Categories
in slovenia

one year in slovenia!


a few days ago we celebrated another year of this cultural immersion adventure, the fourth so far (1 in netherlands, 2 in china and now 1 in slovenia) and i don’t think we’ll stop our mission around the world any time soon… although slovenia has managed to charm us thoroughly! in fact, i can picture us settling down here, on a big house (all houses are gigantic around here) by the mountains, spending our days hiking, eating sausages and mushrooms and breathing in the fresh air with a mug of planinski tea or bela kava on our hands.

i’m almost wary of singing slovenia’s praises for fear that the country will be invaded by tourists, spoiling its magic. i’m not the only one thinking so – we’re like a league of secret slovenian admirers, speaking of the country as if it’s mythical (a bit like bielefeld conspiracy, I’ve heard…). seriously, when was the last time you heard of slovenia in the news? never? i rest my case. :P

right now, the first snows have fallen, and we’re eager to start enjoying the winter before packing the tent again and moving somewhere… north. after shanghai we craved quietness, pure air, nature. after slovenia, we’re craving a bustling city, events, cafés with internet. we’ll see. :)

Categories
links and ideas

public service by dan savage

“the clitoris… i know so much about it! it’s like a country i’ve never been to, but i’ve read every travel guide.
angor watangor twat i should call it!”

dan savage answers sex related questions live on events and on a column called savage love. it’s pure public service of setting records straight about sexuality in a frank, no-nonsense voice.

recently, he started it gets better, a project where he + his husband and hundreds of other people (including tim gunn, perez hilton or chris colfer) send lgbt teenagers a clear message:

Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.

i think this is a remarkable project. high school really is a tough time (and not only for lgbt teenagers), but it gets better for all of us, often just the moment high school ends. hang in there, it does get better.

Categories
just life links and ideas

101 things in 1001 days – second edition

it’s been over 1001 days since i made version one of my 101 things list… which didn’t go all that well. i did about 40% of the tasks, and reached some conclusions.
1001 days seemed like a lifetime 3 years ago, and so i sprinkled the list with wishful thinking and lots of travelling adventures… which ended up not happening (e.g. roadtrip coast-to-coast in the US). it turns out, our big travels are not conditioned by items in a list, but rather by whims and opportunities. it’s not that we travelled less, we just ended up choosing different places to go to – and that’s ok.
another thing i’ve learned is that things… change. i’ve lost interest on a lot of items (e.g. be better at iceskating) while others turned out not to be so compatible to our current circumstances (e.g. starting a compost pile). other things turned out better than i expected (e.g. instead of going 100% freelance, i work remotely).

all in all though, i liked the idea of having this big list with a set deadline – it didn’t shape my future, but it did focus me on certain goals. the second list took me a lot more time to draft, as i’ve struggled to remain more practical and make sure all the items are all “doable”. i really want to do better this time.

so, 101 fresh things for the next 1001 days:

