About five, six weeks ago a highway section near Šentvid on the outskirts of Ljubljana was opened. This 3,2 kilometre strech of the highway connected A2 and A1 highways, diverting hundreds of thousands of passangers daily around Ljubljana. Not. The tunnel was closed on the very same day it opened, because a chunk of fire-retardant foam fell off the ceiling. All eyes turned to the contrator, which just happened to be Ivan Zidar’s SCT. It however claimed that a British subcontractor, Ceramicoat was to blame. The tunnel was reopened, only to be closed a week ago, when another part of the foam fell off, this time hitting and destroying a car of a German tourist. Luckily noone was injured. The result so far: Minister of transport Radovan Žerjav and the board of State Highway Company (DARS) tendered their resignations (but noone accepted them as yet), while the blame game between the minsitry, DARS, SCT, Ceramicoat and supervisors is reaching new heights.
The tunnel, however, remains closed and heavy traffic is still rolling through northern Ljubljana. On the bright side, however, this has sparked a series of rather good jokes, one can laugh at while twiddling one’s thumbs in a traffic jam on a hot August afternoon…
St. Weed tunnel – fun for the whole family!
British subcontractors, huh?
Del-boy! Are you sure that was fire-retardant foam we used?
Naturally, there are some serious political consequences stemming from all of this, but it’ll have to wait…
Now we know what Bob Dylan meant when he wrote that A hard rain’s gonna fall:
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
The “drive less – live longer” thing works on all(yes every single one of them) slovene roads…