My Expensive Coke Addiction

I am a woman of many vices, but none is so great as my love of the soft drink known as Coca-Cola. Earlier this year, Matt M. was scandalized by my admission that water is not my favorite beverage. Far from it. If I am ever trapped under rubble for 80 hours and rescued, I will follow the wise ways of Xue Xiao. "I want to have a cola. I want to have an iced one." If you don't want that mantle, Xiao, I'll be happy to take it off your hands.

Back in America, Coke comes cheap. A can is $0.85 in a vending machine, a bottle about $1.25. If you're in Times Square, they might charge you $2.50, because they're evil. Here in Slovenia, however, 250 ml of Coke (which—listen up, Europe—is not a full meal's worth of Coke) costs €1,70 at the least and often climbs to €3,00 or more. This wouldn't be so crazy if every other beverage weren't super-cheap. A pint-and-a-half of beer for €2,20! A decent glass of wine for €1,90!

Coke is the most expensive drink in this town, and I'm addicted to it. Why, Slovenes, why!? I guess I will have to start drinking more wine and beer. It's the financially responsible thing to do.

Speaking of wine, I went to a Chinese restaurant tonight, and they actually gave me complimentary wine with a not-so-expensive meal. That was nice. As you can see, the restaurant is a very understated, culturally authentic place:Not much else to report today. I spent most of the day slogging my way (partially) through a law review article, and I took about an hour to reply to an e-mail from Ray responding to a video I sent a few months ago on "the moral roots of liberals and conservatives." If we argue enough, I'm pretty sure we'll find the answer to life, the universe, and everything. He insists it's 39, but I'm sticking with 45.

If only compromises were so productive.

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.

How Much Is The Fish?

The first time, I thought I might have been dreaming. Here I am, in Ljubljana in 2009. It is 6:53 on Tuesday morning. I am woken by my radio (which is 7 minutes fast; hence the 6:53). First, I hear the tail end of some pop song. Then, I hear a techno intro. "No, it can't be," I think. A voice speaks. Then another line of techno, this time with words. "But it is!" The voice interrupts again and another line of techno plays. "Yes, yes, it absolutely is!" Here, in Ljubljana in 2009, I'm hearing clips of a song (interspersed with heaven-knows-what) that my sister and I listened to in Madrid in 1998. It is the great/awful German techno group Scooter, singing their hit song, How Much is the Fish? This morning, at 6:53, it came on again. It was real.

If you didn't pick up on it, that link up there goes to the music video of How Much is the Fish?, which Natalie and I watched constantly on Canal+, and you should absolutely click on it. Considering the video has nearly 3 million views, maybe it's not so strange that it's showing up as intro-outro on the radio. One of the great features of the song is that its first line (of many nonsensical lines), "Transforming the tunes," sounds much more like "Transforming the Jews." Oh, Germany!

I went back to Salon tonight. I think it could be my place. I like the server there...he's a stern-looking muscle-bound fellow around 30 who doesn't condescendingly speak to me in English whenever I stutter out "vroča čokolada s smetano" or laugh nervously and try to work with me. He just leans in, eyebrows furrowed, and I repeat it, and he nods gruffly and walks away. Then he brings the hot chocolate (or Irish coffee, as was the case tonight), and I sit in my ridiculously comfortable leopard skin chair and read. Tonight I was sitting next to a group of 20-something girls and trying to pick out their language. It's possible it was an extremely non-nasal Portuguese, but I think it might have been Catalan. Which is kind of awesome.

Maybe I can start wearing my leather jacket at Salon. I stopped wearing it after a day and a half when I realized if I wore the jacket, people assumed I was Slovenian, but if I wore my North Face fleece (yay for the serendipitous North Face outlet in freezing-cold Berkeley, CA a couple of weeks ago), people assumed I was American. Having someone speak to you expectantly for 20 seconds before you can tell them you don't speak the language ("um...angleško?") is kind of embarrassing. So I'm sticking to the fleece for now. I tempered my wearing of the jacket in New York for different reasons...the first day I ever wore it, I got hit on by these two women as I walked from the subway to work. And not just flattering hit on: if-they-were-men-I-would-have-called-the-cops hit on. Blocked-my-path-as-they-walked-with-me-for-two-blocks-asking-if-I-had-a-girlfriend hit on. If there's one thing I enjoy less than telling people I don't speak their language, it's telling people I'm not interested in going out with them. So, depending on where I am, the jacket makes me look either native or gay. It is a very powerful jacket. Don't mess with it.

Giants: Take Two

So of course the day after I resign myself to posting a vaguely-recognizable picture of the Alps, they show up crystal clear, glistening in the sun:

That's what I'm talking about.

Not too much to say today. I'm feeling a little blue this evening...I think it's that classic combination of hormones and children dying in front of their parents in the novel I'm reading. Does it every time.

Also, I'm beginning to get nervous about work. I heard those fatal three words from my boss today—"...whatever interests you..."—that mean there's no work to be done. Too much more of this and I'm going to start reforming their certiorari system. (The Court handed down decisions on nearly 2000 cases last year, whereas SCOTUS heard 88 this past term. And we have 150 times their population.) And as with every summer of schooling, I'm starting to worry about "grades." (They weren't always in scare quotes.) I don't think I studied enough for my finals...gah.

