Honeybees and a Monastery

 I haven't posted anything in about three weeks - maybe longer.  We  have been very busy with the branch, and that's why I haven't done much playing around, which is the stuff that is most fun to post.  However, we did get out a few times and I will now post about that.

I also gave two talks in church in this period of time.  The focus of them was to build unity within the branch and try to help the members see that backbiting isn't doing them any good.

There are several cultural venues in Maribor, and we have been sad that they were all closed during the COVID pandemic.  We got to one ballet (Liz loves ballet - I prefer opera) when we first arrived in Slovenia, but that was the last one.  Well, they are now opening up again, and we got tickets to a string quartet performing just a short walk from our apartment.  I really enjoyed their performance, even though they had three ancient instruments and one modern one - modern instruments have improvements to make them louder and the cello overpowered the other strings.  Ancient instruments were built with the best materials available at the time, but more importantly only the rich and famous could afford musicians, so small, intimate performances were the rule of the day.  The need for louder instruments only came after larger audiences became the norm.

The stage where they performed.

The ceiling above us.

This performance hall was built in the early nineteenth century, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled this part of the World.  The architecture was very elaborately decorated.  The rounded shape of the stage continued back across the ceiling, and you can see the elaborate carvings and patterns.  In the 20th century, the building was used less and less, and finally fell into disrepair.  Only about twenty years ago the city restored it and re-opened it for small concerts.  So that was a fun evening.

We had a Zone Conference, which is where the mission president and his assistants come to Slovenia to meet with all the missionaries.  This was the first time in a long while when the president could come visit us.

President Field wanted a picture with all of us, but I hadn't yet joined the group and President Field was trying to rig up a chair to hold his cellphone camera.  I had nothing else to do and remembered that my cellphone was in my pocket, so I took a photo of all the young missionaries.  Sister Field had her head turned away from the camera and Elder Taylor is hidden behind Sister Williams.  But this is our team.  Liz is standing in front of our tallest, Elder Daw.  Left to right - The Sisters:  Hart, Back, Williams, Ashurst, King, Castleton, Yost, and Field.  Left to right - The Elders:  Kunzler, Poulos, Miller (AP), Christenson (AP), Handley, Taylor, Daw, Miller.

A few days later we had our second picnic in the park, this time in Celje.  The turnout was not great, but President Fidler (branch president) said he was pleased with how many came.  It was a hot day, so nobody was very interested in strenuous games, except for a 13 year old boy and the Elders.

Eating lunch under the trees, after the sun had moved so they were out of the shade.

The old foggies (myself and three of the older sisters) sat on a park bench in the shade.

The 13 year old boy told one of the elders that it was the best day of his life and that he hoped it would never end.  That was amazing.  I think he has been confined by COVID, school, and protective parents too much and for too long.  But it was a very pleasant afternoon.

We bought two Roma tomato plants and put them in pots on our balcony.  They have grown nicely and we have 9 little tomatoes coming along.  We hope this will continue, but the high heat here for the past week seems to have stunted them.

This is a common item in the grocery stores here - mixed mushrooms.  Sometimes there are 3 varieties, but more commonly there are only 2.  Soups are very popular in Slovenia, and most cooks would cook a big pot of soup using whatever is available.  My favorite is a bushy mushroom they only have in the spring.  Later, there will be other kinds.

Saturday, we had to do apartment inspections across Slovenia, so we decided to stop at the Beekeeper store and an old monastery.  The bee store caters to serious bee farmers, and seemed to be doing a land office business.

The store is in an old carriage house behind a huge mansion/castle that is now abandoned.  Slovenes traditionally painted funny, religious, or historic scenes on a board in front of each hive.  The one reproduced above the windows is a bunch of guys making girl wine - a joke, of course - girls are sweet.  A girl's feet are just going into the grinder, while her head and shoulders are just coming out. And on the left, a man is carrying another girl on his shoulder so they can add her sweetness to the brew. 

The windows below the oversized bee board are covered by posters showing flowers that are useful honey sources.

Notice the notch at the bottom-center of the bee board above?  All the tourist bee boards have this, but in actual use the notch is not on the painted board.  Here is what they actually look like on the hive.

