell (apparently Dante got it wrong). Still, I took them out threw them in their sack, spreading them out on my bed a few minutes later. (They're still there). Guessing that the half-sun icon on the machine meant "partially dry" and the whole sun icon meant "dry" I set the whites on "I said dry my clothes, woman!" and left.

Nearly three hours later, I reached into the dryer and retrieved some of the dampest underwear this world has seen since [this is a family blog, but you get the idea].

Three hours! And still wet! My wit could dry those clothes faster.

Ah, but I haven't mentioned the best part of my laundry experience. I met another one of my roommates: Roberto. He's also Italian and speaks very, very little English. But he is a-dorable. He has a master's degree in law (currently working at the Italian Embassy), so I assume he's old enough for it to be not sketchy that I think he's cute, but he's definitely got a bit of that "Bel Ami boy" look. (If you don't know what that means, google it...while nobody's looking...and be prepared to delete your search history.) He'll be there the whole time I will. The city just got a little prettier.

Tomorrow: I write about strange price discrepancies. Don't let me forget.

American Law: Let Me Research It For You

Today: A miracle.

I was getting ready for another day of background reading, when I heard a knock on my door. A woman I didn't recognize came in, looked at the other desk, and said (as I'm used to hearing by now), "Oh, Urška's not here?" Nope, she's out taking finals. "Well, I was coming in to see you anyway?" MOI!? (I didn't actually say that.) "I just found out about you! My name is Tjaša. I'm currently researching a pending case on Topic X." (where X is a topic I'm super-interested in. I won't say what it is exactly, because I assume this blog is the foremost source of inside information for litigants in pending US-RS cases.) She explained the case and told me that it looked like German, French, and British courts hadn't spoken directly to her question, so could I think of a relevant U.S. case? I couldn't. But! I could tell her basically what the landscape of cases would look like, and I told her I'd do some research and send her what I found. "Don't spend too long on it," she said. Oh, I would be so happy to spend too long on it.

Actually, it only took around four hours, especially since it wasn't a formal memo and the cases that were most likely to help her weren't really going to hide themselves. I also got to explain some basic stuff about American law, which made me feel very knowledgeable. (I wrote to my boss about our admittedly ridiculous Supreme Court cert system a few days ago. "It is all very...mysterious," he said, appropriately.) Above all, it was real work. I got to research and analyze and summarize and generally obtain and communicate knowledge. I'm hoping I will now be the go-to person for all legal advisory department questions about American law.

And I did finally get to meet the infamous Urška. Who is awesome. First, and not to be underestimated, she speaks English fluently. Almost everyone here speaks English proficiently, but that is not to be confused with fluently. And she has a British (with a touch of Scandinavian/Australian?) accent, although she's only lived in Slovenia and Luxembourg. She's also a little funkier than most of the office...hair dyed that sort of slightly purple red and thick-framed glasses. And she's energetic. Overall, I'm excited to have her as my office-mate-to-be.

Tonight, I missed my bus to the movie theater (I actually got there about 5 seconds before it, but it was at the back of a bus line and I didn't see it until it pulled away), so no Star Trek for me. Instead I'm back at England (have I mentioned that it's great to have a pub with wireless next door?) drinking Laško, blogging, gchatting it up with a newly married old friend just back from his honeymoon, and going through Nerve.com's "Twenty Sexiest Ugly People." (Danny Trejo is the perfect choice. Sandra Bernhard's pretty good too.)

I can use a little low brow. I finished up the (middle brow) Middlesex last night, which I highly recommend for anyone with some extra time feeling a little generous with their disbelief suspension. It's one of those books that you either buy into or you don't, and if you don't, you think it's self-indulgent and ridiculous, and if you do, you think it's beautiful and engrossing. I was feeling it, so I really enjoyed the experience and would recommend it. And last night Alexandria and I had a good (highish brow) gchat about how cancer does what it does. It's a really interesting disease...it pretty much operates entirely on the principle of "If I can replicate quickly enough, I can evolve my way out of anything!" My feelings would be a trifle more positive, however, if it weren't going to kill the majority of people I care about (and hadn't already killed a few). Right. (Speaking of otherwise exciting things that kill people...cars! There was a red Aston Martin DB6 on Šubičeva ulica yesterday. Too hot.)

Oh, and I just have to get this on the record: While some of you know I'm, er, intrigued by a certain YLS professor, this sudden Wikipedic transformation is not my handiwork. But I must say, I'm impressed.

Later, dudes.

If God Lived in Europe...

When I was an undergrad, the ever-humorous Yale Record put out an issue lambasting the residential colleges. Their bit on Silliman was as follows:

If God went to Yale, he'd be a Sillimander. "That's right," he declares. "I love the blend of Georgian and shitty architecture. It is in keeping with the diversity of my creation, which ranges from the restrained and tasteful Bengal tiger to the ugly-ass manatee."

If this is, indeed, how God chooses real estate, I think he would be thrilled to live in Ljubljana. Rome? Please. Last I heard, pride was a sin. Plus, we're talking about architectural diversity, here. Exhibit A:Ah, yes. That pleasing blend of Baroque/Art Nouveau (right two buildings) and, as the Record so nicely put it, "shitty" (left two buildings). I don't know whether this stuff is left over from the Soviet era or just their idea of cool, functional building, but, in any case, it's hideous, especially next to the rest of the gorgeousness.

This morning I went to an "American Breakfast" at the Marine House. There weren't too many people my age there (the marine I spoke with most was 34 and married with a 13-year-old daughter), and it seemed like everyone I spoke with wasn't actually from America. First was the nice and dorky Slovenian couple who had spent five years in New York while the wife did her post-doc at Columbia. Then there was the British man who just decided to settle in Slovenia, since his consulting job takes him all around the world. When I told him what I was doing, he mentioned he thought the Slovenian legal system was one of the worst in the world, citing judges who gave out disparate sentences for horribly silly reasons (the relative ages of two adult perps). I then told him about America's sleeping lawyer rules, and I don't think he was any less appalled by the Slovenian system, but he was certainly more appalled by American courts. I'm such a bad ambassador.

I chatted with two girls around my age who were from Venezuela, one of whom had lived in the states for a while. The marine I spoke with was from Trinidad & Tobago via Brooklyn. I did speak with a few always-American Americans, including a Colonel who reminded me just a little of Josh Brolin's Bush in W.. They were all good people (and very family oriented...so many little kids), and hopefully I'll see them at another social event. And maybe then the Marines will be in uniform.

After that I did more article reading (not for pleasure, sadly) outside at Cacao, where I had a mean hot chocolate and this view:
I then walked up to Ljubljana castle, where I sat overlooking the cloud-covered Alps and the red roofs of Ljubljana. I'll post Alpy pictures when there are fewer clouds...it's pretty awesome how well you can see them on a clear day. And now I am back in my room an blogging, soon to head back over to England for a Lasko. It's raining and I don't want to go far...plus, maybe I'll drink up an appetite for burek.