How do others see Slovenia?

Have I mentioned here a class in Argentina participating in the Walls Talking project decided to learn more about Slovenia?
They set up a website where they pool their finds and invited me to talk to them about our country - I'm really looking forward to this - we are meeting tonight on Skype. :-))

It was at their site that I came across this interesting article in Slovenia Times by Diana Evans (a Brit living in Maribor). The text is her observations of life in Slovenia - she has been living here now for almost 5 years. She says she likes our lifestyle:

The lifestyle. This is hard to explain, but let me tell you there is an advertisement running in UK newspapers saying that British people throw away a quarter of the food they buy. I just cannot imagine Slovenes doing that. People are more careful with their money, with what they buy and about what they throw away. People use the things they have and pass them on to others if they don’t need them any more. In our area, a twice a year collection of large unwanted items is enough for most people. People seem to care about the environment. There is little litter lying around and the country as a whole is clean and tidy. People look after their homes and gardens and take a pride in their own appearance. There are a lot less overweight people than in the UK due I believe to eating less processed food and also exercising more; less TV watching; more sport and other healthy activities. (I have lost weight since I moved here!).

There are many other interesting observations - for example she considers us kind and open and willing to help a foreigner. ... We thought a bit different about us here and here ;-).

Another non-Slovene explorer of our country living in Slovenia 6 months a year and beautifully writing about this in her blog is our dear Kay Raplenovich. Our current class unfortunately did not have the opportunity to meet her, but we were lucky to have had her with us on a number of occasions with previous groups. She's an American and lives part of the year in Šempeter, Slovenia and part of the year in Ohio, US.

Another very interesting site along these lines I bookmarked ages ago was also created by an American - nicknamed Pogoer. He used to live here and has posted very interesting observations and tips for foreigners interested in exploring the life in our neck of the woods.

Any other non-Slovenes out there willing to share your impressions of Slovenia? We'd love to hear from you. :-)

Graffiti - what is right and what is wrong?

Some graffiti look good and some don't, some are viewed upon with approval and some not... What is acceptable and what is not? What is funny and what is not? What is art and what an offense? Michael's photo here says it clearly... but are things really as simple as that?
I gathered below some interesting comments by my class.

• Added value, appropriate place.
  Nice graffiti look nice or say something nice or something somehow of value most of us seemed to agree. Scribbles which are only there to deface the buildings or hurt somebody's feelings are vandalism.
  
• Respect other people's property.
  Edi and many others pointed out the importance of being respective of other people's property. 'It's something that has to do with age. Young people don't work and don't earn money and don't understand so well the concept of leaving things which are not theirs alone.' (I haven't thought of this before but it's true, isn't it? Most of the graffiti we see on the walls of our town looks seems to have been produced by teens.) 'Graffiti art is cool We should have designated places in towns and cities where people are allowed to do it, it shouldn't be done just anywhere.'
  
• Artistic value is not a black and white concept. 'People tend to generalize things: the beautiful is art and the ugly is vandalism or obscene. But in real life things are not that simple. A beautiful graffiti on a freshly painted wall is art for most viewers, but not for the owner. A "nonsense" sculpture in our town with numerous heads sticking out of one body - is art - even though most people don't understand it and consider it an eyesore - but it's been commissioned from a professional artist so it's officially art' (Edi)
  
• Urban dialogue. 'there are many graffiti makers who simply rebel against the system or joke around - their graffiti are urban responses reflecting reality of life in the area' (Tomaž)
  I kind of agree here, because I find it interesting to observe the walls in our town and study what they say about us.
  
  For example. Our town is a mix of all sorts of nationalities from ex Yugoslavia - in addition to Slovenes there are also many people with roots from other former Republics. Awhile ago I was on my way to Qlandia, our local mall, and I noticed a disturbing and pathetic Slovene nationalistic graffiti saying 'srbe na vrbe' (suggesting the Serbs should be hung on willow trees - it rhymes in Slovene). A humorous Serbian rhyme was added next to it in response: 'nema vrba koliko ima srba' (meaning there aren't as many willows here as there are Serbian people - not too far fetched considering how small the territory of our country is ;-)). I hate the nationalistic stuff on our walls, but this one brought a smile on my face. It is an example of this sort of urban dialogues on the walls...
  
