A walk in THE Park

 

There is a park in Maribor that is referred to as THE Park.  When people want to meet up, they just say, "Meet you at the Pavilion,"  which is a gazebo near the entrance to The Park.  Everybody knows where it is, and there is a non-stop flow of people meandering over to it, meeting, and meandering off.

Yesterday was a warm, partly cloudy day, so we joined many others in enjoying THE Park.  The leaves were beautiful.

This is my attempt at art.

This is another.  This tree was leaning, so the maintenance people put up wooden braces to hold it up.  I thought the trunk was worthy of a photo.  What do you think?

Here she is waiting for her friend, and taking one of the many phone calls she gets (mostly due to her position as mission nurse).

We were meeting a nice lady who has been discussing the church with the missionaries for years.  Liz has become good friends with her, so she met up with her friend while I went on a photographic journey.  I met them all on my way back.

This is the entrance to the park.  This part is a gentle slope up the hill.  At the end of this path there are steps, then steeper inclines leading to a series of four lakes.

This is the first lake.  There are benches all along the banks of the lakes.  This paved trail is the one used most often, but there is a simple, gravel trail on the other side, running beyond the trees.  I like that idea.  It makes it so you can walk along this side and enjoy the lake and trees, or you can skulk along the other side while under cover.

This is a photo of the paved path, taken from the other side of the lake.  There were very few places where there was a clear view of the far side of the lake from this path.  It is more of a nature trail.

This is the upper lake.  I love this scene.  It is the reason I took this walk.

The paved path ends here.  Going around this lake, you have to walk on gravel on either side. 

This is the same location, but I used my newly-functioning large lens to zero in on the willow tree and the castle on the hill beyond (outside the park).   This place simply makes my heart sing.

This is from the far side of the same lake, looking back toward where I took the previous photos.  From here, you can see that the pine tree is on a little island - a fact not noticeable at first view.  

This was taken from under the willow tree.   "There is beauty all around."

Evening was approaching, so the light was constantly changing as the sun got lower and the clouds moved by.

As I walked around the lake, pausing to change lenses, sitting on the benches to just enjoy the cool breeze and the smell of the falling leaves, I felt the love of my God in my life.  We are so very blessed to be able to spend two years in this wonderful part of the World.  We are privileged to assist the people here.  I think of that wonderful song by Louis Armstrong:  "And what a wonderful life!  Oh, Yeah."

COVID-19 Grrrr

 Slovenia is now experiencing an explosion of COVID cases.  Every day this week has seen hugely higher numbers of new cases.  As a result, the government has mandated that non-essential businesses shut down for at least a week.  Today, we went and got groceries.  Good thing, groceries are an essential business.

New regulations for Slovenia:

• Curfew from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am
• Must wear facemasks at all times when outside your own home
• Travel between counties is restricted to essentials
• No meetings of more than 6 people are allowed

Entrance to the Catholic cathedral in Maribor.  Beautiful doorway!

    One of the non-essential businesses is the hotel next door.  We pay a monthly rent to be able to park our car in their underground parking garage.  Yesterday, we and the young sister missionaries went to the branch president's house out on the farm to help his wife with some chores and to conduct some church business with him.  When we got back, the door into the parking garage had the big storm door down.  Fortunately, our card opened the little gate AND the big door.  At that time, the exit door was still open, and only the little gate down.   I talked to the guy at the desk in the hotel and he told me that the big doors would be open from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm, but that our gate card would work any time.  Trouble is, we have to get inside the garage to get our car and its card.  When I pointed that out, he showed me the secret, guests-only, always-open fire door that goes down a flight of stairs into the garage.

    Today when we went to get groceries, the hotel was locked up tight, the elevators were not working. and both the big doors were shut.   So much for being open from 7 to 5.  We had to walk most of the way around the hotel to the driveway entrance to the garage and the secret,  guests-only, always-open fire door.  We went down the stairs and found ourselves at the fire door, which was being held open by a pipe laying in the doorway.  If anybody moves that pipe, we will be locked out.  I wasn't too impressed by that version of "always-open", you may be sure!  Beyond that, we went down more steps to the -2 level of the garage and finally got to our car.

