As you probably know, in two weeks, half of the class (including myself) will be in Slovenia. So I
decided to talk a bit about this country, either to prepare you for the trip or
just to give you some more information about this country (yes, I know that the
only things Slovenia evokes to you are the bears !).
The
Republic of Slovenia is a relatively small country (around 20,000 km2)
located in Central Europe. It is surrounded by Italy, Austria, Hungary and
Croatia, and the Adriatic Sea. There are almost 2,100,000 inhabitants in
Slovenia, 300,000 of them living in the capital city : Ljubljana. It's
part of the European Union (and the eurozone), and is a developed country with
an HDI of 0.896 : Slovenia ranks 25th, just after France! 40 % of
this country is mountainous - there are the Alps and the Dinarides. To conclude
this brief presentation of modern-day Slovenia - and as it is REALLY important
to know ;) - I'd like to say the climate is mostly continental ! I hope
that you get the reference...
Now some history. It had been part of ex -
Yugoslavia for 70 years, when there was a movement for its independence in the
late 90s. After some struggles it succeeded and went from a Soviet country
(since WWII) to a parliamentary republic. It thus avoided the violent Yugoslav
Wars. It is now led by the centre-left president Borut Pahor. It’s also
interesting to know that most Slovenes are Catholics.
As
said earlier, Ljubljana is the capital city of Slovenia, but it’s also the
largest (160 km2) … and where
we're going ! It's situated right in the middle of Slovenia. It was named
European green capital in 2016 and has a beautiful natural landscape ! Its
symbol is a dragon.
Here
is some technical information to know : there's no time difference, there's
currently a temperature of 15°C in Ljubljana and to make a call from France to
Slovenia you need to put +386.
I
hope that now you know more about this country and I think that you're fully
prepared to go to Slovenia ! I'm really looking forward to going
there !
Nasvidenje !
(Goodbye !)
Augustin
I've been doing some research too Augustin! I dont know if you know but Slovenia actually has the most visited caves in Europe: the Postojna caves, i hope that Mr Larique will take us there because they look AMAZINGLY COOL !
ReplyDeletei am very excited as you can see sooooo....bring on the adventure !
IRENA
Yeah I think I've had the chance to notice how passionate you are about these caves xD But they indeed look great, I hope you'll get to visit them :D
DeleteNo I didn't know Irena but yeah they look cool !!!!
Delete"yes, I know that the only things Slovenia evokes to you are the bears !" Actually, no. The first thing that I think of when I hear "Slovenia" is "SLAVIC BROTHERS" and then "Send Maraaya to Eurovision again, you fools" C: Also I love how "goodbye" in Slovene and "goodbye" in Russian are almost the same, it just shows how connected and close Slavic languages are (but the people that speak them though... eeeeeh not so much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ buuut this is irrelevant and boring so I won't write a full text about it - although I could, because trust me, there is much more going on in the beautiful Slavic world than just the Russia/Ukraine conflict, but whatever).
ReplyDeleteYour comment made me laugh a lot! No I think you could talk about this in your post ! That would be interesting. But maybe you would have too much to write ! ;)
DeleteNah I think I'll talk about something else, because I already talk waaaay too much about Eastern Europe and I'm afraid to bore you all to death lol
DeleteVery interesting and pertinent article, Augustin! And although what first comes to mind when I think of Slovenia is actually Melania Trump, I thought your article talked about several pieces of practical information which, consequently, most people reading your article might actually be interested in before going to Slovenia!
ReplyDeleteAnd although I am personally not going there, I wish you and the rest of the people going a good trip!
-Emma P.