  A much nicer example of this sort recently added to the wallstalking site is this:
  
  The authorities in our town (Nova Gorica) have put these signs boasting that our town is a university town along all major roads leading to Nova Gorica. The problem is they seemed to have forgotten about their old promise to also provide appropriate location for building the university campus - so an action called 'University Town' ' was organized in which activists furnished all these signs with the question ' Where is this university?
  

Any other thoughts on this?

More glimpses of Slovenia

Just thought I'd post this Flickr slideshow here too because it fits in nicely with the previous post - it's glimpses of my home town Nova Gorica and other parts of Slovenia (from our family trips, mostly by my husband, whose fingers are usually glued to the camera wherever we go ;-)).

Slovenia's talking walls

Ok, we wrote about Argentina here, it's time to also post our ramblings concerning Slovenia and Slovenian walls. This is what we came up in class awhile ago:
Slovenia is a small but beautiful country criss crossed by many scenic roads. The landscape is very diverse - it only takes you a couple of hours to travel from the Adriatic coast all the way to the high peaks of the Alps (mountain range stretching across the borders in also to the neighbouring Italy, Austria and Switzerland) - we call our side of the Alps the sunny side of the Alps.

Another natural beauty is our Kras area with one of the biggest underground Karst cave system. Vojko said he heard somebody say if you ironed Slo it would be bigger than Europe. Nicely put, isn't it? :-)

Landscape diversity reflects also in many different Slovene dialects, some are quite challenging to understand also for Slovenes not coming from the same region. We think we are reserved people, need to get to know somebody a bit before we get friendly with them.

I think that some aspects of this are nicely shown on the graffiti on this train - with rainbow stretching above the beautiful green hilly landscape and fences delimiting people's property below. People here say 'čisti računi dobri prijatelji' - meaning people have to have their affairs in order (money, property...) if they want to be good friends - what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours.

Our country is on the territory where a lot of blood was shed during the WW1 and WW2. Older generations still tell stories of those times. Times and politics have changed now though, and some of the people who used to be national heroes are not everybody's heroes anymore. I posted this photo and the story to our Wallstalking site - not quite a graffiti on the wall, but the actions associated with it bear many resemblances to what we typically associate with graffiti art.

As far as sports is concerned, many like football here too though we think it cannot be considered national sport, like in Argentina. The conditions for practicing it are rather poor, skiing, snowboarding and other winter sports seem to be more popular. Skiing has a long tradition here. It's interesting though that while football related graffiti are quite frequent on our walls, I can't remember seeing a single skiing one.
Our typical foods are meaty ones like pršut and kranjska klobasa, dishes like jota, žlikrofi and mlinci, and sweets like potica, štruklji and gibanica - the assortment of foods differs a bit according to regions, but these are usually listed as typical Slovene foods. Some of the Slovene regions are wine-producing areas. Wine and wine drinking has long been part of our culture, something our walls testify about too.

HISTORY OF SCOUTING

The history of scouting goes back to the turn of the 20th century, when the first seeds of scouting were sown. On a farm in Connecticut, a naturalist and author named Ernest Thompson Seton had a problem with a group of boys who kept stealing fruits from his garden. He decided to organize those boys in a group. At first, he just told them Indians stories. A few weeks later, he took them out of the village in the nature where they spent a few days living in a teepee – an Indian tent. He called them the Woodcraft Indians. All that happened in 1902.


At about the same time, in 1907, a British Army officer, Robert Baden-Powell gathered about 20 boys and took them to Brownsea Island in a sheltered bay off England's southern coast. They set up a makeshift camp that would be their home for the next 12 days.
His idea of scouting was born while he was stationed in India. He discovered that his men lacked basic first aid knowledge and also that of the elementary means of survival in the outdoors. Baden-Powell realized he needed to teach his men many frontier skills. After returning from the Boer War, Baden-Powell was amazed to find that his little handbook called Aids to Scouting had caught the interest of English boys. They were using it to play the game of scouting.


The boys had a great time at the scout camp. They divided into patrols and played games, went on hikes, and learned stalking and pioneering. They learned to cook outdoors without utensils. Scouting began on that island and would sweep the globe in a few years.