This is the front of an inhabited beehouse they use for teaching beekeeping.  In Slovenia, you have to pass a course and have a certificate before you are allowed to keep bees.  The bees come in and out of the hives through a notch at the bottom of the hive.  The painted boards are just above that and attached to the bee house rather than the actual hive, which is fastened inside the bee house so the beekeeper can open it from the back.

The bee boards on the hive above, left to right:

• A carved depiction of the bees gathering around the queen.
• A man with his trousers hanging on a pole, and all the washer-women trying to get them first.
• Three farmers gathering a swarm of bees from a tree.
• A man carrying a cross, with his woman riding on the cross.  Probably a marriage trial.
• a beehouse, a man playing a violin, a Saint sitting on a rock, the beeman's wife in front of her house.
• A woman doing laundry while a devil reaches into her hair.  Very dark!

Liz wanted to get a full-size bee board to use in decorating one of the bedrooms in our new house.  Inside the store, we found a display with full-size boards.

Bee house display in the store.  Sadly, these were not for sale, because they are full size.

• Another painting of capturing a swarm of bees.  Another man plays the fiddle while they work.
• Two bears arguing over a bee board while the keeper shows his frustration
• A man carrying a beehive on his back, but with a girl inside it.  He's approaching the church door.

So this bee house stuff interests me, and I recognize that the interest is not universal.

After visited the bee store we drove to an out of the way place to visit the ruins of a Cartusian monastery.  We were there many months ago, but it was closed on the day we were there, so we could only look through the gate.

This is a painting of it in it's active days.  Now it is largely ruins.

My knee was bothering me from walking around the grounds of the bee store to photograph their bee houses, so I didn't hike all over the monastery, but I viewed it all.

The monks were educated men who knew Latin as well as the local language.  Their main job was to copy books, this being in the days before the printing press was invented.

This is an example of an "illustrated text", referring to the fancy leading letter of paragraphs and chapters.  Some of it is quite complex.  I guess it relieved the boredom of just copying.

This one is music, and I've never seen a text like this.  I believe it is for a choir doing a Gregorian chant?  

The monastery had the largest library, second only to the Vatican, in the World.  Nobody knows where the books went after the monastery shut down in the early 19th century, but it is assumed they were moved to worthy places.

I thought these 3 arches were cool.  They were the doorways to the cooking areas.

The long building to the left is built on the outside wall and had rooms for Monks.  They have a potter there now, and we bought a traditional pan for baking policinka, a festival cake similar to the pogacha Liz has made since we were young.

The tall tower in the distance was a defensive tower.  The one with the steep roof that is flat along the top is the funeral chapel.  They had a service there when Monks died, and then they were buried without marker, wrapping or casket so that they could hasten the Biblical phrase, "unto dust thou shalt return".  It also allowed them to have a very small graveyard because it was easy to dig through prior burials.

This is the view from the potter's room, across the site.  The stones in the ground mark where a covered walkway used to be.  The mounds were Monks' rooms.

The monks lived a solitary life of  silence, chastity, and seclusion.  There were 12 full monks, and 16 serving monks here.  The full monks each had their own suite of 3 rooms.  They spent their days copying books, writing, and studying.  They had two meals a day, plain food prepared by the serving monks.  If they were heard to speak during a meal, they had to leave the food behind and return to their room.  The serving monks became famous herbalists, and the gardens just outside the ruins still grow both common and rare herbs.  They also farmed at a location down the valley where the sounds of planting, weeding and harvesting wouldn't disturb the full monks.

My overall impression is that it is a peaceful, calming place.  But I wouldn't give up my woman to live there.

A day off in Slovenia

 A typical sLOVEnian scene.  Even the roads show the romance in the air.

We actually drove slightly into Austria to get to this place.  More on it later - I want to keep this chronological.

We have both been busy as a dog in a flea circus.  Trouble is, we have days where our schedule is crazy full and sometimes one of us has to represent us while the other attends to some other duties.  A lot of this is simply due to the fact that I am the only councilor in the newly-combined branch.  The branch president lives 40 minutes north of Maribor and the other half of the branch is 45 minutes south, in Celje.  So we have been assigned to attend the Celje branch most of the time.  The Branch President even suggested that we move there, but we said, "No."  We'd rather drive back and forth.  If the Mission President steps in (and why would he?) then we'd have to go.

