by Borut Prah (borut@prah.net), 2001
It makes a total sense that Americans prefer to reach Slovenia from the west. You can check out from Palazzo Gritti in Venice, traverse Slovenia and check into The Imperial Hotel in Vienna on the same day. Or you can overnight in Slovenia. Its best hotel is Tito’s villa at lake Bled, now a Relais & Chateaux member, a cross of Ahwanee with charm of a KGB Hospital. But the setting almost matches Yosemite.
Slovenia measures 170 miles from border to border at its
widest point. By the time you reach
lake Bled from Venice, in three hours of autostrada, you are ten miles away
from Austria. Just remember to avoid
the early afternoon traffic jam in the capitol Ljubljana. Since the recent demise of Marxist methods
of transportation (shoes, trams, buses, and bikes) it has more cars than
residents.
Slovenia is so little known because the place was
obscured by communist Yugoslavia for the last fifty years. It was not always like this. Slovenia, under the name of Carantania or
Carinthia, was for over five hundred years an integral part of the Austrian
Empire, with the same living standard and culture.
Do not expect any visible change when entering Slovenia,
such as you would see when crossing an American border into Mexico. During three thousand years of known history
the borders have been moved between east and west almost one hundred times.
Such slicing of territory created a cultural and ethnic mix so similar
that most picture postcards you buy in North-eastern Italy can be used in
Slovenia or Austria and most people will not even know the difference.
The differences, however, are below the surface and these
are worthy for Americans to know. More
about this later. First, some ancient
history.
The 21st century Republic of Slovenia covers
the eastern half of the territory along the Eastern Alps that Venedi settled
some three thousand years ago. Venedi
lived in a kingdom called Norricum.
Venedi’s neighbors were Etruscans who lived in Etruria, another great
country of that age. Both had a similar language and alphabet and left us some
fabulous art. Also, both were very good
at high technology, which in pre-silicon age meant forging metals. Both kingdoms exported their products with
great profit and therefore lived far better then their Third World neighbors
down south in Latio.
With help of Etruscan technology, Latio’s Latins
eventually conquered the Etruscan capital Rome and called themselves
Romans. Then they occupied Etruria even
before Etruscans could get out of their fine hot tubs and even better wine
cellars. Eventually Romans did the same
to Venedi and that’s why people in Verona and Venezia now speak Italian and not
Venedian. Next, the Romans marched to
the east. Most Etruscans and Venedi
(aka Venetians) became Romans, but some did not and preferred to retreat deep
into Alpine valleys to wait for better times.
These were the optimists. Many
centuries passed and eventually Latini too grew fond of hot tubs and fine
wines. The rest you know from the Rise
and Fall of the Roman Empire.
While the Empire was collapsing, Slavs advanced from the
North and the East. They moved into the
Alpine valleys, where Roman authorities had neither interest nor power, and
mixed with the remaining Venedi. We
know about this from the toponyms, names given to mountains and rivers that
retained the meaning in the current Slovenian language but mean nothing in
Italian or German language. For
example, Slovenian word for a cliff and an oven is the same - pec. There are cliffs all over the Dolomites –
and most of them are called forno, the word for oven in Italian. Oven?
In some cases like Cortina d’Ampezzo, the pec was simply converted into
pezzo. Anyway, the resulting mix, Slo-venians, now live as Italians on
the lands east of Venice, as Austrians on the lands west of Vienna, and as
Slovenians in the middle. Thus, as you
travel you will cross three different languages spoken by one ethnic group with
identical customs, and other obvious signs, such as architecture.
Venice is closer to any point in Slovenia than lake Tahoe
is from San Francisco. You can do just
a day trip to sniff the mountain air of Slovenia. An overnight trip is probably enough, unless you want to take a
closer look at the country or play golf.
Slovenia gets a lot of rain since the west to east weather movement is
obstructed by the Eastern Alps that arch down from Austria. Thus, grass grows easier there and golf
courses have sprung all over after Slovenia joined market economy in 1992. So have tennis courts, despite of snow and
ice in winter and many rainy days in summer.
