Down in the Valley

Mental Meandering:  Yesterday, I was thinking about the fact that 100 years ago, one would travel to a foreign country and the people of an ethnic group would look similar, have similar physical characteristics (which is some of what led to prejudice).  That is how stereotypes of certain ethnic groups emerged:  Hungarians, Spaniards, Italians, Swedes, Turks, Japanese, different tribes of Africa, Russians, etc.  But, after many years of inter-marriage and migration, people mainly tend to look the same everywhere.  Granted, there are more people with darker-colored skin in Africa, and more dark-haired people in Hungary, but the edges have softened and we are only left with the stereotypes.  If we drop those and actually look at the people of different countries, they look exactly the same as if you were walking down the street where you live.  Even much fashion is the same.  It is sad in that many ethnic groups are losing their culture and heritage, but good in that there will hopefully be fewer wars, hatred, and prejudice.  That, of course, leads me to the forms on which you need to mark ethnic group.  Many people do not even know their ethnic origins unless they have thoroughly researched their family tree.  But even then...you just never know.  There needs to be a box which says multi-ethnic, and I bet that would have a lot of check marks.  And how do you know which box to mark if you are from several different ethnic groups?  Does the blond child with blue eyes whose mother was half African-American and whose father was caucasian mark African-American or caucasian?  And, more importantly, does it matter?  Then, of course, is the tracking of test scores, graduation rates, job quotas, etc. based on ethnic group, and how true is that?  Well, anyway, back to Slovenia.

Today we went to a valley in the mountains--Logarska Dolina.  It is a type of national park.  There are many places to stay once you enter the park, but no “towns” of any type.  To get there, we were even in Austria for a short period of time and passed right through the pre-EU border control areas without a soul in sight.  We drove by way of scenic by-roads to get there.  Some had room for two cars to pass, some did not.  Also, most were switchbacks--heading up and down the mountains with tight turns.  And our rental car--an Opel with a toy engine.  It did not go up the mountains easily (we need a running start to get out of our driveway at our apartment).  We turned off the air conditioning and stayed in the lower gears and went faster than we normally may have to get up the mountains.  We had a few near misses.  Another weird thing here--kamikaze motorcyclists.  They pass everyone (even in no passing zones) and take chances that could be dangerous.  I have noticed that they usually wear helmets, however.  There are signs all over warning motorcyclists of falling off their motorcycles on the curves.  

Back to today.  The road was harrowing at times, but lovely.  Even the time we had to wait for a digger truck to move out of the way for us to pass and try to find our way back to the main road up ahead (he had that section torn up in piles of dirt).  And he didn’t speak English when we asked him.  Several times we had to guess which way, because they don’t always label the roads very well and the maps Randy had downloaded before we left were small on his iPod and details such as “turn by the cute stream and the house with the blue shutters” aren’t on there.  At the park, we drove to the end through the cool, shaded roads through the woods.  At the end, we got out and hiked (up again) to see the waterfall.  At the waterfall, you can walk right up to the bottom of it.  It is very windy and cold and wet there.  My sunglasses were continually covered in drops of water and I had trouble catching my breath if I opened my mouth.  Annie and I crossed a rickety bridge to see it from further away and got some nice photos as well.  At one point, the wind blew so hard, that it blew the stream of the waterfall sideways, so that the water curved, caught between wind and gravity.  Annie found a snake, and Randy and the children climbed up high above the path to see the waterfall from a rocky ledge above (I was done climbing up).  Then we left the park and wanted to find an area to have a picnic lunch that was shady and had a view.  We found a place with one of the criteria--a meadow with a killer view of the mountains.  After lunch, we continued on even more rustic roads, even stopping once to fill our water bottles at a water place with water from the mountains, channeled through a wooden pipe flowing and falling down into a wooden trough.  Good, cold water.   

Most of the houses in this area of Slovenia appear very Austrian or Swiss.  Since we are so close to Austria, maybe that is the reason.  They are built of red, hollow, clay bricks which are then stuccoed. The air provides a small amount of insulation.  We saw so many piles of firewood cut up and stacked (very evenly) by the houses in the mountains--the small amount of insulation from the bricks must need some help up here in the mountains during the winter--every one was getting a good supply in.  And cutting and baling hay--a lot of that as well.  Most of them were raking the hay (smaller fields than we see in Minnesota) into a line, then using a baler.  Some of the farmers use drying racks to dry their hay first.  All of the churches have the same type of bell tower as the one in the church in “The Sound of Music.”  

We came back to the apartment then on the motorway for a rest before dinner.