We are going to move

 The apartment where we've been since we came to Slovenia is awesome.  It is right along the river, next to historic sights, and just a short distance from the City Center.  The views out the windows are awesome.  But I mentioned before that it is very hard on my sore knee.  The stairs are not too bad, but they contribute to it.  The cobblestones are not very nice but if that was all, I could live with it.  The steepness of the hill going up to the Center is the worst of the lot.  And there is no parking!  The car is a half mile away.  The combined affect is that my knee is rapidly getting worse.  There is no way to avoid those things, and the only alternative is to move.  Well, we found a new place and signed a lease.  It has an elevator, a/c, a balcony which has Liz excited, and is a bit bigger than we've had, which is very nice.  Parking is in an underground garage next door.

The official church representative lives outside Ljubljana, and is very busy with his software company, but we found a time when he was in town and agreed to meet him at the Ljubljana church to sign the lease.  We also had to enlist the help of the elders to translate the lease into English for us.  We had started with a stock lease that had Slovene on one side and equivalent English on the other.  The landlaord added a few sections, and those are the ones we needed translated.

After that, we stopped at an outdoor restaurant for lunch.  There was a flock of Italian Sparrows that were quite amusing.  They had a space at the edge of a roof where they obviously feel comfortable waiting around.

  I'd flip little bits of bread out onto the pavement and the whole flock would swoop down and fight for it.  Italian sparrows are very similar, but not identical, to the English sparrows that are now so common in the US.  Notice how the male is puffing out his chest to impress the two hens.

  After lunch, we met with the Military Attache assigned to the American Embassy in Ljubljana.  He is a member of the church, and we've met before, but didn't have much time to talk.  It was nice to sit down with his family and just talk about living in Slovenia.    We brought his family a box of chocolate chip cookies we had baked, and the kids instantly loved us.  His wife arranged to get some new pants from the states for me, for which I was very happy.  Our primary topic of discussion was translation.     

  The young missionaries try to translate the church services for us, but they are at varying levels of fluency in the difficult Slovene language.  Sometimes we have a good idea what is being said, but there are frequent gaps where the speaker continues, but the translator is stumped.  Since neither of us has any other choice, we suffer through it.  Sometimes I suffer in somnambulance.  So, we brainstormed ideas on things we could suggest to make it better.

    The Military Attache rates a house built to US standards.  It was on a large lot with a good-size yard, including lawn and BBQ.  It is surrounded by a tall concrete wall, which appeared to be substantial, but it didn't really stand out in the neighborhood where it is.

    We drove back to Maribor with the lease, as evening approached.  We had an appointment with the landlord to give him the lease (3 copies, signed and sealed by the church) so he could take them to a notary for his signature.

We met the landlord's wife when we first looked at the new apartment, but we had never met him.  We knew he was a lawyer and that he thought we should all go together to a Notary to sign the lease.  Our church representative absolutely refused to drive to Maribor to sign the lease with a notary.  So we were hoping and praying that he would accept it with the signature and church seal on it.

As we talked to him, it was clear that he liked us and as we explained who we are and how we will be using the apartment, he got more and more comfortable with us.  In the end, he said that a notary is only necessary if we don't trust each other, and that he was completely comfortable trusting us.  He signed the lease and we distributed the copies.  Hooray!!!

So, we are moving to our new apartment at the end of the month.  The sisters are moving into our wonderful apartment.  We are releasing the other two apartments where missionaries have stayed for many years.  And the moves all have to happen right at the end of the month.  It will be a very busy couple of days!

By the way, we continue to be fascinated by fenestrations on the older buildings in Slovenia, just as we were in Croatia.  Here are some examples.

They stucco over the bricks and stones the buildings were built with.  And they love to add a bit of color.   It is quite nice to have pastels colors all around - yellow, purple, green, red, blue, and pink.  But it is the decorations they add that make them so wonderful.

     The silhouette at the right edge of the building is of Luciano Pavarotti, because the restaurant just outside is named after him.

This is a closeup of some of the decorations on the building below.  The same portraits are on two windows at the other end of the building, so these must be pre-cast and glued on.

This building stands out, partly because it is in two shades of grey.