IT'S 145 O'CLOCK IN BEAUTIFUL SLOVENIA!

We are getting to know our son's adoptive country, and as helicopter parents with a first grandchild on the way, we expect to be spending increasing amounts of time here. Even though it's a seven-hour drive from our Italian home, this will not be such a sacrifice. This is a beautiful place that feels exotic to us, and about which we still have plenty to learn.

For example, just outside our charming B&B, the church bells go bonkers with something like regularity. They seem to go into overdrive at quarter of the hour, and they like to get an early start.

A few minutes ago, at 8:45AM, I counted 145 bongs. That must mean that it's 145 o'clock, and all is well. Or could it mean that once the bonging stops, we have only 10 minutes to get to 9AM mass?

We are a family of theorists who likes to think there's a method even to things that look like madness. We  have a family saying for when we have no idea what might be behind any given phenomenon:"that would be due to ....something." It was invented by J, who is very smart and understands a lot of things. But even when he doesn't, that doesn't stop him. Who doesn't like to think that there could be an explanation for why things happen ?

He couldn't believe that I was actually in bed counting all 145 of those bell bongs. Of course I could have been wrong about that number, since some were more elaborate than others, making it hard to decide what constituted a single bong.

As for what it all means (besides no more sleep for YOU), that remains to be pondered.

Maybe at 9:45 I will get another clue?

Perhaps the playwright Eugene Ionesco visited here, too. His "La Cantatrice Chauve" ("The Bald Soprano") opens with a very cuckoo English clock that bongs 3 English times, at which Mrs. Smith declaims, "Goodness, it's 9 o'clock!" A bit later, the very English clock bongs 7 times, then 3, then 5. 

 If the time is out of joint, what next? It's all a bit unsettling, but that would certainly be due to something. 

Slovenia is always beautiful, but especially so in winter.

A playful surrealistic touch in downtown Ljubljana

 When I first saw this stuff hanging in the distance, I thought they were using oddly-shaped sausages as holiday decor. (Food obsessed? Moi?)

A closer look shows that the designer went to the Imelda Marcos School of Street Decor Design.

J would like to see my saddle shoes from fifth grade--the most comfortable ones I own (and also the best ventilated due to the strategically placed holes)--strung up here, but I can't give them up. Ionesco would have LOVED it here!

Here's a shoeless winter view of downtown.