Weather report
The weather in Primorje has been boxing the compass for the last week. In that time we’ve experienced extremely high heat and humidity, cold drizzle, pure crisp bluebird days, pounding rain with thunderstorms and non-stop lightning, and gale-like burja, which is quite unusual for June. Today, after several cold rainy days, the morning sun is once again brilliant and pure. Recent days have been a textbook example of muhasto vreme.
Primorje, the westernmost region of Slovenia where we live, is the littoral, the coastal province. The word means literally ‘by the sea’ (preposition pri=by, near, upon, at, etc; morje=sea). This region does indeed include 46.6 precious kilometers of coastline, or 2.5 centimeters (one inch) per Slovene, as I’ve seen it broken down — so that .6 is important. This sliver of coast is wedged in between the Italian port of Trieste (Trst in Slovene — to read a recent post touching on the disputed-territory topic, by all means go here ) and Croatia’s Istrian peninsula. Beyond the salty air, though, Primorje extends well up into the mountains to the north, taking in territory that does not feel coastal but is definitely alpine. A colleague, a native Primorskan, likes to refer to her region as “the California of Slovenia,” covering as it does both coast and mountains. Other similarities spring to mind, such as the small Austrian minority and wealth of grafitti. Our location means that we generally experience Mediterranean rather than Continental or Alpine weather, but we can get some interesting mixes, and the weather here might be entirely different from what it’s doing in Ljubljana, just an hour’s drive away. Here’s more on the regional distinctions of Slovenia.
As it happens, Poland also has a region almost identically named, and with the same meaning: Pomorskie, the Polish littoral, includes the dramatic port city of Gdańsk (aka Danzig), but like Primorje it extends well inland to include my darling wife’s hometown, which she shares with Copernicus. This region of Poland is usually translated as Pomerania, so in addition to Magda and Mikołai Kopernik, it is famous for giving the world yappy lapdogs.
So the sun is back in Primorje, as you can see in the photo above — that’s a color photo, by the way. It owes its existence to the mountain of toys that have accumulated in the living room. Adam digs mirrors, and when I got up this morning his little mirror by the window was doing this at the other end of the room.
One of the main reasons we are moving at the end of this month is this mountain of toys. We aren’t really sure how it happened, but Adam has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to stuff. We can’t move for all the baby-gear in the place. It’s even begun to affect the lighting, for crying out loud. Time to move.
Hey John.
I never heard my girlfriend calling the Primorska region “Primorje”. Are they synonyms? I know that Primorje is the uber building company in the country, but I though it was just a name.
Oh, and I’m not using irony right now :-)
Comment by Carlitos Yoder — Friday 21 October 05 @ 16.17 MDT+2.00