Yesterday the Municipality of Ljubljana unveiled its Draft Strategic Zoning Plan, which will be a subject to a public debate until 30 May and is expected to be enacted by late 2008 or early 2009. The plan will more or less define the contours of spatial development of Ljubljana until 2025 and beyond and is the first such document this city passed since 1986, which will hopefuly put an end to partial development of ever-smaller areas of the city where developers showed little or no regard to the city’s overall needs. Why should they, afterall, if the municipal adiministrations failed to do so. At any rate, this are about to change, but this time city’s architects priovided eye candies as well. Well, one eye candy in particular.
As of yesterday, Ljubljana is visible in 3D on Google Earth, and now rubs shoulders with London, Paris, Washington, New York and the likes. But there’s more – you can also see what Ljubljana will look like which is way cool.
So – download, add the 3D-Warehouse pack and browse. And if you want to really see what is being planned (can read Slovenian and are map-savvy), you can log on to a dedicated Zoning Plan webpage and submit comments
Olimpija’s Brendan Yarema beating Alba’s player Odor in Austrian EBEL league
OK, so I don’t usually do sports on this blog. Unless of course you count sex and that other thing as a sporting activity. The reason for this is that I can’t even pretend to know the first thing sports. I couldn’t bluff my way through it under any circumstances. But to make an exception (if only to confirm the rule, today’s topic is ice hockey.
As some of you probably know, Ljubljana’s own ZM Olimpija followed suit of its eternal rival Jesenice and joined the Austrian EBEL ice hockey league. After decades of Slovene ice hockey being dominated by the two teams a change was more than welcome, not in the least because both Jesenice and Olimpija could now play against clubs on or above their level. Especially Olimpija performed admirably and qualified all the way to the finals of the league where it has already played five games against Salzburg Red Bulls and through a combination of skill and luck got a 3:1 lead in victories prior to last Sunday’s match. Or did they?
Namely: only hours before Sunday’s game a fax came in, saying that Olimpija was stripped of one victory (the game was played almost a week before), because – watch this – the average age of players exceeded the limits set in the rules of the league. Obviously, half of Slovenia went EXSQEEZE ME? BAKING POWDER? WTF? Average age?!?! What is this? The Little League!?! But there was no avoiding it. Rules are there and you can’t just ignore them if you don’t like them. Funny thing is, that the management of the league sent word only hours before the fifth game, with Olimpija being on a roll and all primed to score what they thought was the last victory needed to win the championship. And the – dissapointment and disbelief. Not only was one of their hard-fought victories disallowed, but was awarded to Salzburg. You can’t really put up much of a resistance knowing that everything you did was in vain. Consequently Olimpija lost Sunday’s game 5:0 and now the victory tally is 3:2 in favour of Salzburg, while only 72 hours ago it was still 3:1 for Olimpija.
While the error was clearly on the side of Olimpija’s management, the fans and the players were outraged at the behaviour of the league’s management, which was clearly aimed at destroying Olimpija’s morale. In responce, it seems, Salzburg is about to get a shot of the Balkans tonight. This evening Salzburg and Olimpija clash for the sixth time in this play-off and Olimpija must win to even the victory tally and stay in the game. A little birdie tells me that Green Dragons, Olimpija’s official fan club/amateur hooligansand the players were given an unofficial all-clear to make tonight’s game a living hell for both Salzburg and the league’s management.
The running joke is that if Salzburg loses the finals, they’ll be off playing in the German league next season, but in realitly Olimpija is the weaker team. But no matter who wins, I (and thousands like me, I’m sure) would like to see the victory being achieved in the ring and not on some clerical error.
So, apparently we’ll know for a fact today who will win the bid to build the footbal stadium in Ljubljana. A story which began in late 1999 when then-mayor Vika Potočnik blurted out the promise to build a new stadium in light of successes of Slovene footbal team (which had then just qualified for Euro 2000, against all odds), might at last get a move on.
The proposed look of the new stadium
But truth be told, I’m not really holding my breath. Yes, we’re marginally closer to getting a stadium than we were a year (or ten years ago) and yes, Mayor Janković did a lot to breath life into the project (it is afterall central to his political platform) and the project he proposes seems to be sound: The municipality will sell the land to whoever bids the highest and this investor will then build a shopping mall for himself and a stadium and a sports hall for the city (we’re still waiting for the details, though), but as long as I’m not seeing the mayor kicking off the game (as he promised he would do), I’m not buying the tickets.
