April 2007

April 2007.

Well, you all know I'm trying to find a new country to teach in every year. I don't always succeed, and it's quite often I have to go for a default. For quite sometime I've been thinking about Slovenia as a place I'd be happy to be in, not exactly knowing why it seemed to attract my attention. I spent a week in Slovenia at Easter, and here are my impressions.

To begin with, let's look at some measurements… A person who comes from one of the smallest countries upon earth, instantly feels at home in Slovenia, which covers around 21,000 sq. km, and is just slightly bigger than Israel. The population is staggeringly small – around 2,000,000.

There seem to be very few minorities, and even though I haven't yet checked it, I believe it wasn't one of those horrendous places where Jews were deported from to death camps in their millions. I hope I'm not showing enormous ignorance here. I've come to realise it DOES make a difference, in quite a few ways, after spending some time in Poland and Hungary.

The landscape is promising, especially the Julian Alps, in the north west. I travelled around the mountains with my good old friend Israel Guvrin, and the lakes, the snow capped mountains, the lush green valleys, and the very minimal Slovenian seashore on the Adriatic, were all superb. Ljubljana, the capital, is located in the centre, which means one can get

to any place in Slovenia in a matter of 2 hours or so…., Therefore spending weekends in the countryside seems feasible, since you don't have to drive for hours in order to get anywhere,

like in big countries as Hungary, not to talk about Poland. Also, the country is close to some very interesting neighbouring countries, like Croatia and Montenegro on the one hand, and Italy on the other.

I spent another four days in the capital on my own, splitting my time between calling on language schools, and strolling around the city. I actually visited around 10 schools, handing in my CV and reference...