The game of tennis had a temporary setback when the Communist Party in
1945 declared it a game of capitalists.
Soon after the Davis cup team took a political asylum in Egypt and
scattered all over the world as tennis pros.
It took three decades for tennis to return; a Slovenian girl Mima
Jauševec won Roland Garros in 1977 while Slovenian coach Breskvar was coaching
two juniors named Boris Becker and Steffi Graf.
But return of tennis did not portend return of freedom
and capitalism. For another fifteen
years, in this 98% Catholic country Christmas remained outlawed and the
restaurants were still government owned.
Now, Christmas is back and restaurants are plenty, all privately owned,
so service and food are good again. Slovenian cuisine is in the middle of a
food spectrum spanning from Italian-light to Austrian-heavy, depending how far
you are from Venice or Vienna when you eat.
There is no real ethnic food, however, Slovenia could not avoid the
Yugoslavian influence of last 80 years, so some food can be strictly “Balkans”.
Slovenia is a very photogenic country. Baroque churches often sit on top of hills,
towns are immaculately clean with houses that go back centuries. There are two
opera houses that have supplied some fine talent to Vienna opera, two
universities that teach no feel-good curriculum, and the oldest symphony hall
in the world.
All this you will see and may conclude – there is nothing
wrong with socialism. Until you realize
that all the nice things that you found were created before 1945, the year when
the communists took over.
In Slovenia, socialist government, like everywhere else,
ran economy into the ground. Americans
have only limited experiences in such matters: Post office, Amtrak, Public
Schools and State of California Energy Policy are but rare examples. Not so in Slovenia. If you are not convinced ask to be shown
some “victory of socialism” and you may be looking at some big factories that
now sit empty because nobody bought their products. The government owned everything and its officials decided what
will be produced. Huge taxes were
needed to construct these “victories” and the most creative people simply
stopped working, left the country or simply behaved as “they pretend to pay us
and we pretend to work”. Thus, the
country was defaulted to the least able people and slipped into the Third World
status from which has still not completely recovered. Before the World War II the wages in Slovenia were about 80% of
those in Italy or Austria. From 1945 to
1990 they were 30% at best, but they are now catching up due to one major
mistake that the Communists made. It’s
called Education Paradox.
European Communists believed in providing everyone with
good education, especially in
sciences. They assumed that educated
population would increase their power.
Surprise! The educated people
left Slovenia as soon as the Iron Curtain lifted and even those who stayed or
were kept in by it could no longer be controlled. This error, coupled with some solid pressure from America, was a
major factor for the demise of the communist bloc from Albania to Siberia.
Today, an American traveling to Eastern Europe can
observe the fiasco of the Big Government economics and the lunacy of Marxism,
although traces are vanishing fast. In Slovenia, they are almost
invisible. A visitor to Slovenia in the
new millennium will now conclude that socialism is dead. Yet, socialism is appearing in most
unexpected places, even in America.
Today, the members of Socialist International (http://dsausa.org/dsanews/index.html)
count among them over fifty members of US Congress (our “own” Nancy Pelosi,
Pete Stark, Barbara Lee et al.).
Socialists International, which is now the haven of most
defunct communist leaders from Eastern Europe, is well aware that communism
lost power because its educated population could not be controlled. A theory to regain power without force has
hence evolved. This peaceful road to
power is the creation of dependent (read helpless and dumb) population. The place to start is to teach children to
feel good, to have self esteem, to know nothing. Give them entertainment, moral relativism, and tell them there is
no difference between right and wrong.
Success is forthcoming. American schools already rank
among the lowest in the industrial world.
The new Left learned well from the Communists’ mistake. No revolution is needed. Incrementally raise taxes so you can employ
in government jobs more and more dumb citizens whom you created stupid by
degrading their education. With tax
revenues, grow the government and one day the government will run everything,
just as it did in Slovenia, USSR, et al.
Slovenia recovered, thanks to American help and the
education mistake that Communists made.
But who will help America when its own dumbed down grownups attain the
critical mass? This is the lesson that
you can take home from Slovenia while also having some good time.