Beside the Seaside

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In Which Everything Is As Sweet As

August 19, 2008 by Mike

Ankaran

I don't say this lightly, because I'm talking about a country that I think is as wonderful as any I've ever been, but.. Slovenia reminds me of New Zealand.

(I have to point out that I've only seen a few miles of the former, and not that much more of the latter. But several years as a journalist and many more as an Englishman have taught me to form instant impressions about Abroad and then stick to them forever, however duff they turn to to be.)

Slovenia -- the half of its coastline that I've seen -- is neat and clean and tidy -- houses and farms and towns and villages and fields are all little boxes that fit snugly and happily together. It manages to be a small country that's still too big for its population. It's green -- gentle valleys are wooded, hillsides are wooded, the coastline is wooded. It feel comfortable. Great tarmac. The people are polite (even the drivers -- despite being so close to Italy) and smile and are all, without exception, good-looking.. but they look like they might have a bit of grrrrrrrr and whoaaaah to them too.

You can see, perhaps, why I make a comparison to New Zealand (or the tiny bit of New Zealand I've seen.)

Ironically, I expected to be making NZ comparisons when I get to Croatia, for personal reasons -- and doubtless will. Watch this space.

Back to Slovenia: it's in the European Union, in case you didn't know (I did), and the Euro Zone (this I didn't know -- much to my embarrassment when I tried to change money) and it's a part of the former Yugoslavia. Being a sporty lot, they do very well in the Olympics as long as you count medals per capita. One of the seminal Industrial/ Noise bands of the 80s named themselves after the German name for their capital city.

Apart from that, what do you know about Slovenia? I did some research before I started the trip, and came up with:

- there are approximately 31 km of coastline in Slovenia;
- there are approximately 31,000 registered alcoholics in Slovenia.

Not much to go on, I know, but that does mean.. approximately.. a metre of coastline for every alcoholic in the country. To my knowledge, no political party has adopted this as a campaign policy, but they might reasonably assume to get at least 31,000 votes if they did. In a country this size, might that not be enough to win a parliamentary majority? You heard it here first.

To which, on my first morning waking up in the place, I can now add that it's sunny and warm in August, the campsites are full of Germans and Italians (of course) but also Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and Poles.

It's a country jam-packed with supermarkets, most of them branded yellow-and-green. Pleasepleaseplease never ask me how far out of my way I went to take this picture as proof:

Tourist offices are not only open here (again, contrast with Italy) but full of colourful, well-written and professionally produced literature in a range of languages - including English. That's English, mind, as opposed to 'a language of which shorting-cut is to be translate part of internet to be used not goodness in what understanded is not'.

In a booklet called Taste Slovenia, part of the 'I Feel Slovenia' campaign, I read that amongst the 31 or so recognisably Slovenian dishes there are about 20 different breads. There is Funšterc, Špehovka, Matevž, Mavželj and Mežerli. Vipava Štruklji, Štruklji Wljkava, Karst Zašinek, Žvarcet, Frtalje, Cvrče, K'p'rouc, Tržič Bržola and Prekmurje Bograč. ("There is," the pamphlet notes with pride, "an annual bograč cooking competition".) Also, that a society "for the recognition of roast potatoes as a dish on their own has been active in Ljubljana since 2002."

I skipped breakfast, and headed back to Trieste. I've been looking forward to this almost as much as Venice.

Although its hinterland is either Slovenia itself or mostly Slovenian but still part of Italy thanks to the politicians, and for much of its history it has been a part of Austria, Trieste itself has always been a largely Italian-speaking city. Except when it was a Latin-speaking Roman city. In other words, it makes sense that it is in modern Italy, unless you look at it on a map.

Back-pedal a moment to the idea of Trieste as Austrian -- way back when Austria was an Empire of many languages and peoples, nationalities and indeed nations ruled by Vienna. Despite its wealth, its culture, its vast territories across central and eastern Europe, Austria's only access to the sea was here at the head of the Adriatic. It made sense to be Austrian then, as long as 'Austria' reached down to Venice, say, and included Slovenia and the nearest bits of Croatia.

But it was Austria's only stretch of coast -- and we, gathered here besidetheseaside can all agree that the coast attracts a strange kind of person. *cough*

Tip the Austrian Empire on its head and shake vigourously - all the loose bits would fall through the cracks and settle at the bottom: Trieste.

