Settling in

Our internal clocks are slowly resetting, meaning we are semi-bright-eyed sometime other than 3 a.m.

Monday was my first day of class, an advanced editing course I’ll share with Marko Milosavljević. I came in halfway through the four-hour class period and spent an enjoyable time letting them know who I am, trying to figure out who they are, and finding some touchstones on the concepts of editing. They are great, bright students who were unafraid to ask questions. Next week I teach the entire four hours myself while Marko attends a meeting.

The University of Ljubljana is huge – more than 40,000 students – but is scattered around the city rather than grouped on one campus.

It has 23 “faculties” or what we would call schools and colleges, some of which are miles apart. Journalism is part of the Faculty of Social Science, which shares a cluster of modern buildings in north Ljubljana with the faculties of administration, economics and education. Students take almost all of their courses in the single faculty of their major, so there is no frantic dash across town for the next class.

Higher education is free in Slovenia, which opens it to students of all classes. My students came from all over the country, from small villages to the capital.

Our apartment is just across a walkway from the Faculty of Social Sciences.

It is small, but well-appointed. The tiny kitchen feels like home to us – it’s about the same size as the one in our 13-foot Scamp travel trailer. Cecile came to Slovenia already a genius at whipping up gourmet meals on a two-burner stove.

Apartment staff clean the apartment daily and deliver fresh linens once a week. There is a fitness center and a free laundry that is complete with irons and ironing boards. Perhaps the best amenity is the doorman, whose name I have yet to decipher but who answers every question with a smile and in perfect English.

As I had no class Tuesday, Cecile and I went downtown to buy some basic supplies for our stay. There great variety in the  central city stores, offering the shopper everything from local honey to antiques to high end fashion.  We had already discovered the Aldi store, which is called Hofer.  The layout is familiar and I could have walked through it blindfolded and done a reasonably job of buying groceries. New to use:  the Müller department store which has everything from food to appliances to perfumes and the latest fashions. I even found maple syrup on its shelves!

We took our time wandering back streets, eating pastry and sitting in the sun in the main square. Ljubljana’s central city is reserved for pedestrians and bicycles. If your feet give out, however, you can hop on one of the electric micro busses that criss cross the area on no apparent schedule. If that is too much effort, you can pull out your phone and sign into Ljubljana Free Wi-Fi and let your fingers do the browsing.

Scattered through the downtown crowd were costumed revelers squeezing the last bit of jocularity out of the pre-Lenten Carnival. One fellow with an incredible sun-ray mask asked me to photograph him with his phone, then posed with me for a selfie.

Tomorrow I meet the graduate students. Adventures in academia.

Captions: Time for class; The short walk to our classrooms; Our little stove; With my sunny reveler and my real sunshine.