Thursday, November 1st, 2007 - Day 1 in Ljubljana, Slovenia

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Ok, time to get back into this. Today is going to be quick, some photos from our first day in Slo with Brooke.

Brooke lives with another Missionary named Hailey in an apartment inside Ljubljana (Loo - blee - ahna, the capital of Slovenia, the northern-most country of former Yugoslavia: here's a good map http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/images/europe/slovenia.jpg). Sarah stayed with the girls, and I stayed with Daniel Psaute who is the Coordinator of Nazarene missions in Slovenia, and Johnny - another missionary and Brooke's new fiance - across town.







Got up that morning and Brooke, Sarah, and I walked into the town square to head up to the castle. They were repaving the square; on the hill behind these workers you can see the castle up at the very top. The bridge just to the right of that white tent is the bridge you see in this photo below, which I took back in 2005.

From the castle we had a great view of Ljubljana and the surrounding countryside.

More of Ljubljana...

That afternoon/evening we went outside of the city to take some engagement photos of Johnny and Brooke. Beautiful, beautiful country. Also, because it was All Saints Day, every church was ringing the bells all day... and there were little churches EVERYWHERE. At first, cool. After 2,723 rings, shouting at each other above the noise... kind of annoying.

The culture in Slovenia (and most of Eastern Europe from what we saw) does not really celebrate Halloween much. But during All Saints, there are a number of really cool traditions we were able to see. One is eating copious amounts of roasted chestnuts... more on that later. Another is the lighting of these candles for deceased family members. Each candle is placed inside a red plastic vase and set around the chapel in a cemetery (like this photo) or at the actual grave (see below).

One problem with this tradition is that the candle eventually melts the plastic enough for it to touch the flame, then it catches on fire. They place lots of little water pots around so you can douse a vase if it catches on fire.... but the whole place smells like burning plastic.

I will probably get cancer from all those dioxins. But hey! That's what traveling is all about........ crazy Slovene dioxins.

More tomorrow!