Liz is heavily involved because we are also just starting church meetings again.  We have only been having District-wide Zoom for the greater part of the past year.  Now we need to have our own meetings, including the Sunday School, priesthood, YM/YW, and Primary.  Liz is the de facto planner for several of those groups, and we are glad to have her help.

So, some days are crazy, jam-packed with all sorts of things we have to do.  But then there are days when our schedule is wide open, and we crave a chance to get out and get away.  Most of what follows is the result of those days.

One day we had an afternoon off and decided to walk up to the awesome city park.  Liz wanted to climb the little mountain and see the tower there, but I protect my knees these days and I begged off.  While she went up the steep part of the hill, I walked up a slight incline to the lakes.

I took my camera so I could practice photos where the subject is clear, but the background fades away.  This pretty little iris growing at the edge of the lower lake, for example.  

This is an example of what happens if you don't do it right.  The pretty rhododendron doesn't stand out and just kinds of blends into a flat photo.

I saw some ducks walking down the path toward me, so I stepped aside and got out my long-lens to photograph them.  

I kept shooting as they got closer and had time to notice that she has a blue patch on one side, but not the other.  

"Dimorphism?" I asked myself.  But I finally concluded she is just hiding her colors except where a feather is missing.

We had lunch at the restaurant by the lake and I wondered what this comic character represents.  As I looked at it, I finally noticed that what looks like flames must be water and there are horsemen in it.  I had to know what it said!  Enter Google Translate:

"A shoemaker disguised as a Turk, opens a lock at the three lakes and drains water into city ditches, thus rescuing Maribor."  This must have happened in the 12th century when the Turks were turned back from Austria and Yugoslavia.

While we had lunch, it started to rain and we ended up getting soaked.  But we had things to do that afternoon, so that was the end of a morning off.

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Next time we had a day off, it was all day.  Liz just wanted to get out, so I suggested we go to the famous stork swamps in far NE Slovenia.  As we approached, Liz noticed a city she is familiar with - Murska Sobota.  She visited a member who lives there, and knew a beautiful church.

It is a Lutheran Church.  This corner of Slovenia was long a part of Hungary and only became part of Slovenia after WWII when the Russians "liberated" it.  They gave it to Tito to thank him for continuing to be communist.  More on that later.  We went inside and saw the beauty of it.

The altar and the stained glass above.  Notice the drapes on the wall behind and on the sides of the altar area?  They are painted on.

It is strange to us Mormons to see an antique organ in the choir loft, surrounded by modern trappings like drum set, electric keyboard, and sound mixing equipment.

A monument to the Russian Liberators.

WWII was hard for all Europeans, but this is a truly sad story.  After Hitler annexed Austria and swallowed up Poland, many Eastern European countries joined the Axis to protect themselves, including Hungary (which included this area) and Croatia which was an independent part of Yugoslavia.  So, it came under German control and that wasn't pleasant after they learned that Hitler dispised Slavs almost as much as jews, so they withdrew from the Axis.  Naturally, Germany invaded and conquered them with little effort.  Slovenia was part of Croatia then, and Croatian leader Tito was communist, so he resisted Hitler, although the Nazis remained in control.  Then the Russians came and pushed the Nazis out, and Tito became absolute leader of all Yugoslavia, and the Russians gave this region to him to be part of Croatia.  After Tito died, Slovenia wanted to be independent and declared it, and got it, and this region came with them.  Croatia followed suit, so Serbia (which had control of the Yugoslav army) attacked just like Abraham Lincoln, to protect the union.  That dissolved into a bitter period of Civil war, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and chaos, so the UN (us) stepped in and stopped it.  Then, Croatia got their independence, as did Bosnia and Montenegro and Kosovo.  But this little piece of what used to be Hungary remained in Slovenia.  I didn't see any signs of displeasure, but what do I know?  I don't speak the language.  The point is, that each of these political shifts had protesters who were rounded up and executed.   The Nazis hung people in the town square or shot them outside town.  The Russians just shot them where they stood.  Tito was quiet about it.  Now, they appear to be very happy with life - it's safer.