    We got our groceries just fine.  Last week, we stumbled across a place that was selling little carts for carrying groceries.  They are like a moving dolly, but with a big cloth bag to hold your stuff.  I bought the heaviest one they had, which might hold up to a small amount of abuse.  I bought some 6 x 2-litre bottles of my favorite refreshing beverage, and the 6-pack fit inside the bag perfectly.  Now, even gimpy as I am, I can get the goods home.

    So, even though it is now officially a pain in the knee to walk around the hotel, down the stairs, and across uneven ground to get to our car, it is still a better arrangement than it was in the other place.  As long as the pipe lays there peacefully, that is.

Voting. And, COVID-19 raises its ugly head.

 When we came here, we signed up for updates from the U. S. Embassy in Croatia.  This is a normal thing where they notify citizens of changes in danger-levels, terrorist threats etc.  One of the things they've been very good about lately is sending updates on how to vote while living here.  With their help, we got an emailed ballot and envelope print-image, which we printed and filled out.  The back of the envelope had to have a large box with text stating that it is a crime to mess with ballots, and there is a place to sign that you are entitled to vote on the ballot inside.

  The front of the envelop has the verification that it is my ballot, in the return address field.  And, of course, the ballot went inside.  A lot of states that send out ballots via email, also receive them via email.  Texas, however, does not.  You can mail them back, or FAX them (the FAX has to be followed by the physical form within a very few days, so what's the point?) but you can't send a valid ballot via email.  We pondered that for a while and I even prepared an envelop to send our ballots to our daughter to mail in.  Express shipping was going to be an expensive way to vote.  Then I re-read the Ljubljana Embassy bulletin and noticed that it said you could hand your absentee ballot to the guards at the Embassy gate and it would go by diplomatic pouch to the US and be guaranteed to arrive in time.  

   And then we spent Saturday driving down to Ljubljana and back.  The hardest thing was finding the Embassy gate.  The Embassy is surrounded by tall wrought-iron fences, just like you see on TV.  There are places where cars can go in, and there are places where the fence is hardened (more protected, bulkier), but I didn't find a guard.  In fact, while searching I got almost to the end and called to a man who was entering the building.  He didn't respond, which was good because then I noticed it was the Russian Embassy.  The U.S. and Russian Embassies are right next door and the two fences looks like a single fence.  As I returned, I noticed that a guard hut a couple yards back from the fence had a guard inside and I was able to get his attention.  I expected a U. S. Marine, with whom I could bond, but it was a Slovene civilian employee who spoke good, though heavily-accented English.  I explained what I wanted and he motioned me to another part of the fence, where the bars are not so close together, and multiple cameras watch.

  He came back out of his booth with a little piece of paper.  He had me hold out the ballots and rubbed both sides of them with the little paper, then he returned to his booth.  A short time later, he returned with a grey, plastic basket, which he had me drop the ballots into.  He took that inside for a moment, then he returned with the grey basket and a wooden box with a locked lid and a slot on top.  I wasn't actually very happy that he'd taken my ballots out of sight, but when he came back I checked and I don't believe it would be possible to duplicate my illegible scrawl of a signature, nor Liz's, in that amount of time.  So, I got my ballots back out of the grey basket, and put them into the slot on top of the locked box, and we wished each other well.  My ballots are probably already back in the USofA in the care of the US Mail.  Just another day in the life of an expat.

    Meanwhile, COVID-19 has exploded in Slovenia.  It's a small country, so it's a small explosion, but disturbing because Slovenia went relatively unscathed last spring.  Each day, there are more positive tests, more confirmed cases, and more hospitalized than ever before.  Deaths haven't caught up, yet.  

  There was talk last Friday that Slovenia might close travel between counties over the weekend, and I was a little worried whether we could make our dash to vote in Ljubljana.  We had no troubles with that.  But when we left, the central part of Slovenia was officially red, while the coastal area and the area around Maribor were orange.  However, the numbers on Saturday turned the entire country red.  The county-to-county travel ban only counts if traveling from orange to red areas, and since everybody is now red, there is no travel restriction within the country.  Yeah!

