Meeting Mosquitos

The big news of today, June 18, 2020, is that we, at last, have actual, certifiable, hot water coming out of our taps!  Today, we get to take a shower, instead of washing up in a pan of water heated on the stove.  Today, a serviceman came with a new computer board for the water heater, and now it all works.  Oh, blessed day!
Not that we're complaining.
   We have heard horror stories about the mosquitos here.  Last Sunday evening I looked out the windows and saw people swatting at the bugs as they walked along the river.  Next day it rained and cooled off.  We haven't seen any of the little bloodsuckers, yet.  Fingers crossed.  Knock on wood.  The locals say to eat a garlic clove every morning to discourage the vampiric bugs.  Heavy price, I say.
     I still enjoy seeing the swans.  In this photo, a mother and five "chicks" are preening their feathers to make them waterproof.

This set of chicks is well along towards being adults.  The swan on her nest is still waiting for her little fluff balls.
    While walking back from the church last Tuesday, I noticed these flowers growing in a vacant lot.

The plant is unremarkable, but the flowers are stunning.  I saw them glaring in the light half a block away.
   Wednesday, we finally met up with our country's official representative to get fingerprinted at the police station.  It was what you'd expect from a government agency.  Slow, wait a bit more, hurry in to the room to wait while it warms up.  Then the official took our fingerprints and printed them out for us.
  Now the fun starts.  We have to mail them to our daughter in the US.  She will send them to the FBI, who know they are coming because I already registered them (and paid a fee) and told them what to do.  The FBI will read our fingerprints and provide a certificate saying we aren't hardened criminals, and send it back to our daughter.  BUT, that is not an official international document, so she will then send the certificate to the State Department, who I already notified to expect the certificate.  For a fee, they will certify that the certificate is an official international document (Apostille), and send that back to our daughter, who will then send it all to our country representative here in Slovenia.  With that in hand, we will be issued a visa to live here for a year.  At the end of that time, we'll have to request an extension, which won't be so complicated.
   It is amazing how much the former socialist governments here love their red tape.  I got my tires rotated on Wednesday.  When they were done, the clerk pulled out five forms for me to sign.  Two of them he stamped with his official stamp (looks like a notary stamp).  Then I paid my 22 Euros and left.
  On the way back from the church Wednesday, I also stopped at a little open-air market and bought some veges, including this amazing tomato.

I suppose some tomatoes look like this, but he had a bin full of tomatoes that were all like this.  It was a fleshy tomato with great flavor and very little juice.  Delicious.
  He also had some nice, tree ripe apricots which were worth the trip all by themselves.  We like these markets.  People here are still living in the mode where they do a little shopping every day.  There are bakeries everywhere, fruit stands, handicraft markets, etc.  It is a different pace, but we are enjoying it on occasion.  We mostly still shop like Americans; buying mass quantities at a supermarket once in a while, and making do with not quite as fresh in between.
    Today, we walked up into town and Liz stopped to buy a pair of shoes.  While I was waiting I noticed this across the street.

There are  four paintings in all.  All of them depict two angels.  All of them are obvious harvest scenes.  They are faded, and life has left them behind, but they are very nicely done.  Perhaps not Michaelangelo, but very well done, indeed.
  Tijuana and her husband got tickets for us for tomorrow's ballet:  Radio and Juliet.  It is a small production with five dancers.  It is a modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.  Tijuana is the only female dancer and we are looking forward to seeing her perform.

Meeting Maribor

We are getting settled into our new apartment and city.  We have located grocery stores, bakeries, the Slovene State Theater, hardware store, etc.   The Slovene State Theater is on the list because our landlord's wife is THE Prima Ballerina in Slovenia.  She has danced Giselle, which in case you don't follow opera is one the most (if not THE most) difficult roles in ballet, because, in one of the scenes, the ballerina has to go on point (on one toe) and hop across the stage, approximately 30 hops without putting her other foot down.  The whole time she has to either gracefully kick on each hop, or she can kick a few times, then hold her leg at waist height for the same number of hops, and repeat.  It is ridiculously difficult to do, which is why an otherwise plain little ballet is still performed worldwide whenever an opera company has a ballerina talented enough to do it.  I can't even stand on one foot that long, much less hop and kick while doing it.  If you care to see some grace and beauty, here is a Youtube video of various ballerinas doing the scene.  The hops come near the end of the scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyQBVR-ALQM
  WE have tickets to see our landlord's wife dance next Friday night in Radio and Juliet.

