Juvenile Swans - Trip to Ljubljana July 21, 2020

Sometimes we are driving some place and I see something where I think, "That is interesting!  I should take a photo.  Here is one:

The clouds are streaking in all directions above the mountains of Austria, 18 km away.  This was taken in Maribor, across the River Drava from where we live.  Maribor is built up the bank and onto the flanks of the hills visible in the photo.

     We love watching the swans (you may have noticed).  A hen had three eggs in a nest along the sidewalk at the edge of the River.  The eggs were gone one day and I thought she had successfully hatched her chicks.  However, there has been no sign of a swan female with 3 cygnets in the weeks since then.  Of course, she could have taken them off somewhere less bothersome than a busy sidewalk. 
    Meanwhile, there is a female who had five cygnets when we arrived and we have watched them grow.  They are beginning to get feathers now, and are almost as big as she is.

The poor things get fed by helpful people along the river bank very regularly.  We were reading that high calory, and especially high protein foods like we crave will cause deformation of the wings of swans.   Is it true, or merely a story to make people stop being so unhelpfully helpful?  I don't know.  In any case, the cygnets look as long as their mother, but gangly.  They need feathers to look filled in.

We have a sister missionary who is on her way home today so she can start her law degree at BYU School of Law.  Yesterday, we drove down to Ljubljana where she has been working, and took her and her companions to lunch so we could wish her fair well.  We wanted to let her know we are proud of her and that she can go home proud.
   While we were there, we decided to do a little sightseeing and touristing.  We parked in a parking building near the center of town and walked out of it to this view.

Liz is standing in a public square, in front of the Ljubljana Festival sign, and the Ljubljana Castle is above us all, with its flags waving in the wind.  We wanted to go up there, but it didn't work out.  I can't climb hills with my current knee, but there is a funicular that goes up to it.  Some day we will do it.
     We visited the outdoor market near the tri-bridge (three bridges so close together you can have a quiet chat with people on another bridge, but they fan out to three separate streets) and did some souvenir shopping.  As time approached to meet our dear sisters at the restaurant, we saw them across the street and joined them for the walk to a restaurant with very good food.  And it was reasonable, too.
     Afterwards, we decided to visit the home of the most famous architect in Slovenia.  His name was Joze Plecnik (1872 - 1957), and there are statues of him littered all over the city.  He also did a lot of work in Vienna and Prague, but he is famous as the architect who had the biggest impact on the design and building of a single city anywhere in Europe.  His home is now a museum.  He lived like a monk, so the house itself was mostly interesting only in how he didn't cave in to creature comforts.  But behind his house he had a garden, and in the garden is a bee house.

This is Slovene beekeeping.  They make hives that are in separate cabinets (5 in this little bee house).  These are all unoccupied and bee doors are closed.  The house is built onto the top of a concrete pipe as wide as the bee house.  The traditional bee house is a building where the beekeeper can go in a full-size door into a work space at the back of the hives, where he can work in peace and comfort.  This one only provides shade and shelter from the rain.

    This is the back of the bee house.  A door opens to reveal the back of the individual hive cabinets.  If you open the cabinet door, you expose the back of hive, and you can work in relative peace because the bees are not alarmed like they are when you are at the entrance, or when you rip the top off.  Slovenes never pick up more than one frame of honeycomb at a time, which also makes less of a disturbance than the ones we use in the US.  I think I might take up beekeeping again when I get home.
     The big difference between these hives and the ones we traditionally use in the US is that the hives never change size, and frames are removed as they are filled with ripened honey, rather than waiting to the end of the season.  I had to give up beekeeping because it was getting too hard for me to work the bees and harvest 100# supers of honey in the Texas heat.  With these that would not be a problem. 
     The other Slovenian tradition is to paint colorful scenes on the wooden boards at the front of the hives.  The ones in this bee house are either yellow or blue.  But the tradition is for nothing so mundane as that.

Two men holding a cow while the milkmaid milks her.

Dancing and playing music around the bee house to keep the bees happy.  It appears the bees are dancing the Virginia Reel.

Notice the colorful scenes painted on the bee boards in the picture on this bee board.

And always a favorite: St. George slaying the dragon with a spear.  The tradition is that he performed this heroic act in Croatia.  Or maybe Serbia.

Bee boards are a coveted antique around Slovenia, and originals as old as the dates on these reproductions go for big money - albeit mostly to tourists.  Locals just paint new ones.  Slovenes have long held that the bees can identify their own hive better with splashes of color to guide them.  Modern research has confirmed this tradition, and bees are demonstrably less likely to stray to adjoining hives if they can orient on color.

The other interesting thing about the architect's house is that he collected bits and pieces and used them in any way he could.  Thus the beehive on a culvert, and smaller pipes being used to line sidewalks.  But he also used them to demonstrate ideas he had.  The hedges of his garden have all kinds of pillars, vases and other items he used for inspiration.

He built several building with unique roof tiles of his own design, using the then-new material: reinforced concrete.

Liz is examining a stunning tile laid out in display, of which we saw examples around town on several magnificent large buildings and on garden sheds.
  We had a great day in Ljubljana, but it was HOT!!  We had to stop at an outdoor cafe and have ice cream and sodas before we could walk the rest of the way back to the car.  We were happy to get back home and fall into bed.