Ljubljana Quotes

Without the communist oppression, I am absolutely sure I would now be a local stupid professor of philosophy in Ljubljana.

In the small central square of Ljubljana, the statue of the poet stares fixedly at something. If you follow his gaze, you will see, on the other side of the square, the face of a woman carved into the stone of one of the houses. That was where Julia had lived. Even after death, Prešeren gaze for all eternity on his Impossible love.

When she decided to get a job, she rejected a tempting offer from a company that had just been set up in her recently created country in favor of a job at the public library, where you didn’t earn much money but where you were secure. She went to work every day, always keeping to the same timetable, always making sure she wasn’t perceived as a threat by her superiors; she was content; she didn’t struggle, and so she didn’t grow: All she wanted was her salary at the end of the month. She rented the room in the convent because the nuns required all tenants to be back at a certain hour, and then they locked the door: Anyone still outside after that had to sleep on the street. She always had a genuine excuse to give boyfriends, so as not to have to spend the night in hotel rooms or strange beds. When she used to dream of getting married, she imagined herself in a little house outside Ljubljana, with a man quite different from her father—a man who earned enough to support his family, one who would be content just to be with her in a house with an open fire and to look out at the snow-covered mountains. She had taught herself to give men a precise amount of pleasure; never more, never less, only what was necessary. She didn’t get angry with anyone, because that would mean having to react, having to do battle with the enemy and then having to face unforeseen consequences, such as vengeance. When she had achieved almost everything she wanted in life, she had reached the conclusion that her existence had no meaning, because every day was the same. And she had decided to die.

Without the communist oppression, I am absolutely sure I would now be a local stupid professor of philosophy in Ljubljana.

I once saw a woman wearing a low-cut dress; she had a glazed look in her eyes, and she was walking the streets of Ljubljana when it was five degrees below zero. I thought she must be drunk, and I went to help her, but she refused my offer to lend her my jacket. Perhaps in her world it was summer and her body was warmed by the desire of the person waiting for her. Even if that person only existed in her delirium, she had the right to live and die as she wanted, don’t you think?” Veronika didn’t know what to say, but the madwoman’s words made sense to her. Who knows; perhaps she was the woman who had been seen half-naked walking the streets of Ljubljana? “I’m going to tell you a story,” said Zedka. “A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad. “The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them. “When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication. “In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: ‘Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.’ “And that was what they did: The king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country? “The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.” Veronika laughed. “You don’t seem crazy at all,” she said. “But I am, although I’m undergoing treatment since my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. While I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being crazy, living my life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?” “People who have all drunk from the same well.” “Exactly,” said Zedka. “They think they’re normal, because they all do the same thing. Well, I’m going to pretend that I have drunk from the same well as them.

Veronika had decided to die on that lovely Ljubljana afternoon, with Bolivian musicians playing in the square, with a young man passing by her window, and she was happy with what her eyes could see and her ears could hear. She was even happier that she would not have to go on seeing those same things for another thirty, forty, or fifty years, because they would lose all their originality and be transformed into the tragedy of a life in which everything repeats itself and where one day is exactly like another

We have arrived in Ljubljana, a title that reads more like a WIFI password than a place name.

Anyway, she had had such moments before, and besides, she was not killing herself because she was a sad, embittered woman, constantly depressed. She had spent many afternoons walking joyfully along the streets of Ljubljana or gazing— from the window in her convent room—at the snow falling on the small square with its statue of the poet. Once, for almost a month, she had felt as if she were walking on air, all because a complete stranger, in the middle of that very square, had given her a flower. She believed herself to be completely normal. Two very simple reasons lay behind her decision to die, and she was sure that, were she to leave a note explaining, many people would agree with her. The first reason: Everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way, with old age beginning to leave irreversible marks, the onset of illness, the departure of friends. She would gain nothing by continuing to live; indeed, the likelihood of suffering would only increase. The second reason was more philosophical: Veronika read the newspapers, watched TV, and she was aware of what was going on in the world. Everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right—that gave her a sense of complete powerlessness.

Quería volver a ver la plaza de Ljubljana, sentir odio y amor, desesperación y tedio, todas esas cosas sencillas y banales que forman parte de lo cotidiano y dan sabor a la existencia.

The sort of candidate who might have benefited from such legislation is Boštjan Špetič, a Slovenian citizen, discussed previously. As founder of Zemanta, Špetič had opened his business in New York in 2009 with an L-1A visa, used to transfer a foreign company's top managers. Zemanta had an office in London and Špetič had moved to the USA from there. After a year, however, he was denied a visa renewal. “The US officers said that we didn’t have enough staff in the United States to justify a senior executive position,” recalls Špetič. “They stated that it was obvious from the organizational chart that we didn’t have an office manager, implying that no one was answering phone calls, and that’s why we could not claim a senior executive transfer. Somewhere in my office I still have four pages of explanations. At that point, I called everybody, the American ambassador in Slovenia, the Slovenian ambassador here, the Slovenian foreign ministry. My investor, Fred Wilson, got in touch with a New York senator, but no one could do anything.” Špetič therefore had to work from Ljubljana for the following three months, when a new attorney finally found the right bureaucratic avenue to obtain an L-1B visa, a specialized technology visa. “Personally, I want to move back home eventually,” says Špetič. “I’m not looking to permanently immigrate to the US. I prefer the European lifestyle. Nevertheless, this is absolutely the best place to build a startup, especially in the media space. It made so much sense to build and grow the company here. I never could have done it in Europe, and that is an amazing achievement for New York City.” For this reason, when other European entrepreneurs ask him for advice, Špetič always tells them to settle in New York, at least for a period of time, to gain American experience. And for them he dreams of creating a co-working space modeled after WeWork Labs: “Imagine a place exactly like this, but with decent coffee, wine tasting events in the evening and only non-US business people working in its offices,” explains Špetič. “There is a set of problems that foreigners have that Americans just can’t understand. Visa issues are the most obvious ones. Working-with-remote-teams issues, travel issues, personal issues such as which schools to send your children to… It’s a set of things that is different from what American startups talk about. You don’t need networking events for foreigners because you want people to network into the New York community, but a working environment would make sense because it would be like a safe haven, an extra comfort zone for foreigners with a different work culture.

No one should let themselves get used to anything, Eduard. Look at me; I was beginning to enjoy the sun again, the mountains, even life's problems. I was beginning to accept that the meaninglessness of life was no one's fault but mine. I wanted to see the main square in Ljubljana again, to feel hatred and love, despair and tedium - all those simple, foolish things that make up everyday life, but that give pleasure to your existence. If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy. Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.

In all the occupations throughout the United States and around the world, from Rio de Janeiro to Ljubljana, from Oakland to Amsterdam, even in cases when they lasted only a short time, the participants experienced the power of creating new political affects through being together.

Though the multitude of Plečnik’s architecture is what most foreigners recall after visiting Ljubljana, there is no single iconic view that defines Ljubljana for the visitor.

The country is frustratingly conservative and non-progressive socially, at least by American standards. Racism and homophobia are often overt here, and with no consequences. Outside of the center of Ljubljana, I’ve never seen an openly gay couple, and people even do double-takes when they see anyone who is not Caucasian.