In many ways, the two organizations were similar, but they were not connected. The boys who belonged to Woodcraft Indians had never heard of Baden-Powell or of Boy Scouts, and yet both groups were destined to become Boy Scouts one day soon. The biggest difference between those two organizations was a discipline. The Woodcraft organization was more about freedom to foster and emphasize the symbiosis with nature, Scouts, on the other side, were firmly organized and had well defined methods.


Next year, Baden-Powell published his book Scouting for Boys and Scouting continued to grow. That same year, more than 10,000 Boy Scouts attended a rally held at the Crystal Palace; a mere two years later, membership in Boy Scouts had tripled.

In these days there are more than 28 million Scouts, youth and adults, boys and girls, in 160 countries.

What about Slovenia.



In Slovenia the first scout groups emerged in Celje, Ljubljana and Maribor. In 1925 an active group of scouts published the idea of establishing Woodcraft organization. The Woodcraft organization was established in Ljubljana, but in Maribor it was the most active center at that time. There are no significant differences in the working methods of the Slovene Woodcraft and scout organizations. Both organizations have been expanding throughout Slovenia. There has been considerable expansion of members and local organizations. Political views of members of Woodcraft or Scouting organizations are not important. For the scouts the only condition for consideration is the Scout law and oath.


The name tabornik (i.e. Scout) was first mentioned in 1924 in the National Journal. It referred to members of both movements. The adoption of this term subsequently led also to the new name of this organization in 1925 the “Združenje slovenskih tabornikov”.




After World War II, on the 22 April 1951, the former scouts and woodcrafts merged in a joint organization called “Združenje tabornikov Slovenije”. Later it was renamed in Scout association of Slovenia (Zveza tabornikov Slovenije- ZTS).


Because of numerous engaging and attractive activities for young people, membership has grown rapidly from the initial 783 to over 10,000 members today. The movement has expanded, and organizations have emerged also in other republics of the former Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav scout organization was an umbrella organization linking together the branches from the different republics, including the Slovene ZTS. Savez izvidžača Jugoslavije (Scout association of Yugoslavia) was formed in 1951 on the initiative of ZTS. It never became a member of the World Organization of Scout movement because of the political situation in the previous system.
In time between 1951 and 1958 Scouts organization were founded in all republic of former Yugoslavia. After colaps of country, scout groups and association doesn’t stop to work, and now all Scout association from republic of former Yugoslavia are fully member of WOSM.



Compared to other Scouts associations in former Yugoslavia, ZTS has kept its identity, which is reflected in the Slovenian scouts' coat-of-arms, their distinctive code of behavior, units and description tags, and other peculiarities, which have varied in other scout organizations from the other republics of former Yugoslavia.



Custom manners and habits of both organizations from before of WW II are firmly rooted in ZTS. In 1989 the organization began the process of going back to the original ideas and began introducing higher common standards of organization and operation of local scout units. All these efforts payed off in 1994 when our national Scout organization ZTS became a full member of the World Scout movement - WOSM. This also meant that ZTS become a national scout organization.


Another related organization in Slovenia active since 1990 is called Slovenian Catholic Association of Girl and Boy Scouts (Združenje slovenskih katoliških skavtinj in skavtov - ZSKSS). The purpose and the Scout methods are the same as in the case of ZTS, but the forms of action and activities are slightly different. In 1996 the ZSKSS association joined the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), which brings together girls Scout organizations around the world. To pursue common interests and promote diversity, the organization decided to adopt this special arrangement.

Hackers

Well, I did a presentation about hackers for my English class and seems that my class mates liked it so Saša invited me to post few lines about the topic. So, fasten the seatbelts and rock'n'roll :)

The first queston that comes in mind when speaking about hackers is: who is a hacker? Usually we think about hackers like some anti-social individuals breaking into computer systems searching for classified data. This is the image of hackers that mass-media created, because people dig stories about super-inteligent teenagers that rule the cyberspace. Nevertheless, the truth is much simpler.
Hackers are just individuals who like to explore computer systems and networks. Period. Just ordinary guys - not some gods or voodoo magicians. Even the most famous hacker (well, actually he was black hat hacker, but we'll come to that part) - Kevin Mitnick - admited that most of his targets were "low-hanging fruit". In his own words he often did it like this: telnet to server, username: guest, password: guest ... and he was in. Many of his famous break-ins were just reflection of poor security policy. And even today is not much different.