While I'm kvetching: Have I mentioned that my shower gets exactly five minutes of hot water? I'm used to luxurious 20 minute showers, so this is a big change for me. I mean, that's barely enough for one full sing-through of Surabaya Johnny.

At least I'm loving my book (despite the death), and walking around an old city, landing in every bar/cafe I can find, is definitely one of my favorite ways to spend an evening. Tonight was the tastefully tacky Salon, where I got a hot chocolate as thick as pudding topped with whipped cream. And this afternoon I watched the pilot of Glee, a new Fox show, off of a faked US IP address. I accomplished that by connecting, via a VPN client, to the Yale library network (which I usually use to access library internet resources from home). Hulu only lets American computers download videos, so I had to go incognito. I fooled Hulu. I fooled Google (which finally let me go to google.com instead of google.si). But I did not fool Fox. They were too...savvy.

There Are Giants In The Sky

Before I came to Ljubljana, I looked at a picture of the city, and in the background were the Alps. I had thought Ljubljana was decidedly south of the Alps, but I said to my mother, "Mom, I think Ljubljana might be kind-of-sort-of in the Alps." She confirmed my original thought that it was South. Here is proof (shot along Slovenska cesta, Ljubljana's main drag) that (a) Ljubljana is indeed south of the Alps, and (b) I wasn't crazy for thinking it was kind-of-sort-of in the Alps:

I understand that distant mountains can sometimes look like clouds, so I've drawn this helpful diagram:

I'm not sure how well it comes across in those snapshots (I'm still using the PowerShot that I keep in my messenger bag; I'll break out the SLR at some point), but those mountains are...rather large. I'm not sure whether they're the Julien Alps or the Kamnik Alps, but either way, they look almost surreal at the end of a city street. I've always had a sort of visceral reaction to enormity—things that are very tall but even wider, like cruise ships—so these mountains sort of stop my heart.

More reading today at work. I think I'm going to view this as an educational experience for now. I get to learn about European Constitutional Courts—how they operate, what issues they face—and maybe I'll get to help one out while I'm here. By the way, the Slovenian Constitutional Court would never let this happen. The oath the judges take is: "I swear that I shall judge according to the Constitution, the law, and my conscience and that I shall strive with all my power for constitutionality, legality, and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms." Yes, the judge's conscience and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms is put on the same plane as the Constitution itself (although some might say that the order matters here). Our judges say: "I, ------, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as ------ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God." (23 U.S.C. § 453) Ok, so our oath isn't so bad (although how the 'so help me God' would fly in a town that's one-fifth atheist is anyone's guess). Still, there's something awfully appealing about a human rights override.

Robert the Tech Guy asked me today how Ljubljana is different from what I expected. I think he was surprised by my answer ("Fewer chain stores"); he'd expected me to say it was more modern or cosmopolitan or something. I told him I'd browsed around before I came and realized that most bars and cafes had decently-designed websites, which I found to be a pretty strong indicator of a city's modernity. As a tech guy, he appreciated that.

Until tomorrow, friends.

And So It Begins

My short holiday is over, and now it is time to work.

God willing.

I had my first day, today, in beautiful Plečnik's Palace. I thought I was getting there before the crowd to meet the boss at 8:30, but apparently he works the 6:00 - 3:30 shift. I will not be getting in at six. Eight thirty I can do. Six is ridiculous. And when I tried to leave at 5:30, I realized I was locked in. (A visibly irritated guard who was leaving let me out.) So 8:30 to 4:30 it is...I guess?

My boss seems like a great guy; talkative, knowledgeable, helpful, and generally sunnily disposed. He's the only man in the entire division (and, by my count, one of three on the entire floor). I'm slightly weirded out by that; I tend to get along much better with young men than young women, but hopefully I'll get to know the gals on the floor and like them. Although one of them did describe the Court as "lonely." Right-o. My office mate is out for the month, finishing up her master's degree, so I have a fairly large office to myself. It's a great space, but now I have to fill it with work. Work!

I spent today getting oriented, which will probably be my task for tomorrow (and the rest of the week?), reading random things about Slovenian government, the Slovenian Constitutional Court, Slovenian human rights legislation, and the Slovenian National Anthem. Yup, their national anthem and coat of arms are proscribed in the Constitution itself. (Shout out to the city of Ljubljana's awesome coat of arms.) Also in the Constitution are such guarantees of rights as "Everyone shall be free to decide whether to bear children." I haven't yet asked whether that just means "To hell with you, Oliver Wendell Holmes: The state can't sterilize people," or whether "whether" is actually "whether or not." Still, it's kind of crazy.

In any case, that was all fine, and I'm good with doing that for another day or two...but I really hope there's work after that. Apparently a LOT of the stuff they do is in Slovene. When they need to do comparative con law, I'll be all over that, but I'm not entirely sure how frequently that happens. Well, worse comes to worse, I'll just tell my boss I want to prepare comparative reports on issues that we think are likely to come before the court. Like gay marriage (they already have civil union-type things) or transgender rights or something else with that Mosque that still hasn't gone up. Ideally, however, there will be real work relevant to pending cases. Wish me luck.