  We went shopping the other day and among other things bought a little table for the kitchen.  We felt we should do it so that we'd have room to feed hordes of hungry young missionaries, which we hope to do each Sunday.

For style points, a round table in front of the window where we can look out at the round fountain is a treat.

And here is the fountain, looking back at our second floor window by the sun dial on the wall.
    A couple days ago we had the young missionaries all together, but our kitchen wasn't ready to serve them all, so we had to go out to a famous hamburger place.  These young people are a lot of fun to work with.  They work hard and do great things.

The two young elders ordered huge hamburgers with five, half-pound patties, and impressed the young sisters by eating every bite, or maybe only one of them ordered that one and the other ordered an ordinarily huge one.  Then we walked up the hill to an ice cream vendor for dessert.  Sometimes being a missionary can be hard.
    One of the special treats of this place continues to be the swans.  Dozens of them live along this stretch of the river and they are eye candy, to be sure.

They are especially graceful-looking when they hold their wings out of the water.  Only one of the swans in this photo is doing it.
    The pigeons here look to me like they are bigger than the USA pigeons,  Maybe not, but it looks like it.  Anyway, this photo gives you an idea of how big the swans are.

These are both hens.  The males are even bigger.  In a few days we expect to see three little, grey fuzzballs with the one on the nest.
    This swan is holding its leg out of the water and resting it on its back.  Pretty impressive!

    Today we decided to walk up into town.  The road up the hill from our building used to be two-way traffic, but they have closed it and are putting in wall-to-wall sidewalk to make it a pedestrian/market lane.  I think it's going to be great.  There is a little cobble-stone alley that goes from our front door to that street.

This is the wide part of the street where the road used to go around a tall statue that is now fenced in.  It is the Plague Column, which is seven meters tall and crowned with a gold-plated statue of the Virgin Mary.  On the ground, surrounding the tower are statues of Six Catholic Saints to whom the people prayed for deliverance.  And the obvious question:  Why have a monument to the plague?!?  It actually commemorates the END of the  1680 plague that killed one third of the people in Maribor.   Makes COVID-19 seem tame and pleasant, doesn't it? The current monument replaced an older one, and the current one was done in 1743.
    The other monumental thing in the above photo is the building with the clock tower and fancy spire.  This is the Maribor Town Hall.  Adolph Hitler stood on the little balcony of that building in 1941 and addressed the cowed residents to tell them how happy they were to be conquered by a nice guy like him.  The allies largely destroyed the city while rooting his army out of it in 1944, but then they pitched in and help rebuild it afterwards.  Americans didn't actually bomb nor help rebuild it, but they are very well thought of here.
  Lunch time passed as we were window shopping and buying a few little things, so we stopped in a pizza place.

I ordered the meaty half of the pizza.  Notice that we are both eating that half.  In truth, it was all mighty tasty.  Pizzas here are Italian pizzas, not American, but they are outstanding!  And huge.

So, I guess I might sum it up by saying that we are very happy to be here.  We are actually serving as missionaries again, and doing good things.  We are also having a ball exploring and learning about the country.  I have been called as the Branch Clerk and we expect to receive more callings shortly, but having no clerk is an emergency.  I will be busy with it.  And the next audit is approaching, so we are busy with that, too.

Meeting the members

The church is a half mile from our apartment, and the only place we have to park our car is in the same building as the church.  The lack of parking is the down-side of having such a marvelous location for our apartment.  The up-side is that the walk to the church is mostly along the river where the flock of swans hangs out.

