Dan upora proti okupatorju
My official MoD calendar shows today listed in red but doesn’t define why it’s a holiday, so I hope I am spelling the title of this post correctly, what with its case endings and assorted grammatical frottage. At any rate, it’s a national holiday. Upon waking up yesterday morning, Magda mistakenly referred to the holiday as “Dan upora proti predatorju,” thus betraying the title of the last theatre film we saw before Adam was born (“Alien proti Predatorju”). I could go into a discussion of proti (against, anti-, contra, etc) and so on, but I’m kind of sick of grammar at this point and looking forward to getting away from it for a week. Suffice it to say that today’s holiday translates as “Day of Uprising Against the Occupiers.”
Many of the street names in Slovenian towns derive from esteemed national artists (see upcoming money shots) or are in honor of the Yugoslav partisans who struggled under the Nazi jackboot. We live on 30th Division Street, and within a biscuit-toss you can find streets similarly memorializing the patriots with names like Gradnik Brigade Street, Military Road, Partisan Street, 9th Corps Road, and so on. It’s no joke. This is a place where if your neighbor is over 75 and male (or even not), odds are he (or she) took to the mountains and shot at Germans as a youngster. You can hear some amazing stories with a little patience and a tolerance for Turkish coffee.
Today is a holiday marking the beginning of the tossing-out of the Nazis in 1945. It falls shortly before the May 1st Labor Day holiday so we’ve managed to cobble it together with a few days of leave to take a trip to Germany to visit the Dortmund family. Our young niece is taking her first communion so we expect to see a lot of family while we’re there. It will be Adam’s first time in Germany ex utero, and the first time his Polish grandparents get to meet him. Thanks to the fallen patriots of Slovenia for this opportunity to travel. I’m sure you would forgive us our destination.
Although we’ll be away, isoglossia.com can run itself, and will, auto-posting some memories of May Days gone by.