The hackers scene is deeply related with UNIX operating system, C programing language and ARPAnet. In fact, people involved in those projects are today known as pioneeer hackers. In those early years phreakers were more common than hackers mainly because at that time there were not many computer networks while phone systems were pretty evolved. Phreaker is a person who likes to explore telephone systems, basically a phone hacker.

Like every sub-culture hackers also have their unwritten laws and ethic codex. Some well know hacker's ethic rules are this:

• all information should be free
• access to computers should be unlimited and total
• destroying things is easy, the hardest part is to build them

But the cornerstone of hackers culture is considered to be a short essay called "The manifest". This essay was written by a hacker named "The Mentor" shortly after his arrest in 1986. It's worth reading. "The Manifest" gives the insight view of hackers philosophy. The manifest states that hackers choose to hack because hacking is the way to learn, kind of intellectual challenge, but also because, they feel bored and frustrated about limitations of modern society.

That was once upon a time. Today we have like many flavors of hackers. Most of them fits into script kiddie category. Script kiddies are mainly teenagers that have a minimal knowledge of computers and networks but they are using publicly available hacker's tools and programs to attack the systems.
White hats (or ethical hackers) are good guys. If they found a vulnerability they will report it to developer.
Black hats (or crackers) are bad guys. If they found a vulnerability they will exploit it, sell it or publicly disclose it.
Grey hats are a hybrid between black and white hats. Sometimes they will act legal while sometime not.
Corporate hackers are hackers who are working for large corporations, searching for security holes in corporate environment and making big bucks :) Did you know that Microsoft also hires hackers? BTW, this guys are often called "Security professionals" because the term hacker is not appropriate for serious business.
If you are wondering if they are really wearing those hats? No, they don't. This is just fictional and taken from old spagetti-western movies where the bad guys are wearing black hats while the good guys are wearing white hats. And what is the color of your hat? :)

The most famous hacker is Kevin Mitnick, of course. He was black hat. He penetrated many corporate networks - supposedly searching for source code. He was 5 years on the run, then arrested by FBI (he was actually traced by a white hat hacker), spent 5 years in prison and when he got out he was not allowed to use computers or cell phones for three more years. Today he works as corporate hacker. He are some other hackers worth to mention (all white hats this time): Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman and Bill Gates.

That is. If you read it until here then you're probably interested in hackers. You may be even asking yourself: "Am I also a hacker?". Luckily for you, there is a universal solution to answer that question. If you can understand this:

ph33r u5 n0w 'c0z w3 pwn u L1k3 7h47 w17h ju57 p1ng, 7r4c3r7 4nd n375747

than you're almost certainly a script kiddie. :)

Argentina's talking walls

During our previous class we brainstormed what we know about Argentina for some 5 or 10 minutes and came up with the following:

Argentina's capital is Buenos Aires. The country is located in the South America, Spanish language is spoken there. People do tango and are fond of fireworks. Football is Argentinian national sport, one of the world's most famous football legends - Maradona comes from there.

Argentinian people eat huge steaks, lots of cattle is bred for meat. Argentinian beef is exported all over the world and served in many restaurants even in our part of the world. Argentina is also one of the world's biggest honey producers (also in Slovenia beekeeping is a firmly rooted tradition).

It is not uncommon for a Slovene to have relatives in Argentina or to know somebody who has - many Slovenes emigrated to Argentina before and soon after WW2. Even one of our ex prime ministers, Andrej Bajuk, is an Argentinian Slovene (has retired recently).

Evita Peron was a very popular Argentinian First Lady - the queen of people's hearts. Argentina hosted this year's rally and used to host F1 races too in Buenos Aires. There is a beautiful national park called Patagonia.

We then had a look at graffiti uploaded to the Wallstalking.org website and Flickr group:

the graffiti there are humorous, vivacious and colorful, - Caminito tango dancers, Plaza de Mayo street bustle, young Valu enjoying blissful afterlife, 'Hello Kitty' turned into 'Hello Kirchner', a complaint about not too good-looking women from somebody's neighbourhood,... Some graffiti there are also more serious, e.g. reminding people of a dark period from their past, protesting against capitalism,..


People seem to be proud of their culture, roots and heroes. (Hm, can we say the same for us, Slovenes?)

caminito, originally uploaded by jenverschoor.