Strange New World

First and foremost, this was a business trip for me. But in between seeing houses, I wanted to see more of Slovenia and Italy. Although I was staying for three weeks this trip, I knew time would fly. Despite my readiness to enter a new chapter in my life, I knew I needed to take my time and not do anything rash.

Running Man (RM) had called the owner of the historic farm to tell her that we would like to see the property if she was still willing to show it to us. She invited us to meet her there on Saturday when the tenant would be away. That gave us two days to settle in and plan our attack for this trip. 

The day after our arrival in Lokve, we unpacked, made a grocery list, then embarked on my first trip to the grocery store. We drove down the mountain with the windows open, breathing in the fresh air. We came to a spot in the road where people were filling plastic bottles with water flowing out of pipes and, if not captured, back into the earth. RM told me that people believed the mountain water was not only pure but could prevent prostate cancer. Personally, I prefer tap water to bottled water and despise mineral water, carbonated water and flavored waters; however, drinking water that has traveled down from the peaks of the Julian Alps and through a pipe alongside the road made me a little uneasy. There are reasons for water treatment plants.

Around one series of turns, I caught a glimpse of the beautiful blue-green Soca River far down in the valley. And all along the road, I saw the remnants of stone bunkers from the first World War alternately with small ancient stone shrines that marked the path of pilgrims long ago. Unlike my last visit, everything was lush and green and in full summer bloom. The views were even more breathtaking than before.

When we reached Nova Gorica, the temperature was markedly warmer than it had been up in Lokve.

"Where are we going to shop?" I asked RM. In my mind, I saw us at an open-air market, buying fruits and vegetables from one vendor, fresh fish from another, warm baked bread from a third. I could hear the sounds and smell the scents of a busy marketplace.

"To the hypermarket," RM replied matter-of-factly. 

"What's a hypermarket?" I asked, confident that it was something far different from the quaint image that had now been ripped from my mind.

"It's a big place with stores," RM said. "Like your Wal-Mart."

"Wal-Mart is just one store. Does this place have just one store or different stores?" I queried.

"More than one," RM said.

"So, it's like a mall, not like Wal-Mart," I responded.

"Well, it's nothing like your malls in America," he replied, sounding a little exasperated with my questioning. "You'll see."

We pulled into a large parking lot and entered a large building. Yep. It was a mall. Okay, it was a small mall but a mall nonetheless. 

"Hypermarket, not mall. Motorway, not highway," I thought, making mental notes about the vernacular. It was like learning a whole new language despite the fact that it was still English.

Shopping in a store where nothing is written in English is quite an interesting experience. We started our excursion in the produce section where I did very well. After all, I can recognize an apple by sight even when the sign above the bin reads, "jabolko." I spent several minutes there just looking at bins and making my best attempt to pronounce the name above them. Some were quite easy. A banana is a banana. Others were, well, not. I know what an eggplant is called in three languages -- English, of course, Spanish (berenjena) and French (aubergine). In Slovene, it's jajcevec. Difficult to spell and even more difficult to pronounce. Still, the produce section was relatively easy.

"Wow," I thought. "Shopping won't be such a difficult experience." 

My thought was slightly premature. If a can or box of something didn't have a picture on it, I wasn't sure what it was. I would look at the back of a box of cereal and see that the text was translated into several languages -- often Slovene, Serba-Croat, Russian, German, even Albanian at times. Great. At least I might stand a fighting chance with my Spanish if the text were written in Italian. And while I'm on the subject of cereal, I was amazed by the lack of selection. In the States, the cereal aisle is typically the largest in the store, stacked from floor to ceiling with countless types and flavors of cereal, cereal bars and Pop-Tarts. Even in this large grocery store, there were only about five or six types of cereal and four of them were muesli. There wasn't a Fruit Loop or Cocoa Puff to be found. I wondered what kids ate here for breakfast or what college students ate for dinner three or four nights a week. 

