I was thinking about things that are different here in Slovenia from what we are used to in the US of A. This kind of started when I made chocolate chip cookies for the sister missionaries to have when they came by for Sunday dinner (a tradition we are continuing here). So I'll start with cooking and move on to other
THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT:
- Flour: They have dozens of grinds of flour from very, very fine to coarse enough to be called cracked wheat. We have settled on 550 as our standard flour, but they range from 200 to 900.
- shortening: Crisco is not a thing here. We finally found shortening, but it is coconut oil based and is hard until it turns to oil. So it's hard to measure, although the scale works well as a measuring tool. We finally found a brand of "soft" shortening. It's still coconut based and harder than Crisco, but you can pack it into a measuring cup. The good thing about all this is that I don't have any more angst about using hydrogenated vegetable oil, aka trans-fat, in my cookies. Crisco claims there isn't any trans-fat in their shortening. I wonder how they put that one over? They must have some amazing lawyers.
- Butter: We couldn't figure out why European butter tasted so blah, until we finally realized it is unsalted. In the US, you have to search for unsalted butter. Once we realized that unsalted is the standard here, we started looking closer and found that a few stores have salted butter. Yummy once more.
- Vanilla: It's easy to find vanilla here, but it comes in tiny bottles. Also, it isn't very potent, so I just pour most of a bottle into my cookies and it works. I miss my home-made, gourmet vanilla.
- Sugar: Sugar here is in large crystals like you find sprinkled on pastries. It doesn't dissolve if you put it in baked goods. We found "small" crystal sugar, but it is still too big to dissolve, too, and my cookies were crunchy from hard sugar crystals. We can sometimes find "fine" sugar which is almost as fine as at home, and the blender helps a lot.
- hamburger: Slovenes love hamburger. Here, it is a mix of beef and pork, which is awesome. It is also partly ground meat like we call hamburger, and partly chopped meat about 3/8" pieces. It is great, but not the same. Recipes have to be adjusted.
Non-food
- Speed limits. The hiways here are fantastic. The freeways are all toll roads, but it's easy. We buy a sticker to put on our window and we are good to go on any tollway in the country for a year. The standard speed limit is 130 kph ( about 90 mph), but that is NEVER posted. You are supposed to just know. As we drive we sometimes encounter a lower speed limit and that is posted well. Later there will be a small, circular sign with the lower speed number inside and slash through it. That means you can go back to the standard speed limit. It took us months of driving here before we figured that one out, and we still sometimes miss the little end sign. When people start zooming past us, we assume we missed it and speed up.
- Drugs. We were encouraged to bring a year of prescriptions with us. The issue we've had is that we brought smaller supplies of OTC drugs like tylenol and ibuprofin. We used to buy them in the grocery store, but here you can only get them at a drug store. Tylenol and Ibuprofen are restricted here, although you don't need a prescription. I go in the drug store and they will give me a little box with 20 tablets inside. If I beg, I can get two. My OTC acid blocker requires a prescription here, and again, it comes in a little box with a few pills. We are learning how to work it, but we feel like it's more work than it ought to be.
- 220 v.: We knew about the voltage difference. What I didn't realize is how much the higher voltage stands up and shouts at us. It is common for a large flash to announce that the plug is not quite all the way in, yet. It can be scary, to say the least. I try to remember to make sure things are turned off before I plug them in, and that avoids the flash. We've also noticed that lots of people have a dread of an appliance that is left plugged in while not in use. Other than that, I am a big fan of 220 v.
- men's trousers: I have a big behind and thunder thighs. I'd like to buy a new pair of trousers here, but the racks are full of slim-fit, straight-cut, skinny-cut, and shorts. Nothing is even close to fitting me, except military clothing (not the image I want to express). All the men here wear tight pants, except old men, and I haven't figured out where they get theirs. My new missionary suit pants from the USA also have tight legs, but not as tight as the ones here. I wear my new suit as seldom as possible, because I much prefer looser trouser legs.
- Ties: Croatia is the place where ties were invented and became fashionable. Actually it was cravats they made famous, but they claim they invented ties, as well. There are stores around that only sell ties and nothing else. But very, very few men wear them anymore for daily wear. We rarely see a tie on anybody besides missionaries. A couple months ago, word came down that mission presidents can submit a request if they want to allow their male missionaries to omit ties, or wear blue shirts, or wear sandals. This should make us appear more normal and natural. President Field (bless his heart) put in his request, and now we don't have to wear ties except to formal meetings. HURRAH!!! We didn't want blue shirts, so he didn't even ask. He also got permission for us to wear sandals, but they have to have closed toes and we have to wear them with dark socks. Socks!?! So, I haven't seen any of the missionaries wearing sandals.
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