After our trip to lovely Murska Sobota, we figured that since it was carnival weekend and since we were passing through Lower Styria, we should stop in Ptuj which is the oldest city in the country (established by Celts!) and also Slovenian Carnival Central. This is the place where they have these awesome kurents (pagan characters that are meant to scare off evil spirits) and I finally got to see them in all their crazy pagan costumed glory.
The carnival was a good time like a mini Mardi Gras and it gave me hope that at least some people in this country know and want to have a good time.
Photo and video evidence follows:
Pippi Longstockings (or Pippi Langestrumpfe in German) was a popular costume
commentary on the economy and the country's (low but slightly increased) birthrate
Some commentary on last year's controversy about whether muslims could build a mosque in Ljubljana
alas carnival seems to be the time for people to really crack out the racism and on top of all the "Indians", "Jamaicans", and even "geishas" that I saw, there was this "gypsy caravan" of people with their faces painted brown. Ay yi yi. Ironically enough, just a few miles away some Roma people were actually having an international conference just a few days before. Here's to their continued struggle in the face of this kinda crap.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Carneeeeeevaaaaal!
Friday, November 6, 2009
a Ijubljana moment
A meditative little moment a few weeks back in the tunnel from Ljubljana's Tivoli Park. The city recently "cleaned up" the graffiti in the tunnel and I'd been complaining that it felt lifeless and dull, but this guy brought a nice warm energy to the place.
The city is coming up aces these days, really growing on me!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Nora Chipaumire in Ljubljana's City of Women
On Saturday, I took my friend Pat from Zimbabwe into Ljubljana to see a dancer from Zimbabwe. The performance was a shortened lower-fi version of Nora Chipaumire's Chimurenga.I thought it was a little too short, but The Captain thought that 30 minutes was all he could handle. Pat found it very moving, as did I.
Anyway, we met up with Nora (who was gorgeous) afterwards and then this other guy from Zimbabwe showed up and there was this impromptu Zimbabwean lovefest and Pat was teary-eyed since she hadn't seen any other Zimbabweans since she had to flee the country (and landed in Radovljica) a few years back.
Thanks to Mesto Žensk (City of Women) for organizing the event and facilitating the Zimbabwean expat lovefest.
Nora again, because...why not?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Starck in Slovenia
When I saw world-renowned industrial designer Philippe Starck on the local news the other day, I had to do a double and triple take. What was he doing in Slovenia carousing with Slovenian people? Save for a few bright outliers whom I hold very dear, Slovenia is, sadly, the home of much drab and uninspired design. BUT I guess that will soon change, since Starck, the high-king of all things design, recently announced a partnership with Riko, a company famed for...wait for it, wait for it....pre-fab houses.
Turns out Le Starck is working on environmental and stylish pre-fab houses with the company, and I, for one, would gladly get in line to cop one.
I'll let you know when we get it delivered, and you can swing by and see us here in stylish Slovenia!
Read more about the partnership here.
See his TEDtalk below.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Speaking In Tongues
A friend turned me in to this New York Public Library lecture by one of my favorite writers Zadie Smith, on the topic of speaking in many ways and having many voices in your ear. It is complex and thoughtful, moving from Shakespeare to Little Wayne to Obama to Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle.
Listen if you have a moment.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
In The Name Of....
I was raised in a family where we all had numerous names, three at minimum and five or six at most. I have five. The first is, of course, Camille. My mother is from Ghana and my brother and I as well as most of my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all have European first names. Not sure why, I guess it has a little do with colonialism and a little to do with "blending in", but I'm not totally sure. My mother almost never calls me Camille, though. She calls me by my second name, which is a name from her Ghanaian "tribe" (someone help me with a better word for this!). The third name is a name from my father's side of the family, it was his grandmother's name and is Spanish or Native American or both or neither, depending on who you ask. A lot of women on my father's side of the family hold it as a middle name. My fourth name is another name from my mother's culture which is given to girls born on Wednesdays, and my fifth and final name is Acey which is my last name, family name, but comes from some slaveholder some time ago...most likely from Ireland.
As a schoolgirl, I read the story of Tikki Tikki Tembo, a Chinese fable championing simple names for the sake of safety, but I still always felt that longer names were better. I was raised to view names as infinitely important and a sign of who a person was and how much they were loved.
Cover of Tikki Tikki Tembo I feel a good name can tell so many interesting stories. So you can imagine my shock and horror upon finding out that not only do most/many Slovenian people only have two names (you can imagine how baffled they are when I look for the middle name slot on forms!), but many of them got their names from the calendar, the naming calendar. The Captain's parents didn't spend months agonizing over his or his brother's names it seems; as soon as they popped out their parents just looked up at the calendar and gave him the one name that was written there. In fact, many people I know were just given the name written on their square of the calendar.
I still can't believe it. Ever since I was a little girl I've dreamed of wonderful names I'd give my children when I had them, big and fanciful, short and sweet. I couldn't imagine being so generic as to give it no thought at all. In some cultures, your name is meant to give you hints at what you will do in life. In my mother's culture, sometimes names will tell you what the child signified, for example, I have one relative who was born after her mother had many miscarriages and her name translates as "God Heard My Prayers". I just don't understand what these calendar names (which are related to the Catholic calendar of saints) convey except for an utter lack of imagination. But I am open to being wrong. So someone --anyone -- please justify this to me!
Oh and btw, if you were born today and your parents gazed up and plucked your name from the January 17th square, your name would be Anton...or maybe Antonija for a girl?
Thursday, October 30, 2008
My Dad The Socialist...or The Communist
In the true spirit of Donald Rumsfeld, I am always discovering "unknown unknowns" (things I didn't know that I didn't know) about Slovenia. Last night I got to watch this fantastic classic Slovenian film "My Dad, The Socialist Kulak" in Slovenian: Moj Ata, Socialisticni Kulak).
This film is a quirky little comedy about a Slovenian guy who fought in the army alongside the Russian Red Army, comes home to communism, and does his best to embrace it (farming his plot of land with the other loyal socialist farmers) while not really fully understanding how the system works and where his loyalties should lie. The characters are all pretty over the top, spouting off ideology, while not quite sure what they are talking about, and information is frequently misinterpreted which makes it a funny story above and beyond all the history...but the history lesson was also much appreciated. For example, I'd no idea that Yugoslavia was strongly allied with Stalin until 1948 when he and Tito had a major falling out (apparently over a Soviet film about the war which didn't give the Tito character a big enough role) and Yugoslavia turned towards a form of market socialism that was informally known as "Titoism" (ahhh, gotta admire the guy's ego).
A quick Google search shows that this film is sort of tough to get one's hands one, so I really lucked out on finding it on television. If I ever get a copy of the film, I'll see what I can do to put up a clip or two on the Youtube. It really is worth a look.
