7/31/16 Kranj Mountain range, Slovenia
What is a person, and how does one communicate with one? Dropping into a seat at a kitchen table in a Slovenian farmhouse, nothing is taken for granted but the human connection and the direct information it carries. The look of warmth or lack thereof in our host’s eyes. The tone with which he speaks. His English is good, but his tone is constantly flat, as if he were bored or defeated. Later it is revealed that he had heart surgery and wears a pacemaker, so he cannot climb the mountains anymore. Still he knows every trail on every peak and gives perfect advice patiently, in an even tone. His breath and therefore his mind has only one speed.
One night, in that voice, he insists that some countries should not have democracy. I have heard that before. I’m a big fan but don’t think there is anything sacred about democracy. He says Gaddafi was perhaps not good for his people but was good for the EU. When Hitler was in power there was sugar. Mussolini with the trains on time. Saddam Husain. I can see where this is going. Here in Slovenia they had maybe the only example of a benevolent communist dictator holding Yugoslavia together. When Tito died in the 80s, civil war and genocide followed. Now safely in the EU, Slovenia looks to Germany for a role model, like a war orphan looking for a parent.
Germany had its genocidal tendencies famously bombed out of it in the 20th century, while the Balkans genocides were suffered and resolved internally with reluctant UN & NATO involvement. These people are famous for avowing a complete lack of understanding of what happened when asked by foreigners. One day our children play together and the next I am watching you and your family marched down the street. Racism runs as deep here as the water in the porous limestone Karst. Things don’t move across the surface, they move underground.
I learned that when it is difficult to get a job in the Slovenian countryside, you don’t go away to the city, you stay and wait for the jobs to come back. Your family has been here on this land 400 years. You are as much a part of this place as the church bell. The genocide, the revolution, the EU, are nothing. There are secrets here, family secrets, older than the EU, older than the United States of America. Everybody here knows a part of them, so when they shrug their shoulders they are lying, which is not a sin when done for tourists. But I think I see in my host’s eyes the tacit approval for things that have happened or may happen yet. In spite of this I am enthusiastically approving of the pear-brandy his family makes in January, of the strange and simple breakfast.
My wife and daughter and I sit at the family table watching his mother make Strukli. I had asked him if it would be possible to learn some cooking from his family, and they invited us into their home. We are videoing it so we can make it at home in homage to our trip and the people we met, and because it is so similar to things my Mennonite grandmother made. As he carefully expresses his thoughts, his wife looks anxiously up many times, giving me the sense that, were he to truly break the surface, we might need to find another place to sleep.
It comes out of the steamer hot, sticky, filled with walnuts and honey. Its covered with more honey and hot bacon fat. I wash it down with pear brandy. I can tell this is going to stay with me a while.
