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My First Trip to Slovenia-Slovenija (November, 2000)

Slovenia

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2004-04-05 13:06:59

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Flying from Tel Aviv

Europe from the air. My first view of the Alps, jagged and snow capped. Plate tectonics plus erosion are powerful indeed. I have no idea where I am and the clouds obscure the view, but at least I had a moment’s view. I’ve been in the air or, at least, on the plane for nearly four hours. I must have slept for two of those hours. My schedule is to land in Frankfurt at 9:15 local time, which is 10:15 Tel Aviv time. I’m in Frankfurt for an hour and fifteen minutes. I guess I’ll get to see yet another interior of an airport, and perhaps a little tarmac, too. Then it is an hour and twenty-minute hop (gate to gate) to Ljubljana (that’s loob-lee-YAWN-ah) where I’ll actually be able to leave the airport. In fact, I’ll have an entire week, including today, to explore Ljubljana and the surrounding country.

What’s a Ljubljana? It is the capital of Slovenia, which is a former province of Yugoslavia. In fact, Slovenia is the first province of Yugoslavia to break free of that federation and the only one to do so without having to put up much of a fight. It also was the western-most province of Yugoslavia and I am told the most modern and Western as well. This is the only country that lies due east of Italy, by land, and, along with Italy, forms the southern border of Austria. Ljubljana itself is some distance further west than Vienna.

Oddly, Ljubljana and Slovenia will be the first European cities I will visit (ignoring my moments in the Frankfurt airport), this being my first trip to Europe and, also, my first trip across the Atlantic from the U.S.A. Why Slovenia? Science! I am visiting a Biophysicist/Phage Ecologist who works at the University of Ljubljana, who I have been collaborating with since this past June on a theoretical paper on the evolution of bacteriophage latent period (the amount of time a virus of a bacterium takes to completely ...