Our second week in Nova Gorica began with supper at Jolly Pizza.  Mirjana Antic suggested two pizzas that were quite different. One had mushrooms and lettuce(thin,jagged leaf type) and the other  had anchovies,  pepperoni,and hot spices as well as little hot peppers (Dragon).  Henry and Nancy tried one anchovy and removed the rest.  They were very salty and strong. Mirjana's pizza was very good.  She was kind enough to share a bite.

This is Mirjana in her Russian car, a Lada, bought from her dad.

Here you are looking at two Fulbright scholars.  Dr. Valentina Tirk is a marine biologist who studied in San Diego.  She was in Nova Gorica to give a seminar about her research  in Piran, Slovenia, which is situated on the coast of the beautiful Adriatic Sea  She studies microorganisms that can cause mucous coagulations to form in the shallow basin region of the Adriatic.

Dr. Tina Tirk and Dr.Polonca Trebse are college friends and now science  collegues.  Dr. Trebse teaches and does research at the Polytecnic.  She and Dr. Mladen Franco arrange seminars for the graduate and undergraduate students in environmental sciences to broaden their knowledge of  scientific research methods and topics.

This is the large classroom where the talks are given.   This group includes several students that we got to know while Henry  taught his environmental course.  Many of the students commute from around Slovenia to Nova Gorica.  The area of  Slovenia is about the same as western Kentucky.  They just happen to have a few major mountain ranges distributed around.  Through the window about 2 miles away is Italy.

Here you see three scientists.  Dr. Polonca Trebse, Dr.Mladen Franko,and Dr. Gvido Bratino.  Dr. Bratino is a physicist and Drs. Trebse and Franko are chemists.

On Friday Jan.19th Henry, Nancy, and Boris Bluhker were accompanied to Gorizia, Italy by a new friend, Dr. Vida Zigman.  She has been walking or biking to Gorizia many years to shop for food, clothes, coffee(at sidewalk cafes), and also to attend cultural events.  She warned us that from12:30 to 3:30 and in some cases even until 4pm shops are closed and then reopened for business until 8pm. It is a sacred ritual that is not changed for any reason.  So we left at 3:15pm for our walk. It was sunny and warm. No 40 mph breeze.

This had been a convent, but now the outer walls are gone and on the ground floor in the right corner is a large restaurant with open air seating when the weather permits. Behind the car  is a garden for strolling and seats for resting.

This is a church converted into the police department.  The dark door at the left is a walkway for policemen and  for their  police bikes.  The building on the right has several shops in the bottom and apartments on the other floors.

This is large church on a plaza down the hill from the customs gate.  They were doing some reconstruction on the far side. This plaza was square rather than round.

This is an Italian castle that we can see from the Polytechnic.

This is the inside of a music school.  It was dark in the entry way, but this picture was painted on the walls and our flash was bright enough to show it.  We were told that Napoleon slept in this building on his march to Vienna.  We have a second shot of the  inner court, but it was full of concrete mixers and wood that made it quite unsightly.

This shows the pruned and shapely trees in front of a government building.  Notice how wide the sidewalk appears.  That is Vida Zigman beside Nancy.  This was a very pretty street lined with various kinds of shops, cafes, banks and at least one pharmacy.  We did have a cappucino outside under a three sided tent that had a heater, which unfortunately was off.  Boris left us at this point and went off to get  a train schedule.

It is now the evening of  Jan.19, and we have been taken by bus along with other patrons from the Kulturni Dom to a castle on a mountain northwest of Nova Gorica.  We went on hairpin curves in a full size bus and even crossed into and out of Italy before arriving at the Dobrovo Castle.  There were nearly fifty bus riders and  about 10 other people who arrived by car before the 8:15pm concert.  Everyone entered  the upstairs hall from a doorway in entry area.  It was somewhat chilly upstairs, but pleasant enough.  Nearly all of the audience kept their coats on.  Here you see the stage and piano.

Zoran Markovic played the contrabass, and Aleksandar Serdar, the piano .  They played  sonatas written by;  H. Eccles (Sonata v a-molu),  Beethoven (Sonatoa v A-duru,) and C. Franck (Sonata v A-duru). These men are members of the Ljubljana Symphony .  We spoke briefly after the concert with Mr. Markovic. Later we obtained the signatures of both for our memoirs.  It was a very enjoyable concert.

The lady from the Kulturni Dom requested our signatures on their guest book.  She was quite pleased that we had found out about the concert on her publicity board and had attended it.  The man in charge of the bus was looking for us so we were extremely glad we made it on time.  The week before we saw Catherine Deneuve in The Dancer in the Dark in the Kulturni Dom. After the movie we discovered that it was a 2000 release, which explained why she looked older than we had expected.

This is one table that shows what the reception food looked like for the muscians- a sweet pound cake, cheese, bread and bites of proscuitto.  We had a choice of fruit juices or wine.  The wine was Quercus that is made from grapes  raised  in the area around the castle.  That is an old carriage in black with red upholstry.  It was a very nice reception

Here is a better picture of Zoran and Aleksandar and an unknown woman.  The ride down the mountain was really thrilling.  We could see the lights of Nova Gorica.  The end of a very busy day and evening!!

On Saturday January 20, we set out for Postojna toward the east. We met Polonca who guided us to the  cave and met us afterward.  Here is an old train used to take visitors on a tour of the cave.  It was  cold and the wind "burja" had arrived.

The mighty "Vrshich Pass" crosser.  Now he is about to visit and compare our Mammoth Cave in Western Ky. with the most famous cave in Europe, Postojnska Jama.   The lizard tail on the railroad car represents one of the special animals in the cave. These reptiles are blind and are a beige color.   In the cave, about six of them displayed in a tank for two months  at a time. Due to problems on the learning curve, pictures of the cave will be seen next week.  Please stay tuned.

Lunch at the Trebse household.  The youngsters on the left are 8 years old Vid and 4 years old Liza,  Polonca, and her husband Tomaz.  This was the first course of the meal, a thick, tasty cabbage  soup.  Tomaz  does quite a bit of the cooking.  He had prepared a pork roast that melted in our   mouths, mashed potatoes, and a salad of red lettuce.  We haven't seen much of the  lettuce that is eaten in the U.S.. We are having lessons in different tasting greenery.

An aspect which made this visit  special  was the opportunity to see a single dwelling home with a  yard.  It had been Polonca's home growing up, but after father died, her mother agreed to share the home with them.  Mama lives in a separate upstairs area, which has its own kitchen, bath, and tv. The  family of four live in a part that has both downstairs and upstairs rooms.  Polanca and Tomaz have had some remodeling done to the kitchen -dining area, living room, and the two children's bedrooms.  They appreciate having a dishwasher.  The refrigerator is in the right corner behind Tomaz .  They have much smaller refrigerators and unless people have a separate freezer there is none.  They buy food every few days and not too much at one time.

For dessert, Polonca brought out a tray of  her mother's sweet goodies and apple strudel made from apples in the yard.  Delicious!!  The caramel colored balls on the right are made from ground nuts and flour cooked and then put together in a ball.  A wonderful ending to a super meal.

Here is an official family portrait by the notable Henri.  We went home and printed one for them, but Tomaz had blue hair. A new  cartridge gave him back his brown hair.  He sells filters for liquids such as beer and pharmaceutical preparations for a German firm.  He speaks more German than English, whereas Polonca does the opposite  He is  from the  Bovec area north of Nova Gorica.  .

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