I was actually searching for cereal bars. First, I had to explain what they were to RM who had to try to explain what they were to a store employee. She asked him several questions in Slovene while I gestured, pointing to the cereal box while saying, "but like a candy bar," which was entirely the wrong thing to say because then she was showing me the candy bars. We followed her to three or four locations in the store and finally, she pointed to some sort of yogurt-coated bar with the candy bars at the check-out lines. I decided to buy a box of fruit and nut muesli instead. Now, I needed milk. After wandering around for a bit, I came across the refrigerated section of the store. Note that I did not say the "dairy section." That's because no matter what the product is, if it requires refrigeration, it was in the same place. I started looking for milk. And looking. And looking. RM, who had been at the meat counter, asked me what I was looking for.

"Milk," I said. "I know it has to be here but I can't find it. What's the word for it?"

"It's 'mleka' and it's probably over here," he said as he started walking away from the refrigerated units and back into a previous aisle.

"No, all the refrigerated stuff is here," I said while following him.

"Here it is, dah-ling," he said, pointing to a pallet at the end of a wide aisle.

I looked at the pallet, stacked with boxes that looked like what brown sugar is sometimes packed in back home. My eyes grew wide, horrified as my brain caught up with my sight.

"You don't refrigerate milk here?"

I must have spoken loudly because I received a few strange looks from other shoppers in the vicinity.

"No, dah-ling," he chuckled. "We aren't primitive. It's been pasturized." 

"It doesn't matter!" I was slightly hysterical but now speaking in a very loud whisper. "It still has to be refrigerated!"

"Of course. You have to refrigerate it after you open it," he said.

"Calm down," I told myself. "Obviously, millions of Europeans don't die from bad milk. It must be safe," I reasoned silently.

After all of the time and trouble exhausted in the cereal bar/cereal search and seizure, I had to get milk. I just hoped that moving to Europe wouldn't end my healthy habit of having at least one glass of skim milk a day. On the bright side, you could always keep a cupboard full of milk on hand, avoiding the need to have to "run to the store" to pick up another quart. Think of the space you can save in the fridge. I picked up a box and checked the expiration date. It was more than three months away. Yikes.

I've always been a prepared grocery shopper with three rules. First, always have a list. Second, never go when you're hungry. Third, if you violate the second rule, stick strictly to the list. I had written our grocery list that morning, organizing it as I always do -- all of the fresh produce in one place on the list, meat and fish together, cleaning products in one group and paper products in another. Back home, I alternated shopping at two different stores so for each, I would organize the list in the order in which items were shelved at the store. That would save me from having to go from one end of a store to the other over and over again. It's all quite logical, right? Well, not when grocery stores here organize everything in an entirely different fashion. While that's to be expected, I suppose, how they organize the aisles here doesn't even make sense to me. Take the typical American baking aisle. There, you will find flour, sugar, cake and brownie mixes, chocolate chips, nuts, etc. Here, the flour and sugar are not in the same aisle. Flour shares space with packaged breadsticks, pasta and rice. The sugar might be several aisles away. I won't even describe the organization of cleaning and non-food items. Suffice it to say, I walked from one end of that store to the other repeatedly and in the end, there were many items I never found -- some because they don't exist here, like good old yellow cheddar cheese.

"They might have that in Italy," was RM's response every time I found they didn't carry an item in Slovenia. (In fact, I later found a reasonable facsimile of cheddar cheese at a store in Italy.)

RM also kept telling me, "We should buy that in Italy, not here," either because the item would be less expensive there or of a better quality. Apparently, some of Slovenia's communist past affects the products it imports. Detergents, for example, would be packaged somewhere in Europe under the same brand name but would have inferior ingredients in those boxes or bottles headed into countries like the now-former Yugoslavia. The Italians would get the good stuff so you should buy those types of items there. I guess it will take time for Slovenia's European Union status to catch up with its imports. 

Finally, we loaded the car with the items we'd purchased in Slovenia, then headed across the border shared by Nova Gorica and Gorizia, Italy, to finish. I was challenged there, trying to figure out which bottles were shampoo and which were conditioner but got by using my Spanish to translate the Italian text. By the time we headed back up the mountain, I was tired, jet lag catching up to me again. But Lokve was peaceful and lovely and RM cooked dinner for me while I checked my email and looked at more properties on the Internet. Tomorrow, we would spend the day grilling, sunning and swimming along the Soca. The day after, we would see the old farm above the vineyards of Goriska Brda. It would be the first of more than 15 properties I would see on this trip. Would it be The One?