Mog's Blog: Time to Come Back to Australia

Hello from Piran,

Apart from fixing up the kitchen (new stove and fridge) and visiting relatives not been doing much as the weather has deteriorated quite rapidly. For about a week we had a strong, blustery, north easterly wind here that they call "Burja" which is nothing like I have seen in Melbourne - and which is more prevalent and colder in winter! The other days have been cloudy and/or rainy but not too cold and in the apartment it hovers around 20 degrees no matter what the weather is outside (one of the advantages of these old stone buildings). Yesterday was a fantastic day but back to rain today and for most of this week so its probably time to come back and in fact I am back in about three weeks time!

But nevertheless some observations...

Tourists

Not as many about - particularly during the week but there are quite a number of tour groups that come to Piran etc. The tourists that do come are Germans, because it is a lot cheaper here for them (food and accommodation is probably 5-15 Euros cheaper here) and we have sea, and Italians because it is cheaper, close y and we have lots of casinos (or Portoroz has casinos) which are still restricted in Italy.

But anyway some of the Germans are hilarious: a group of five of them came on the local bus asking for a group discount! Another group were dipping their feet in the sea - obviously in-landers.

Just yesterday I was walking along and heard a noise like a big dog barking or a walrus - I looked around and in fact it was an Italian tourist blowing his nose.

Compression Clothing

I see a bit of daytime TV now and the number of ads for different types of compression clothing is amazing. There is compression corsets for women to make them look slimmer and even a compression T-shirt for men to look slimmer. I guess it beats exercising and dieting! Then there is my favourite; the compression socks. These are knee high and skin coloured and are supposed to relieve pain from sore legs (must be an old people thing). Anyway, one of the ads shows a man wearing these with shorts with the ad promoting that they can be worn with shorts and then showing a man wearing them with shorts. While that might be a correct statement of fact: that they can be physically worn with shorts - they in fact look hilarious with shorts; it looks like he is wearing stockings. All it does is identify to people that you are a dork. You have to see it to fully appreciate it.

Interesting People

I continue to find them. The latest is a beggar that appears to be stalking me. This woman's MO is to pretend to know you, shouting out to you, then asking for a "donation" for a bus fare or something. She did the same thing to me in completely different town! The ironic thing was that the 2nd time she did in fact know me and I said I didn't have the money and her response was that I did but didn't want to give her any (correct) but before I could say anything more she spotted another long lost friend.
On another occasion I saw a woman with her child who was wearing a yellow fluro vest. I guess the parent was very risk averse and didn't want to take any chances or she has misplaced the child before...
Then there was the cyclist who really enjoyed cycling as he was singing but not when he passed me - he resumed quite loudly when he passed me.

Chocolate and Doughnuts

As many of you are aware I like chocolate. However, I have not had as much here as most of is too sweet. I do like (and have for a long time) the chocolate coated biscuits which are called, quaintly, in the translation on the packet "tea biscuits" called Domacica manufactured by the Croatian chocolate company Kras (who according to the packet have a distributor in Sydney but I have not seen them in Australia). Also another alternative is ice cream as many restaurants have an ice cream stand with some interesting flavours such as: apple, pistachio, hazlenut, lemon...Then there are the doughnuts. These are similar to our jam doughnuts but are bigger and not fried but baked and they always have apricot jam in the centre and are sprinkled with icing sugar. And the apricot jam varies with the bakery, so it always tastes different. They also have them in Austria, and it is the pretty much the standard doughnut (occasionally you can get chocolate too).

And to finish, some more pictures....