Slovenija, Ljubljana

For all the people that have something good in their harts.

My name is Miha Gramc. I am Sloven and I live in Slovenia. It is a small country, just south
of Austria and east of Italy. Please do not mistake it for Slovakia. Maybe it will be easier for you to place it if I say that that is the country President Clinton visited this year during his trip to Europe.
Anyway, the reason I wrote this web page is to tell more about Slovenija.

At the site you just came from, I wrote about my family - my wife, daughter, son and
myself, what we do, what our hobbies are and other general stuff. I am sorry, that everything is written in Sloven. It would take me too much time and energy to write it in English, too, so I wrote just this one page in English to say a few words.
And now more about me.

I am living in a city of Ljubljana, which is also the capital of Slovenia. There is something
special to living in a city like Ljubljana, and people living in the windy city of Chicago, or LA, or San Francisco, or maybe your hometown would say the same about their cities. It reminds me of a song “If you get caught between the Moon and New York City” or some other songs like John Denver`s “Country Road”.
I mentioned the second song since this song is also sung by one of our singers, in Slovene of course, and the words are similar to the original.

Well, I just had to write some words about, since I like my country very much, and all of
the following photos represent it.
I have been in US for almost three years, first time in 1976 and last time in 1991. Company I used to work with (design and production of Integrated Circuits), sent me and some other guys to work there, because of some US Federal regulations on exporting High Technology to European countries.

Anyway I had a god time there (all of the time we lived in California, San Jose and
Santa Clara, which is about 90 km south of San Francisco), got some new friends, found some Slovene families living there (mostly working for HP in Palo Alto). We visited other places in US, almost all of the California from the north to the south, the Death Valley, Reno with Lake Tahoe in Nevada, Las Vegas of course, later I spent some time in Washington - DC and visited some other places.
I can say for myself that I know a small piece of your country and here are some pictures of my country, so you can get an idea of what it is like.
Let me just add a few more things.

Slovenia is a small country with a population of less than two million, but with high
mountains, the highest being Triglav with 2864 m’s, about 48 km of coastline and some beautiful valleys in between.
Well, I don’t want to unvitingly feed you with false information, so I invite you to find out more about Slovenia at first address, or at second address and of course You can find many more sites through all the search engines on the web such as AltaVista, Yahoo etc. searching for words Slovenija or Slovenia, Ljubljana, Lake Bled or Bled.
O.K. Here are the pictures, with some explanation of what they represent.

Dragon (Ljubljanski zmaj)represent the symbol of the city of Ljubljana.
There is a short story of it.
Once, there was time, long time ago when the dragon lived in a big hole at the basement of the castle over Ljubljana. It demand from the people living in a small town under the castle, to bring a young virgin girl to him once per month to eat her, or otherwise the dragon would burn the city. After a few years there were almost no young girls in the town. People living there, were desperately looking for help, so one day a young knight on a white horse came to town, and when the time came for the people to sacrifice another girl, a knight with the girl riding on a horse arrived in front of dragons cave. After a while there was a fight betwen the dragon and knight an he managed to cut off dragon`s head.

On this picture you can see the Castle of Ljubljana. It is situated on the top of the hill right in the center of our capital city. It has only one tower from which you can see all over the Ljubljana basin when the fog clears out. Near the top of the tower is clock with a bell and it is still working. The castle is curretly being restorated but it is open for visitors anyway. One can visit two art galleries in which famous artists present their newest achivements or their work. There is also some kind of museum in the castle. It tells us about the general history of Ljubljana, their citizens and castle and its owners. Here you can learn more about history. Castle is very well visited during weekends because it is also very desired place to marry (they get together up to 24 couples per day!). Sometimes a middle-aged games and plays are held there and they attract many people.

Picture of the Castle hill and the old town was taken on a summer`s day. The hill and the old town are surrounded by the Ljubljanica river and the manmade canal (Gruberjev prekop). It was part of the defense system of our city. Streets are narrow and buildings have thick walls and high windows and ceilings. The buildings can not be changed or pulled down because they are under the custody of Bureau for National inheritance; they can only be restorated. In almost every building a small fashion shop, a pub or an expensive restaurant found its place. That is why the old city is among the most frequent places in whole Ljubljana.

One of the most famous is Copova Street, it leads to the square dedicated to one of our greatest poets France Preseren, and was named after Matija Cop, close friend of him. Along the street poor people play different instruments for change and they always seem have lots of listeners. On the left side is situated Hotel Slon (Elephant hotel), one of Ljubljana`s best hotels and fast-food restaurant McDonalds. On the right side one can find our main Post office, which was restorated a few years ago. The newest building by the street is very modern shopping center Mueller.

On the other side of Preseren`s square a bridge over Ljubljanica was built at first only as a single bridge but later two more were added and altogether were named Tromostovje (three bridges). The street takes you across the river towards the City Hall with another famous art- Robba`s fountain; it symbolizes the three main rivers in Sloveina. Market place and fish market (famous because of its arcades) are taking place on the left of the bridges.

There is an aerial view of old town with a part of Castle tower at the right side. One can clearly notice that the old part was build close to the castle.
This days the city limits were brought far out and even, once viliages up to 5km away are now considerd as part of Ljubljana. Of course there are moderen and large buildings too, but they are same all over the word.