So this city was a mighty Mitteleuropean melting pot - Italians and Slovenes and Croats and Austrians and Hungarians and Jews and Greeks and Roosians; sailors and entrepreneurs and runaways and diplomats and chancers and James Joyce and Richard Burton and spies and poets and rapscallions and dreamers; Ladbroke Grove-By-The-Sea; who wouldn't want to live in a place like that?

Jan Morris wrote a celebrated homage to Trieste.

(I continue on the assumption that you have read it because you, dear reader, have shown an interest in travel-writing by yr very presence and Nobody Should Read Any Travel Writing Until They Have Read Jan Morris.)

Thanks to Morris, I knew to visit " target="_blank">the Obelisk for a view over the city -- though the view is now hidden by a raggedy line of unkempt trees that nobody has thought to trim back. She also pointed the way to the Grand Canal - " target="_blank">not very grand, in truth, to someone recently arrived from Venice. I even made a bee-line to the Cafe San Marco, because she does - but it was closed for the holidays. For a month! The whole cafe! For the whole of August! Yes! I mean No!

Gah -- the truth is, Trieste disappointed me. Hugely, because I had invested so much hope in the idea of the place only to find the reality could not match it. The tristesse of Trieste that lured Joyce and Morris was washed away by unfettered ordinariness of the place. There's a Maritime Museum and a City Museum. I wanted them to infect me with a sense of the place. They were both closed for the day. There's an old saw about travel being all about the *people* not the places.. so I tried, I really tried, to find something in the faces of the Triestinians. No good. No melting pot. No mish-mash. No character. No (hi)stories in the faces, as they marched to meetings or in and out of shops or idled along the waterfront. I InterRailed then hitched in the Balkans so long ago they were still Yugoslavia and Soviet-era Bulgaria. I can still remember the faces -- and more specifically, the moustaches -- of old men sat at a cafe in Zagreb. Their clothes, too, spoke of traditions and values that had survived the horrors of the 20th century. All this, I wanted to find again in Trieste, but Benetton don't stock the hats, coats or facial hair of that time and place.

I was re-reading Morris' "Trieste", of course, sitting in a cafe -- not a great Viennese coffee house like San Marco's, but not a ubiquitous American chain either. I toyed with my espresso.

The city flourished only when the Austrians decided to make it their great port in the 18th century: the unique quality of the place for her, if I may try to paraphrase, has much to do with the loss of that power when the city became, not Austria-Hungary's great port, but Italy's fourth- or fifth-biggest port -- and too close to Venice to develop new, hungry markets of its own. It is, that word again, the tristesse of loss, of ageing, the transience of place an echo of our own temporary occupation of this world.

But Morris aches for a past, hauntingly beyond her reach, that she confesses is thoroughly bourgeois. Fancy clothes and fancier manners. Grand parties and titled ladies and whispered asides. Viennese society. Viennese - yuck. All those fussy little cakes, twirly and creamy and delicate. Too saccharine for me.

In fact, Trieste made the most of its receding maritime influence by developing a new speciality: insurance. I mean -- yawnsville or what? I'm from Norwich, don't forget. I grew up in the shadow of Norwich Union. Parents round our way use Norwich Union like your parents used the bogeyman: "If you don't finish your greens, you'll end up working for Norwich Union.. If you don't clean your room/ do your homework/ pass your exams, it's a lifetime in the Claims Department for you.." The horror.

That this should happen to Trieste...?

And so I leave Italy, disappointed once more. The driving. The litter. Berlusconi. The state-sanctioned racism. The casual racism. The rudeness. The shit-caked 'toilets'.. and the lack of toilet paper. The queues. The selfishness. The disrespect. 'Entertainment' in campsites. Corruption. The world's worst pedestrians. THE SHOUTING. The wilful ignorance. Catenaccio. The television. The tolerance of organised crime. Religious intolerance. Religion.

And now, to add to that sad list, Trieste. It's probably fitting.

Which is a crying shame, because if I could only overlook all those unmissable signs of a country that hasn't grown up and simply doesn't deserve what it's got, this place that has frustrated and infuriated and above all bewitched me more than any other country in the last two years, I'd live there in a flash, and the list of things that make Italy utterly wonderful is ten-times as long.

Beside the Seaside

In Which Everything Is As Sweet As

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