This swan is laying on three huge eggs.   Swans are several times as large as geese, which we also see from time to time.  They dwarf the ducks which are also common here.  The swans are protected, especially along the river bank.  There is a fence around this nesting site, even though it is on the very edge of the sidewalk.  People have to walk out into the street to get around it, but there are no complaints.  People bring the swan corn, bread, lettuce and so forth and the hamburger container on the ground was full of whole  corn an hour before I took this photo.  The fence isn't there to protect the swan, though.  It is there to protect people from approaching too closely and provoking a defensive attack, which can be a very painful thing to experience.  The swans are quite accustomed to people here and attacks are not common, except for nesting.
   The branch in Maribor is quite small.  Our first Sunday, we met the branch President and his wife and three small children.  In addition there was a single sister and two single brothers.  That makes eight total members.  With Elders Christiansen and Kunzler and us, that made a total of twelve.  It was fast Sunday, so Liz and I took the opportunity to bear our testimonies, along with everybody else.
    The sad thing is that it is very painful for people to join the church here.  The Catholic religion isn't just their religion, it is part of their national identity.  When somebody joins the church, they often loose their families, and their jobs.  In Texas, the Southern Baptists don't like Mormons, but we work and live side-by-side.  It isn't an active dislike - usually.  But here the people tolerate us and even admire the church.  They are always pleasant and happy to meet us, but they don't want to be associated with us.
    When Kresimir Cosic, the famous BYU Croatian basketball player was still alive, people joined the church because his fame took a lot of the sting out of it.  But now that he has passed away, we mostly have old, single people in the church.
    The COVID-19 pandemic has helped a lot.  While we were quarantined, the missionaries used social media to find people to teach and had very good success.  The people were at home, in isolation, and spending a lot of time on social media.  They were more receptive, because they weren't so worried about the opinions of others.  We had many commitments to baptism during that time.  Those people are required to attend church with us for at least a couple of times before their baptism so we will see how it works out, but it was a very hopeful sign.
  As we walked back from church to our apartment, a man on a bicycle stopped and began to excitedly talk to us.  He is a member of the church, though not attending at this time.  His name is Ifar and he is from Kosovo, originally.  He was very happy to see us and learn our names.  He already knew where we live and that the earlier senior couple had returned to the USA,  He declined our invitation to join us at church on Sundays, but it was a great contact.
    Yesterday, the elders called us and asked if they could bring a member to our apartment to give a lesson to him.  Of course we agreed.  His name is Jean and he is physically challenged by a crooked spine.  He lives quite a way north of Maribor, along the Austrian border, and was in town for an evaluation to see if he could get a job.  He was very depressed that he was not able to do what they needed, because of his physical limitations.  He is also not getting the support from his family that he wants.  Sister Ashurst and I talked to him about finding something he likes to do and focusing on that.  The elders gave him their lesson, which they later told us was something they hadn't been able to do before.  We ended by telling him that the Savior loves him and is concerned for him.  That he needs to keep praying and his prayers WILL bear fruit.
    We also accepted an invitation from Branch President Fidler to go to his farm for dinner.  They live almost 30 minutes our of town in a very remote area with many beautiful farms in hilly country.  They have 1.5 hectares - almost 3 acres.  We had a delightful evening and a delicious roast chicken with them.  Their younger son was upset when President gave me a leg and thigh, so I cut the leg off and gave it to him.  He didn't say a word, but he tucked right in and made it disappear.  He ate quite a bit of other meat from the chicken, too, so it turned out fine.  We had a nice visit the Brother and Sister Fidler after the kids went to bed.  He is interested in getting some honey bees for his farm, so I agreed to advise him on setting them up.

