KROFI

Krofi seems to be the official donut of Slovenia, and now it is the official donut of our family.

You can find them on every street corner, in every bakery window. And they are hard to resist with lots of powdered sugar, barely sweet bread, and a delicious apricot filling.

Walked to find the Vegetarian restaurant today (there are two in town), and it was quite lovely, with good food, and a beautiful interior.

27 Euros for five -- that's 40 dollars.

It is striking how much Jia stands out here. She is the only Asian we have seen yet, anywhere, and everywhere she is stared at, at length.

It is similar to taking a blonde child to China, though no one has asked for photos of her!

Luckily, she is not old enough to notice. We have an appt. with the Embassy Monday in order

to see about school for her, and maybe the others as well. I am confident that Jia can go to a Slovene school and enjoy it. Otherwise, she is a bit bored here with all the walking, and touring, and architecture awing.

The other two like it all though and are finding lots to do without a school.

Hippolyta (as Avery has renamed herself here in Slovenia) is convinced that she

was meant to be born Slovenian,

and Hollin, (Garrett's newfound Slovenian name) is readying to buy a bike, in order to find some freedom from the 300 sq feet -- and, I am sure, in order to explore the Erotica Shop next to our apt, as well as all the other rather

explicit stores that dot the city's landscape. He got his first clue about Europe's comparative sexual openness

on the plane, and has been interested ever since. In the seat pocket of Adria Airlines, there was a government sponsored Slovenian tourism magazine where one of the sections was on sex shops. He remains intrigued. Tonight he asked me, "Mom, what will I do with that Erotica Shop right next door?"

That was easy, I told him he and his dad can frequent it, just as Hippolyta and I plan on frequenting "Salon" - the upscale and simply beautiful restaurant and vitamin bar just across the street.

But what stands out the most in the last two days is the food. The fruits and vegetables seem to have

at least twice the flavor as compared to ours in the States. Even the organic food in Asheville does not completely compare. Carrots, tomatoes, pomegranants, beets, onions, pears, apples and oranges are what we have

tried thus far. The produce from the little Mercato (government owned version of the stop-n-go on every corner) as well as that from the big outdoor, more expensive market, is all good. We can't stop talking about the flavor difference, and in winter time too.

Hum, is it the lack of use of artificial fertilizers here? Closer to the Mediterranean? Don't know.

And finally, eventhough everyone seems to speak English, and well, we have decided to learn Slovenian at a close by language school. We start Monday.

"Gutentag" is how everyone greets us. Clearly, they think we are German. Then, when we look clueless, they soon go to "Parlais vous Francais?". Today, we got so befuddled with all the languages at the market (where fewer people speak English and more speak German, Hungarian, and Italian) that we just starting calling out numbers in any language in order to get our Clementines (kind of as a family joke since we know the numbers in 10 languages, but nothing else). I called out Ba for seven in Chinese, and Jia suddenly, and very seriously, yelled out "no mom, that's eight, you mean Liu", ---as if they would have noticed. Obviously, Chinese is the ONE language no one does know here.