Mog's Blog: The Slovenian Coast

Hello again. The weather seems to have "cooled" off in the last couple of weeks. Still warm and sunny - high 20s - but not as humid, and a little bit more wind about. Summer may be on the way out (or am I getting used to it?). Off to Austria next week to do some walks in the mountains, so will do another blog then.

In the meantime I have been doing some local walks, including from Izola (town up the coast) to Piran (very scenic, see the pictures below).

But inevitably a few tales to tell...

Visitors to Piran
Over the last few months, as well as the usual tourists, there have been quite a number of summer camp youth groups staying in Piran (who appear to be mainly Austrian or Eastern European). You can tell as they make them wear brightly coloured scarves around their necks (like scouts). They stay in the numerous hostels here (and unfortunately one is nearby to me). Their major activity seems to be aimlessly walking around Piran making noise - they literally are a travelling cloud of noise (I guess that enables the parents to go on their holidays). But it's the people staying at the hostels which particular irritate me. They appear to think that Piran is some sort of amusement park or museum. They don't seem to realise that people, live, work and sleep in Piran. They take up residence in front of people's houses, sometimes sitting on any available steps, and have these, what appear, to be very in depth and animated discussions. Then there are the tourists that walk down the narrow lanes in Piran like zombies - completely oblivious to the existence of anything or anyone else (even me who is trying to get past).

Dogs
Tourists insist on bringing their dogs when visiting or staying in Piran - a few locals have dogs but it is not particularly dog friendly as it is an old medieval town with narrow lanes, multi-storied houses (with no backyards) and little (green) open space. So inevitably they whiz and poo on people's front doors, rubbish left out for collection etc. and the tourists don't seem to care or see. I wonder whether they would tolerate that in their own neighbourhood? It's got so bad that the main streets are regularly washed now.
One day when walking down the coast, one of them had three dogs and was throwing something into the sea for them to jump in and retrieve. Obviously, the owner found this more entertaining than the dogs who, as I was walking past, refused to jump in again. One of the dogs even came towards me and looked at me in the hope that I would offer an alternative land based activity to entertain it. I felt sorry for disappointing it.
Don't get me wrong, I like dogs - I just don't like other peoples' as they usually don't seem to like me (I have been bitten once and chased a couple of times).

Interesting People
Waiting in queues you come across interesting people. At the post office one day I was standing behind a grandmother who was wearing a baseball cap (madeof of jean material) with "honky" written on the front in sparkly writing - she was wearing it backwards. Yes. Then in the supermarket I was behind one of the town alcoholics who was negotiating with the shop assistant for a lower price for the alcohol he was buying as he didn't have enough money (at 8am in the morning).

Another First
My intercom for my apartment doesn't work or so I thought. One day it went off for the first time, so I went downstairs to see whether it really was the intercom as I have never heard it before. Standing at the front door were four men: three of which were police. That's a first. I thought they were going to check my passport or something but instead they were looking for a stolen phone which the owner (who was the fourth man) had tracked down via GPS to the location. They couldn't get much sense out of me so they buzzed one of the other neighbours who was able to better help them. Later I saw them at an adjacent house where they jumped through an open window (it is usually opened). No idea whether they found the phone. Many of the apartments on the other side of the countyard/garden are holiday apartments.

Public Transport
It never fails to deliver entertainment value. On one occasion the bus driver had a horrendous trip, and the horn blowing, heavy breathing and abuse coming out of his mouth increased progressively throughout the trip from Koper to Piran (about a one hour trip). First, there were the three Italians that held him up when he was late leaving Koper. One of them had completely the wrong bus. It only got worse when at just about every bus stop a car was parked blocking him, and then there were the cars blocking him while they maneuvered into car parking spaces. I think everyone was glad when we got to Piran as physical violence was on the cards for the next person getting in his way.
Then on another bus ride an Italian got on with beanie and hoodie over his head (to top matters off his hoodie had sort of a floral design). It was a sunny and warm day, being 25. Fears of skin cancer?
And then there was the woman who got up and pressed the buzzer after the bus driver passed her stop (more like an bus interchange) and complained that he didn't stop at her stop. The driver responded by saying that if you don't press the buzzer or stand up how am I supposed to know you want to get off. She really didn't have a response.
Tourists lack of planning continues to astound me. I caught the bus two days in a row and at the same stop and time there were tourists asking whether the bus was going to Ljubljana, apart from the fact that the bus stop has a timetable, the next bus leaves almost 2 hours later. This is not a State secret. Plus there was some Americans that tried asking for a group discount (four of them) on the bus, it's usually the Germans that try that one. Slovenia must be really expensive for them.

Olympics
The coverage has not been great here because of the time zone and coverage being limited to the main government stations (not sports channels) in Slovenia, Austria, Germany and Italy, so they only show the main things that interests them. But I did note some interesting names representing Poland, Netherlands, Austria, Qatar and Germany in table tennis: Liu, Li, Li Jie, Li Ping, Y. Han.
I noticed many of the Brazilian track athletes wearing bright green arm warmers, didn't really work for them did it. The Japanese athletes with their bright fluro red/pink tops was obviously meant to make some sort of statement too. I noticed quite a number of Kenyan born long distance athletes representing Brunei. I wonder what lured them to live in Brunei: the climate; its safety;or the pile of money they were probably paid by the government to represent the country?
And what's with the biting of medals for photographs all about?
It was also an interesting thing the Brazilians did this time with the diving pool, making it green instead of the usual blue. Slovenian TV referred to it as being more like a fish pond.
The different approaches of countries winning medals is very interesting. I noticed on British Sky TV they were tracking the progress of their medal count against what was projected before the Games they would win whereas in Slovenia any medal of any description is celebrated as a day of national triumph.

Any finally, the pictures....