To Slovenia

We have a member of the church in Slovenia who guides all the missionaries through the process of getting visas and resident status.  He said we have to have a letter from our landlord saying that we can stay in the apartment if we are quarantined, and that there are people who can bring us food and supplies if needed while there.  He was working on getting the letter and it would be ready in the morning.  As a result, we spent one last night in the condemned mission home.
    On Wednesday, the young missionaries were quite excited to help us load up our car for the trip to Maribor.  One of them, Elder Chistiansen was also going to Maribor.  He was going to go with the Assistants to the President in their largeer-than-usual car, so we could meet the Brother and Sister Melonakos in Ljubljiana for a conference.  They also took some of our junk with them.
  Thursday, as we made one last stop at the mission office to pick up mail and miscellaneous to take with us, including new mission phones for Liz and I.  She got the "1 Maribor Seniors" phone, while I got a SIM card that used to be in the "1 Celje Seniors" phone, but is now in my personal phone.
    As we were about to leave, we got a message from Sister Melonakos.  It said, "The eagle has landed!  Elder Christiansen is in Slovenia."  This was very good news, because it meant that Slovenia had, indeed, loosened their travel restrictions on non-citizens.  We had high hopes as we drove towards Slovenia.  We came to the border check-point and the inspector scanned our passport and stamped it.  Yeah!
    But, wait.  We are so illiterate and out of place, it took us a couple of moments before we remembered that was the Croatia exit border check.  We still had to pass the Slovenia entry point.  So with our hearts in our throats we waited in the short line to get to the Slovenian border check.  When we got there, the officer was a very grim-looking man with a scowl on his face.  Liz handed over our passports.  He looked at each of us, then scanned the passports, then stamped them and handed them back.  He didn't say a single word.  We held back our shouts of triumph until we were out of his sight.  Elation!  We are in Slovenia!
    The  border between Croatia and Slovenia is not far outside Zagreb, but it was rather amazing that once across everything looked different.  We entered a woods area, with little towns scattered here and there, and fields on steep slopes.

The rain came in little patches, and most of the way it was good driving.

The other distinctive thing is the church steeples.  The Croatian churches had fancy steeples, too, but in Slovenia they are all on top of tall, square towers.

We saw lots of similar steeples, but off in the distance.  This one is behind the hill a bit, but at least it was close to the road.
  We drove to Ljubljiana where we were scheduled to meet President and Sister Melonakos, and all the young missionaries in Slovenia.  As we drove past the church to turn into the parking lot, they all came streaming out of the church building into the light rain.  Our first thought was that we had missed the meeting, but actually they had been watching for the famous blue car and had come running to greet us.  It was difficult to not shake hands and hug them.  Instead we waved at each other while packed close together on the sidewalk.  There were 5 sisters and 6 brothers, including Elders Christiansen and Elder Kunzler, who will be serving with us in Maribor, as well as President and Sister Melonakos.  What a nice thing for them to come out to greet us!
    We went inside the church building (one of two church-owned churches in the entire mission) where President Melonakos was interviewing the missionaries one-by-one.  Meanwhile the rest of us played games - foosball, table tennis, and round-robin table tennis where everybody lines up around the table and each player hits the ball and immediately drops the paddle so the next person in line can pick it up in time to return the ball.
   Pretty soon food was ready and we all sat down to eat hamburgers.  After we were all fed, we cleared the table and Brother and Sister Melonakos shared photos of a hike they took with some members to the highest mountain in the ANM.  They made it to the top of the mountain, but were caught in fog and rain and very nearly didn't make it back.  They used the adventure to give some advice on how to approach life.
   Then, finally, we drove on to Maribor.  I've been Google Earth lurking Maribor for a while and the actual street and our building looked familiar when we got there.  However, I had no idea where the front door could be found.  Turns out, it is around the corner on the side of the building in the alley.

This is the front of our apartment building.  There are six apartments in it.  Our kitchen window is the one just to the left of the vertical sun dial.  You can't tell what time it is in this photo because it is a cloudy day.  To the left of the kitchen window are two more windows to our living room, and our bedroom is around the back of the building.  Today, a class of school kids came walking in the rain.  They stopped briefly at the fountain and then stood gazing in amazement at the sun dial.  I was looking out the window eating my lunch.  It can be a bit disconcerting to look out the window and see herds of people watching.  OTOH, we have the lovliest view of the square and the river.
    And here is another church steeple, this one with a clock.

We are so happy to be here.

Rovinj

After a day of resting, we drove across Istria again, this time to visit the famous Italian-esque town of Rovinj.  It is the ferry port for people in Istria to go to Venice, and many people say it is very much like Venice.  We hoped to spend a relaxing day there, and perhaps take a harbor tour.

This photo is a sign at the waterfront, advertising all the kinds of tours you can normally take.  But COVID-19 strikes again - they were all closed.  Just above the sign you can see all the boats tied up to the docks.  The aerial photo in the center of the sign shows the peninsula that makes Ravinj famous.  That's the part of town that is like Venice.
    A few feet away from this sign there were several open-air restaurants and we chose one for lunch.  I was intrigued by a menu item called scampi.  I am used to menus listing "shrimp scampi", which is shrimp cooked scampi style, and I always wondered what that actually meant.  I have noticed here that menus list both shrimp and scampi.  Being curious about such things, I ordered scampi just to find out what it is.