EDIT: In the end the job went to a consortium of Gradis construction company and retail company Merkur for a total sum of € 81 million. SCT bailed out just before the deadline, as did four other potential ivestors. The only other bidder was Red d.o.o., a consortium of the infamous Jurij Schollmayer and a group of Dutch investors. Schollmayer and Merkur crossed paths some years ago when former sold his limping Big Bang stores to the latter, which turned out to be one of the worst deals Merkur ever made, spending a lot of money to get Big Band out of the red and pay outstanding debts.
This one was waiting to happen… Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković has joined the ranks of politicians who on occasions wouldn’t even make it to the qualifying round of a spelling contest. While never short for words, Zoki tends to mumble a bit while speaking. But this time around it got the better of him and Janković joined the distinguished company of Janez Janša and George W. Bush, supplying us with the first-ever “zokism”…
Just to give you a bit of background on this video – the municipality finally went about fulfilling a long-standing commitment to build a home for elderly people in Trnovo. But then it transpired that the next-door neighbour has appropriated a piece of land belonging to the municipality and was now demanding money to give it back. At first the mayor and his people tried talking him out of his folly, but this person wouldn’t budge as he could apparently already demand the 60 k€ he demamnded for a speck of land. Or as the mayor put it:
The end result (apart from fumbling the word?). The city took this person to court, won, got the land and sued him back for a lot more than just 60.000 euros, trying to make an example of him.
So, can anyone guess which word was the mayor trying to pronounce? In Slovene and English, please 😈
P.S.: For all of those who are covering Slovenian EU presidency and are based in Ljubljana: Mayor’s office has opened a press centre on the ground floor of the town hall. Its use is free of charge and all you require to enter it is some sort of press ID. It sports phonelines, computers with internet access and a Wi-Fi hotspot if you want to use your own laptop.
EDIT: Hummmm….. It seems that the video about Janša’s stuttering is gone from Youtube…. Well, I never…. 😉
Often being dubbed as the town’s sheriff, Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković can regurarely be seen chasing away double parked vehicles in downtown Ljubljana. I saw that for the first time some six months ago as he took the “press core” on an impromptu tour of nearby development sites. He put on his trademark “this-is-my-turf” look and just tapped on a glass of a taxi parked on a zebra crossing. The taxi driver looked up, and as he saw the mayor peering down on him, he bugged out without saying a word.
A part of this routine can be seen on this video, taken almost two weeks ago. Zoki made his speech, called the traffic wardens and the van was no more.
I’m just not sure if it’s becoming for a mayor to direct traffic….
Mayor of the City of Ljubljana Zoran Janković apparently realised that he is fighting an uphill battle with the government, so he decided to adopt sabotage and guerilla tacticts.
Zoran Janković during Tuesday’s press conference
According to stories in today’s edition of Delo and Dnevnik dailies, the city administration refused to extend the lease agreement with Slovene Democratic Party, which for the past 15 years rented office spaces on street Komenskega ulica. The party was apparently offered (but refused) three other locations, while their present one is to become HQ of Lekarna Ljubljana (city owned drugstore company), which in turn is being evicted from their present location as that particular building was de-nationalised and returned to Ljubljana Archdiocese.
SDS, at the moment the largest Slovene party now has until October 27th to move to a new location. It shouldn’t be a problem, but it sure is a hassle in an election year. And while city administration claims (and SDS agrees :-o) that this has nothing to do with the row between city and the government, noone actually believes that. 😉
As promised, this is another Sunday Special by pengovsky.
Ljubljana saw the largest gathering of people since the end of World War II. 70.000 (yes, seventy thousand) workers demanded a rise in basic wages. The constant tug-of-war between the unions and the employers was fueled by rising inflation (shown in 10 – 20 percent raise in prices of basic food comodities such as bread, dairy product, etc…) which hit those with small incomes hardest. Employers of course will hear nothing of it and the end result was that negotiations broke down and unions took to the streets.
Unions don’t demand a staggering raise in wages – a mere 3.5 percent, just enough to offset the inflation. And – as odd as it may seem, the minister for labour Marjeta Cotman supports their cause. As does presiden-elect Danilo Türk, as you can see on the video.
Iif unions’ demands are not met, they will call a general strike. Which will make the 70.000-strong crowd seem like a picnic. So employers should think twice about not heeding to unions’ demands. I can understand that it may seem like blackmail, but if Slovene economy is really doing better, than a pay raise should be no trouble at all. The unions know that the days of free lunches are over. That’s why they called the demonstration on a Saturday. The employers have been given a fair warning.
And since things can be lost in translation, let me just explain the last part of the video. I used a song by Jani Kovačič, Delam (Working) – which is about people not being able to find work and still having to feed their families, while the only “work” they get is standing in a line at the local unemployment office. It became the unofficial anthem of Slovene working call (and others who are simply overworked).