  • Do the HSK intermediate
  • Make a pinhole & take some photos with it
  • Take calligraphy/handwriting lessons
  • Draw a font
  • Read 50 new books (half of which in portuguese)
  • Write 750 words for a month
  • Spend a week offline
  • Reach my goal weight
  • Be ok in snowboarding
  • Write 20 letters
  • Write/draw a small guide to Ljubljana/Slovenia
  • Research about Slovenia/Balkans history
  • Identify 10 different trees
  • Taste 30 different fruits
  • Taste 20 different cheeses
  • Try a autocaravan holiday
  • Visit a volcano
  • Fly on a glider
  • Learn how to scuba dive
  • Visit a mail sorting facility
  • Draw and get a tattoo
  • Visit a theme park
  • Volunteer
  • Do a photobook of our time in Slovenia
  • Try 25 different teas
  • Do a medical checkup
  • Go to the dentist
  • Draw a comic strip
  • Write 20 lists
  • Find 150 geocaches
  • Apply to the green card lottery november 2010
  • Visit 20 Unesco sites: historic areas of istanbul, october 2010
  • Fly a kite
  • Visit 15 different museums
  • Do 5 videos
  • Go to 20 concerts
  • Watch a sport event live
  • Climb 10 Slovenian mountains: tromeja, ratitovec
  • Hot air balloon ride
  • Go rafting/canoeing
  • Roadtrip in the EU: slovenia-austria-germany-netherlands, september 2010
  • Be halfway through our house goal fund
  • Move again
  • Do 20 surprises: bday parcel
  • Find out what I want to do related with stationery
  • Sponsor an artist on Kickstart
  • Make ice cream from scratch
  • Buy some Christmas lights to decorate
  • Do a secret art project in the city
  • Go see an opera
  • Go see a ballet
  • Sell something on etsy and use the money to buy something there
  • Go an entire month without eating out
  • Go an entire month without using a car (not even friend’s cars)
  • View all of Star Wars movies october 2010
  • Donate five dollars to wikipedia for each goal failed
  • Track the progress of every item on the blog
  • Fill my recipes notebook with recipes
  • Get a Fuji Instax and start documenting our life
  • Feel a baby kick inside a friend’s belly
  • Try to eat local for a week
  • Start laser hair removal
  • Take a cooking class
  • Use all the yarn I have
  • Design and print a postcard
  • Write something for a newspaper
  • Review 25 pieces of stationery
  • Lose the jumping habit
  • Try 20 different sodas
  • Go karting
  • Blog at least 3 times a week for 3 months
  • Put 200 meals on Foodspotting
  • Go see the sea organ in Zadar
  • Make 5 surprise breakfasts
  • Drastically reduce the amount of coffee I drink
  • Ride a ferris wheel
  • Carve a rubber stamp
  • Try sledding
  • Create an herb garden
  • Redesign meiadeleite.com
  • Host 10 people through Couchsurfing
  • Write a letter to someone once a week for 10 weeks
  • Learn to cook 10 new soups: mushroom soup
  • Design a tshirt
  • Fill a notebook with notes from books/articles
  • Straighten up the SS details + get EU health card
  • Get the surgery done
  • Do NaNowriMo (for the blog) once
  • Learn how to do sushi
  • Fix hanzillion and plan half a year of posts
  • Cook pad thai
  • Organize a tea swap
  • Track our calories for a month
  • Pick a holiday and go overboard on the celebrations
  • Make a cute bento box
  • Shoot only in black and white for a month
  • Ride a scooter
  • Buy a Dr. Seuss book
  • Try 10 different types of film
  • Buy something on a flea market
  • Try currywurst in Berlin

some of the things i’ve already completed while the list was still a draft, like watching the whole set of star wars movie (pfeeew!), but i’ve only started the official countdown a few days ago, so the new deadline is set for jul 30, 2013. wish me luck! :)

ps – if you’re thinking of doing one, head over to dayzeroproject.com for inspiration from other people’s lists!

Categories
foooood in slovenia

‘shrooms!

autumn is my favourite season. it’s cold, but not freezing, the leaves turn to gorgeous colors… but the best part is the food! there’s persimmons, roasted chestnuts, apples, hot chocolate, gluhwein here and there… and mushrooms!

portugal isn’t a very “mushroomy” country, and it was only when i left home that i started to realise there was more to mushrooms than the yellow-mushy-canned variety. since then we’ve been in a path to enlightenment, slowly discovering different varieties and flavours.

and then we came to slovenia and we were blown away. due to a perfect combination of forests, humidity and sun, this country is mushroom paradise! mushroom picking is something everybody seems to know about: which ones to pick, how to pick them, how to cook… it’s a national hobbie! it’s so popular that there’s a law forbidding any person to pick more than 2kg in a day!

on a recent hike with the ics club, we’ve learnt a couple of things about this art. first, everything red is a big no-no, potentially deadly, and there are a few deaths per year caused by ingestion of poisoning mushrooms. and when picking mushrooms you should never pull them up from the roots, instead cutting with a blade to preserve the crop.

here’s a sample of what we saw on that hike:


+10 points for slovenia! :D

Categories
in slovenia photography

a girl and her holga

i’ve recently passed the 100 photos on a girl and her holga – which for someone as disorganised as me, it’s a true feat :)
here are some of my recent favourites, a bit from all over slovenia:



(while posting, i’ve noticed the last 3 photos were taken in borders with other countries. in a country this small, you meet these invisible lines quite often :) )

i love the holga. it’s ultra-light, therefore perfect to carry everywhere on my bag. it doesn’t need batteries, which means less things to remember. it looks old at first glance, but once people touch it and realise it’s made of plastic, nobody takes it seriously. there are only 12 or 16 photos per roll, making you focus on what you want on each single picture. and it’s so simple and stripped of “options” that not much can go wrong.

adjust focus, shoot, advance film.

perfect.