When we left town, we headed further east for 20 minutes or so to the little village of Velika Polana at the edge of a bird refuge.  As we got close we saw lots of stork nest poles.  A hundred years ago, people built chimneys with a flat stone on top to keep out rain.  Storks loved those flat stones and built their nests on them.  People believed the storks brought them good luck.  The fly in the ointment was that stork nests can sometimes weigh up to 2 tons, which is hard on chimneys.  So, in the last hundred years they compromised by setting up poles with platforms on top for the storks.

This stork is standing on a very small nest.  They are usually as tall as the stork's legs.  This one was preening - cleaning itself up from the mud it gathered in the fields.

This is a more typical nest.

The storks spend the winter in Africa and return to Southern Europe to nest and raise their chicks, early in the spring.  When the chicks are ready, they fly North to the lush areas there and spread out for the summer and fall.  We saw quite a few, but they are the stragglers.  Most of the poles have been cleaned off for next year, already.

This one was harvesting the most delicious bugs so it will be nice and strong for the flight north.

After we left the stork area, we drove west and north.  Our goal was the heart road, that romantic hillside that all the young sister missionaries pine to see.  It is on the very edge of Austria.  I fell asleep, and with no navigator, Sister Ashurst drove a little too far.  I woke up just in time to see a road sign and the top line said AVSTRIA, but I wasn't very awake.  There was a rest stop there, so we stopped to buy gas.  When I went in to pay, the clerk noticed I am not from around here, and he asked me what we are going to see in Austria.  I said, "What?  We aren't going into Austria!"  He laughed and said Austria was 200 meters farther along the freeway.  These rest areas do not have access to get off the freeways, so we had no choice but to continue.  We stopped for the border guard and I explained that we didn't want to enter Austria, we just wanted to turn around.  He smiled a little and asked for my passport.  When he saw it, he said "Oh, AMERICANS!" like that explained everything!  Then he pointed out where we could cross over and go back.  As we re-entered Slovenia, the guards were waving everyone through who had a Slovene license plate.  Whew!

We took the next exit and I re-navigated over roads that are in Slovenia.  We climbed a lot of hills, and the roads were mostly very narrow.  In the US, we would consider them one-way roads, but people here just figure out how to get around each other.  There are a lot of little places where you can pull over a bit more and they make it work.

The way to the heart road.

Slovenia is the most delightful place to drive you can imagine.  As you go over the little hills, you come to little cleared farms with farm cottages and barns.    We finally came to a steep part of the road and finally came to a sign with a heart on it and an arrow that pointed to a lane between two houses.  We felt like we were driving through somebody's front yard, but at the end is a little bar/refreshment stand.  Just beyond it is the observation point, which is protected by St. George.

St. George stabbing his spear into the dragon's mouth as his horse tramples it.

And what was this all for?  Quite simply the very ordinary road we had driven up the hill has a particular look from the top.

The Heart Road

People come here from all over to see this view.  We first heard about it while we lived in Croatia.  It is interesting that the road forms a near perfect heart from this vantage, but it's not the most impressive thing we've seen.  The views from this hilltop, however, rate among the very best.

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And, finally, there is a mountain on the other side of the river from us that extends back into the foothills of the Alps.  We had a day where we could take off for an afternoon and decided to visit the treetop walkway and tower.  It's not that far away from Maribor as the crow flies, but we aren't crows.  We drove half way to Celje, turned west and drove that far again, then turned north and climbed almost 5,000 feet through wondrously gorgeous forests and farms (just normal stuff for Slovenia) to the peak near Rogla.  We paid €18 to walk on a platform walk that stayed mostly at treetop level to a tower.

We were still below the treetops at this point, and the tower rises a lot higher than we were here!

As we approached the tower we could see the circular slide that you can use to go back down.  My knees don't bother me much to climb, but coming down does, so I decided that was the way for me.  We had to carry our slide pads up, and then another €2 each to take the slide.  It's a long, long way down and the slide is entirely enclosed.  I didn't have time to get claustrophobic, though.  I mostly just worried about staying upright as the centrifigal force built up, and then it spit me out on my side.  Boy!  What a ride.

And this handsome devil is enjoying the views over the mountains and valleys.

If you are observant, you might notice that I was wearing a new Panama hat (which like all Panama hats are made of a particular grass in Honduras.)  The thing with a Panama hat is that you can roll it up and put it in your suitcase - a thing I will test on my way home to America, in six months.

So, that's what we do when we get a day off in Slovenia.