    BUT, we now have to wear masks at all times when outside our homes, even when out in the open air.  There is also a curfew from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am for all non-emergency purposes, with serious fines for violation.  This was a very pointed measure because the current outbreak has been determined to have occurred due to people gathering in bars and restaurants and even homes, for drinking bouts with friends.  This will continue for at least 30 days.  Oh, and businesses, including bars and restaurants, can only have one customer in each room at a time, which essentially closed all of them.  Businesses like hair salons can be open, but again, with only one customer inside at a time.  Fortunately, I got my hair cut last Friday.

     I bought a nice Nikon camera a month or so ago.  The big lens has never worked, but I've been holding off on taking it back, thinking that maybe I don't know what I need to know.  I've gotten better and more confident with the camera and the small lense.  Example:

 

This African Violet is awesome, but it was taken with the smaller of the two lenses, and it works perfectly.  The larger lens will not focus.  It won't focus automatically, and it won't focus manually.  The violet has aphid-like creatures that are much smaller than I'm used to, and I'd like to get a nice closeup of them.

This was taken at maximum magnification with the smaller lens.  You can see the little, white spots that concern me.  I can sometimes see legs on them, and their spacing is a clear sign that they are living organisms, but I can't make a positive ID on them without more help.  So I need to get the larger lens replaced, repaired, or refunded.  Of the three, I'd prefer refunded, because I could get a higher quality macro lens, but I think that is least likely.  Slovenes hate giving refunds, for any reason.

Oct. 13, 2020 the Mission President comes to Slovenia (at last)! PHOTOS!!!

 Here is where we went:

Lake Bled - at the edge of the Julian Alps - is in a lovely little valley with an alpine village.  As you can see, there was some serious snow last weekend.  I've seen such sights many, many times, but it is the first time I've seen it here.  We came here as a P-Day and welcome to President and Sister Field.  They have been in the mission since July, but it was the first day they were able to get into Slovenia.

    Sister Ashurst and I both were impressed by this building, which is the Municipal Building of Bled.

I am impressed with the artwork around the top floor.  It depicts scenes of historic battles, Saints, and mythology.

    We came farthest of all the Slovenia missionaries, so naturally we were the first ones there.  Here is Sister Ashurst with Sisters Perry and King.

Slovenia often posts signs that has the country name as sLOVEnia, so that's why the heart.  It's an obvious place for photos.  And this one (below) is also typical.  There are probably thousands - millions - maybe billions of photos like these laying about..

   I have a new camera, a Nikon D3500, and I was playing with it, practicing the new skills I'm working on developing.  

I was trying very hard to be artistic with this one, and have a soft background for the beautiful flowers.  Trouble is, I was so focused on the focus that I didn't realize the photo is focused on a dead flower.

    This one is better:

I also got shots of a couple of birds.  Sadly, I don't know what they are, yet.

This one was all black, with a subtle bit of a top-knot.  It acted just like an American robin.  It's call was like that of a robin.  It was eating little worms and bugs from the grass - just like a robin.

    

This guy was eating the red berries in a yew tree.  I have been amazed at red berries on an evergreen tree, to begin with, but these are very interesting.  The European yew is very different than the yews in America.  It is deadly poison in every part, except for the fleshy part of the red berries.  The berries look a bit like pine cones, but they are very, very sweet.  They have a large-ish seed inside that is poisonous, and they are coated with sticky sap which is not.

This is the Slovenia Zone, plus President and Sister Field, plus the Assistants to the President.  I am not in the photo because I couldn't remember how to set an auto timer, and forgot that I can use my cell phone to take remote photos while the camera is on the tripod.  Just above Elder Port's shoulder is the church on the little island in the middle of the lake.

    From there, the herd decided to walk around the lake.  My knee was aching just then, so I declined to go.  I took this one as they left:

As it turns out, they didn't circumnavigate either, so I could have gone, but I wouldn't have been able to keep up with them.  I practiced with the camera instead.

    The trees are in their fall colors; not as flamboyant as we remember from Utah, but nice anyway.

I took several photos like this one:

The point is to learn how to set the focus on a macro (closeup) photo so the background blurs out, thus emphasizing the thing you want emphasized.

