Every country has its practices or sights that seem especially unusual to an outsider. Here are some of the ones we noticed in Slovenia:
- People smoke like chimneys here—more than Italians, certainly, and maybe more than Spaniards. Strangest of all, even many outdoorsy people smoke. It’s not unusual to get to the end of a steep trail and come upon a couple of hikers lighting up cigarettes. That’s not something you see very often in the United States.
- Slovenians love soup! You’ll find several kinds on every menu, and they’re usually very good. People devour soup on even the hottest days.
- The cakes and the bread are also very good, especially those made with buckwheat flour.
- The national icon is a hay-drying rack. It’s on all of the postcards and tourist posters.
- Slovenia is very small, and everything is closer together than you’d expect. It never took us longer than three hours by bus, car, or train to get anywhere in the country (or to get to another country, such as Italy, Austria, or Croatia).
- Bicycles abound in the cities and towns. Sometimes you’d think you were in Asia, there are so many bikes.
- Although all of the hosts we asked said that a common characteristic of Slovenians is that they’re hard to get to know, virtually everyone we met was very friendly to tourists, in a way that many other Europeans aren’t. Maybe tourists are not yet so common here that they’ve become a pain. Also, a large portion of the population speaks some English (with the notable exception of certain post office staff).
- Slovenian television makes it easier for people to learn English by showing a lot of American and British movies and TV shows, subtitled in Slovenian. Radio stations do their part, too: Chris said she’d never heard so many ’70s and ’80s American pop songs since she’d left school.
- The Slovenian music you hear on the radio seems to come in two forms. One is bouncy, accordion-rich polkas. This type is nicknamed “beef music” because you’re apt to hear it played at weekend barbecues. (Slovenians seem as fond of grilling meat outdoors on summer afternoons as Americans are.) The other type of music sounds Indian, in terms of the beat and the tone of the female voices. We’d hear a bit out a window and think we were passing the apartment of a Bollywood fan or a homesick Pakistani, until we listened harder and realized that the words were in Slovenian. A coincidence, or some odd cross-cultural current at work?
- Around the summer solstice, some Slovenian villages erect a very tall pole of pine wood, stripped of its bark, with a small live pine tree secured to the top. A wreath of twigs or grass is also tied to the top so that it hangs around the pole partway down. Apparently, villages vie to have the tallest pole. But none of our hosts could tell us what the poles signify or why they’re there.
- In many towns and villages, church bells not only ring every quarter hour but also play “reveille”—three to five minutes of continuous clanging. In Celje, it happened at 6:50 every morning. In other towns, at 8 a.m. or 9 p.m. Maybe the peals are a call to mass, or they mark the traditional beginning or ending of the work day. Whatever the reason, they’re very annoying!
- In every Slovenian home we entered, people took off their shoes just inside the front door and put on flat little cloth slippers to wear in the house. There was usually a small pile of different size slippers by the door for guests. We later found such slippers—they’re all the same style—for sale in the grocery store for 1 euro a pair, and we bought a couple of pairs. They’re very useful. They pack flat in your backpack, and they’re good for walking around your hostel room or out to the bathroom without getting your socks dirty. If you happen to visit Slovenia, be sure to get some.