Triglav is Slovenia`s highest mountain. It raises in the East part of the Julian Alps. It`s name means in translation three heads which are symbolized by its three peaks. During the end of summer and beginning of autumn it is very well visited. On the top one can find Aljaz`s turret, which was made by Jakob Aljaz, one of our greatest mountain climbers. Triglav and also large area under it are protected as a national park. Here grow a few flowers which are unique and don`t grow on any other part of the world. Like the Julian Alps Triglav is also mostly made of lime-stone and therefore it is dangerous to climb onto (lime-stone is a very crumbly kind of stone) but that doesn`t prevent people from visitng it at least once. We even have one proverb: that every Slovene should climb on top of our highest mountain or one is not Slovene.

There is a story about how we got this piece of land.
It was at the 8th day after God created Earth, human, animals and so on. That day he decided to give away a land to different nations so they can live on there own.
There were representatives of many big nations as Franch, German, Italian and among them also Sloven. But as we were small in that crowd all the big ones pushed us away from the God, so he can`t heard our pledge for a piece of land. When everything was finished and all gone away, only Sloven stay there alone and lonesome, asking God for a piece of land. God told him, that there is no land left to give away, but Sloven ask him again and God said:"Well, there is a small piece of land that I left it for myself to live there, it is small but beautiful, this is a piece I`ll give to your nation, so they can have a place to live on there own, too!"

		Dragon (Ljubljanski zmaj)represent the symbol of the city of Ljubljana. There is a short story of it. Once, there was time, long time ago when the dragon lived in a big hole at the basement of the castle over Ljubljana. It demand from the people living in a small town under the castle, to bring a young virgin girl to him once per month to eat her, or otherwise the dragon would burn the city. After a few years there were almost no young girls in the town. People living there, were desperately looking for help, so one day a young knight on a white horse came to town, and when the time came for the people to sacrifice another girl, a knight with the girl riding on a horse arrived in front of dragons cave. After a while there was a fight betwen the dragon and knight an he managed to cut off dragon`s head.
		On this picture you can see the Castle of Ljubljana. It is situated on the top of the hill right in the center of our capital city. It has only one tower from which you can see all over the Ljubljana basin when the fog clears out. Near the top of the tower is clock with a bell and it is still working. The castle is curretly being restorated but it is open for visitors anyway. One can visit two art galleries in which famous artists present their newest achivements or their work. There is also some kind of museum in the castle. It tells us about the general history of Ljubljana, their citizens and castle and its owners. Here you can learn more about history. Castle is very well visited during weekends because it is also very desired place to marry (they get together up to 24 couples per day!). Sometimes a middle-aged games and plays are held there and they attract many people.
		Picture of the Castle hill and the old town was taken on a summer`s day. The hill and the old town are surrounded by the Ljubljanica river and the manmade canal (Gruberjev prekop). It was part of the defense system of our city. Streets are narrow and buildings have thick walls and high windows and ceilings. The buildings can not be changed or pulled down because they are under the custody of Bureau for National inheritance; they can only be restorated. In almost every building a small fashion shop, a pub or an expensive restaurant found its place. That is why the old city is among the most frequent places in whole Ljubljana.
		One of the most famous is Copova Street, it leads to the square dedicated to one of our greatest poets France Preseren, and was named after Matija Cop, close friend of him. Along the street poor people play different instruments for change and they always seem have lots of listeners. On the left side is situated Hotel Slon (Elephant hotel), one of Ljubljana`s best hotels and fast-food restaurant McDonalds. On the right side one can find our main Post office, which was restorated a few years ago. The newest building by the street is very modern shopping center Mueller.
		On the other side of Preseren`s square a bridge over Ljubljanica was built at first only as a single bridge but later two more were added and altogether were named Tromostovje (three bridges). The street takes you across the river towards the City Hall with another famous art- Robba`s fountain; it symbolizes the three main rivers in Sloveina. Market place and fish market (famous because of its arcades) are taking place on the left of the bridges.
		There is an aerial view of old town with a part of Castle tower at the right side. One can clearly notice that the old part was build close to the castle. This days the city limits were brought far out and even, once viliages up to 5km away are now considerd as part of Ljubljana. Of course there are moderen and large buildings too, but they are same all over the word.
		Triglav is Slovenia`s highest mountain. It raises in the East part of the Julian Alps. It`s name means in translation three heads which are symbolized by its three peaks. During the end of summer and beginning of autumn it is very well visited. On the top one can find Aljaz`s turret, which was made by Jakob Aljaz, one of our greatest mountain climbers. Triglav and also large area under it are protected as a national park. Here grow a few flowers which are unique and don`t grow on any other part of the world. Like the Julian Alps Triglav is also mostly made of lime-stone and therefore it is dangerous to climb onto (lime-stone is a very crumbly kind of stone) but that doesn`t prevent people from visitng it at least once. We even have one proverb: that every Slovene should climb on top of our highest mountain or one is not Slovene.
		There is a story about how we got this piece of land. It was at the 8th day after God created Earth, human, animals and so on. That day he decided to give away a land to different nations so they can live on there own. There were representatives of many big nations as Franch, German, Italian and among them also Sloven. But as we were small in that crowd all the big ones pushed us away from the God, so he can`t heard our pledge for a piece of land. When everything was finished and all gone away, only Sloven stay there alone and lonesome, asking God for a piece of land. God told him, that there is no land left to give away, but Sloven ask him again and God said:"Well, there is a small piece of land that I left it for myself to live there, it is small but beautiful, this is a piece I`ll give to your nation, so they can have a place to live on there own, too!"