    On my way to meet everybody for lunch on the hill, I found a hotel that keeps honeybees.  Slovenian beehives are kept in little buildings or sheds or shelters of various sizes.  This one is a common size.  It has fourteen beehives in it and the bees were flying in and out.  The hives can be opened from inside the building.  This one has a window for selling honey.  The main door to enter the building is on the opposite side.

Two rows of seven hives, and you can see the famous bee boards with colorful folk art.

    The restaurant where we had lunch was near the cathedral on the hill.  It is impressive from down by the lake.  Here is a closer view.

And here is the impressive door:

And for the grand finale, I present another macro shot, this time of a stunning moldy leaf:

I could have chosen an intact leaf, but that would just be boring.

In the new apartment

 We had lots of help on moving day - all the young missionaries in Slovenia - but it wasn't all just for us.  There were four apartments involved.  One hasn't been used regularly since COVID slowed things down, but we stored some of the excess items there until we had settled where everything else ended up.

The young sisters have been staying in an apartment away from the River.  It is nice enough, but the decision was made at the top to close all extra apartments.  Some of the missionaries went there to finish packing things up, and loading the things into a car.  They also cleaned it well, in preparation for the owner's approval of its condition.

At our apartment above the fountain on the riverside, we disassembled the bed and nearly everything else was ready to be loaded up and transported.  The elders from Celje brought me an abandoned exercise bike, so we put as many other things as we could into their car and I showed them the way to the new apartment.  There is inadequate parking in Maribor, but there are some  semi-official rules that make moving easier.  I had them park the car in a truck-loading zone near our new apartment and turn on their emergency flashers.  The flashers are a signal that: 1. I know this is breaking the rules.   2. I won't be doing it for very long.   3. I promise not to do it again.  The police then turn a blind eye.

While Liz supervised the clearing out of the other apartment and got the sisters settled in there, I got things put in the correct places in the new one.  The apartment is only a little bit larger than the old one, but it has two bedrooms and lots of cabinets.  The elevator is shaky - it jumps and moans before settling in at the door, but it takes a lot of pressure off my knee because I don't have to climb stairs.  I have already noticed that my knee bothers me much less than before.  I sleep much better for not being awakened by an aching knee.

So, now we are settled into our third apartment in the mission, and we thought we would stay in the same place the whole time!?!

D. and another friend came to help us move, too, I think so they would know where we live.

D. had his 22nd birthday this week, so we invited him and the sisters over for a birthday party.  They don't make a big fuss over birthdays here, but we assured him that it was a good thing to be the center of attention once in a while.  The sisters baked a little American-style (very sweet) cake for him.

We took him out to dinner and then we cut this little cake into five pieces and had a nice, casual chat while we ate it.  BTW, the photo shows the entirety of our new kitchen.  It really only allows one person to work there, but another can work from the other side of the island countertop.  The fridge and freezer are also quite small.  The stovetop works via induction, which we saw briefly while living at the Mission Home, but is otherwise new to us.  We checked all our pots and pans and only brought the ones marked for induction cooking, but we have found the frying pans (we have a set of three) to be very twitchy.  Often the cooktop clicks or buzzes under them, but won't put out any heat.  The other pans work much better, so I guess we'll be buying more cookware so I can have my eggs for breakfast.

The most delightful thing about our new apartment is the sun room.  It is a balcony that has been enclosed with glass on the sides and the top.  

Liz and her friend are sitting out there watching general conference.  The room is only about 4' wide at one end, and about 8-10' at the other, while it is 25' long.  There is a double door leading into it, and a matching set of double doors are on the outside wall in front of a safety fence.  So, we can be outside, or we can shut ourselves in.  The sun warms it up quickly in the morning, but I'm sure it will be cold in the winter.  There is a heating grill in the floor, but we'll just use it enough to keep the plants and water pipes from freezing.

  And, as I'm sure you've noticed, the view is nothing to brag about.  It is the side of a hotel.  But we are on the top floor of the building, so we have a view of the sky through the top of the sun room, and we are very close to the river and other scenic things.  Our car is parked in the basement garage under the hotel, so it's tremendously more convenient.