These are scampi.  They are a largish variety of shrimp with long, pointed claws.  You break off the tail and eat the meat inside.  It was served on a bed of spinach and zuchini.  Delicious.

This was the view from the table as we ate.  The wooded area beyond the boats is an island.

You can see the Italian influence.  Italy had control of the Istrian Peninsula after WWI, but Yugoslavia got it back after WWII .
Istria is famous for its truffles, a curious mushroom that grows underground.  The English use pigs to find and root them up.  Here in Istria, they use dogs.  They are very expensive and increasingly expensive.  We stopped at a little roadside stand and bought some local olive oil (another thing Istria is famous for: designer olive oils.  We got a bottle with garlic extract in it, and another bottle with truffle oil.
    We had one more stop to make.  Motovun is a little town that is still clustered around their old, medieval castle.  It is said to be worth the time to see it.

I took this photo as we approached it. 
    When we got to the base of the hill, we had to pay 20 kuna to park.  As we drove up the steep road, we got to the bottom of the town we noticed that lots of cars were parked along the road.  Then we got to a gate and found that only residents were allowed beyond that point.  Sadly, my knee is still healing and is not up to that kind of climb.  And Liz did not relish it either, so we turned around and went back down the hill and on to Opatija.

While driving, we got a phone call from Sister Melonakos.  It seems that Slovenia may loosen up their travel restrictions and allow us to go to Maribor.   We decided to pack up and go back to Zagreb to get our stuff.

Driving through Istria

For the first three months of our mission we lived in the flatlands of Croatia.  But Istria is mountainous.  The Croatian road department has been quite practical about how to handle it.  They simply level everything out.  They've built some big bridges, and for the rest they just go through.

Clearly, they were all bored by very large, identical machines.  There is one of these tunnels that is over 5,000 meters long, which is somewhat more than 3 miles.  The tunnels I've pictured here (except for the curved bridge) are all the same size.  Big enough for two lanes, with a nearby tunnel for the two lanes going the other direction.  But the 5,000 m. tunnel has four lanes in a huge tunnel.  There are fans mounted at the top of the tunnels, but that long one was not up to the task.  It stunk of diesel exhaust and other incidental hydrocarbons.  By the time we got to the end, we were SO happy to get out of the inside of that mountain.
    They have escape exits in even the shorter ones, and in at least one I noticed a little shrine built into the concrete abutment by one the emergency telephone.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Today, we put Hreljin Cemetery on the genealogy map.  We had hoped to have help for this, but Liz and I went to Hreljin and accomplished our task single-handed.  Or maybe with two of us, it was double-handed.  In any case, we photographed every gravestone in the cemetery.  We figure there were 800-900 of them.  They are crypts, so each one can hold up to seven coffins. 

This is one of the fanciest of the headstones.  There are four people in this crypt, all of them with the last name of Benac.
  There were also some very old crypts.  The oldest person I saw on them was someone born in 1824, died in 1919.  That was on a stone embedded into the back wall of the graveyard, on the opposite side from where Liz is standing in the photo below.  I think it must have been moved here from another location.  And did the body accompany the stone?  Was there a body left?  I don't know, but I photographed it anyway.

The oldest graves are at the far end of this photo, with modern ones at this end.
  We did our work using an App called "BillionGraves".  I had to add the cemetery before we started.  Then we took a photo, decided if it was keep-able, if not take a replacement, then marked "USE".  The photo is then saved, along with GPS coordinates, in a database that can be accessed by people all over the World.
  This next photo takes some explaining.  It is a memorial to WWII veterans.  I've never seen a sunken memorial like this before.

The grass on top of the memorial is at g round level, so you don't see anything at all from a few yards away.  There are three stairways down into the lower level, where the pedestal goes into a globe.  On the three sides between the staircases are three plaques.  This one has some peoples' names, including some Benacs who might be relatives.  There are some other familiar-to-family names, too.