As I promised on Saturday, here is some footage of the total lunar eclipse as seen from Ljubljana. It is actually a piece (if you can call it that since I improvised it) for the Firm™ so it is in Slovene, but still…
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Camera: El Presidente™, music: Michael Jakcson, Thirller
OK, so it wasn’t all that spectacular 😀 But it was much more fun looking at it during the actual event. Which reminds me… I might post some footage of 1999 total solar eclipse. That was much more fun 🙂
Zoot suit – gotta get me one of those! 😀
From March 16 to 18, Ljubljana will be hosting the first ever swing festival on Slovenw grounds. The festival will include 16 hours of workshops, done in two levels, three evenings of parties, live music and last but not the least – a lot of fun and dance. The festival is hosted by the SweetSwing Society and you can find more info here
Highly recommended! 😀
The guy who went on to become Slovenia’s greatest poet has in his time written some rather stirring poems.
The romantical drunkard that he was, he had obviously suffered from a bad case of Weltschmertz, which I always somewhat resented him. Add to the fact that we basically had to idolise him in high school, and you can easlily understand why (mostly) young Slovenes have a sort of love-hate relatioship with France Prešeren
Now – every year for the past 20-or-so years Slovene Association of Teathre Performers organises a Recital of Prešeren’s poetry as their hommage to France and his work. The Firm™ covered the event for the last four years and we do so today as well. So, if you feel like enjoying some excellent performances and not your average dull reading of poetry, tune in today from noon (12.00 CET) as we will be broadcasting live – audio and video.
Audio stream link here (WMP required)
Video stream link here (RealPlayer required)
And if you have a 3G mobile phone (UMTS or EDGE enabled) you can tune in to http://mobile.radiokaos.info, as we will be broadcasting to mobile phones as well.
But just to wet your appetite, here are two performances from previous years.
Nebeška Procesija (Heavenly Procession) performed by Marko Simčič, 8 February 2005
This one is a must. When I heard it for the first time, I was stunned by the fact that one can easily apply it to the situation in present day Ljubljana.
And, of course…
Zdravljica (The Toast) performed by Polde Bibič, 8 February 2004
BTW: My all time favourite verse in all of Prešren’s poetry is from the second stanza of Zdravljica:
“Bog živi vas Slovenke, prelepe žlahtne rožice.
Ni take je mladenke, kot naše je krvi dekle.
Naj sinov zarod nov,
iz vas bo strah sovražnikov”
What’s yours?
UPDATE: There were some problems with the video connection in the last 15 minutes of the broadcast, but othetwise it went without a glich. Me very happy 😀 All in all, some 1800 people attended the performance on Prešeren square. It was quite a show – despite the occasional downpour
Minister of civil service Gregor Virant and Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković
So, today (that is, yesterday) Zoki finally got to meet with JJ. Why? To get back the money the state more or less took from Ljubljana in the begining of the year. The result? 0 €. Yes. Zoki got zero. Zilch. Niente. Nothing. Nada. JJ was even cheeky enough to no attend the press conference, but sent Minsiter Gregor instead.
While Janković had hoped to develop over € 2 billion worth of projects, Janša more or less told him to go fuck himself. Now, I was always wary of Janković’s grandeur, but the thing that pains me is the fact that the tug-of-war between the state and the city will leave us – the Ljubljanians – worse off.
No matter what the government says it is more or less obvious that the overnight change in financing municipalities was passed to please the mayors of 206 smaller (and more rural) municipalities, and to hurt one (1) mayor in particular. Had the government of Janez Janša really wanted to distribute the funds evenly it would have done so in phases – not leaving Ljubljana budget gaping with a € 45 million hole.
I’m sorry if I sound biased, but this is yet another example of this government pursuing specific goals (i.e.: neutralising an unwanted mayor) by changing the legislation in general. I have my reservations about Janković, but I resent Janša for fighting this battle over the back of the citizens of a capital of the state he runs.
On Tuesday I posted some more or less random thoughts on Ljubljana Escalator which opened a day later. I also wrote that heads will roll if the thing doesn’t start making profit soon. Well now… Heads might roll, but not in the near future as the escalator is expected to return the investement in forty years!!!!!. For fuck’s sake! Even I will be either geriatric and heavily demented by then – but most likely already six feet under… Jesus… Seven million euros divided by 2,5 euros (the ticket fare) means that the poor thing will have to transport at least 2.8 million passangers (provided they all buy a return ticket) just to break even. And that’s not counting the operating costs, repairs and necesary overhauls. Sheesh!
So, if you want to see how the gala opening went, here’s the piece I did for the Firm™ (in Slovene)
The voiceover is a bit screwed up because of compression and the camera work is not all it could be, but still…
The legendary jazz musician (and City Councilor) Miha Jazbinšek performed at the soiree and here they are: Miha Jazbinšek and His Legends, doing Gershwin’s Summertime
This video wasn’t aired anywhere, so it’s kind of exclusive 😀 Note how he looks into the camera at the end of his solo 😉
The Ljubljana Escalator building site (source)
The infamous Ljubljana Escalator will officially start operating tommorrow. The project started way back in 2001 when then Mayor Viktorija Potočnik during one of her fits of grandeur announced that Ljubljana will get an escalator to the Castle hill. The project costs were initially estimated at around SIT 600 million (€ 2,1 million). For various reasons (including the fact that she was ultimately responsible for the fiasco of SIB Bank and the fact that she promised a new football stadium and repeatedly failed to deliver) Vika Potočnik lost the elections of 2002 to Danica Simšič, who put the escalator project on the back burner.
As going got tough for Mayor Simšič she revived the project, hoping that it would be finished in time for the elections. Of course it wasn’t and the fact that the costs now soared to SIT 1,7 billion (€ 7 million) might have contributed to the fact that she lost the elections of 2006 to the incumbent mayor Zoran Janković.
Thus “Zoki” as he is popularly know will preside over tommorows official unveiling of the escalator, hopefully bringning to a more-or-less sucessfull end someone’s pet project. A couple of thought on the issue:
Ljubljana doesn’t really need an escalator to the Castle hill. While I agree that the capital city must have some sort of glamour, the escalator will hardly achieve that. Despite the fact that it is apparently high-tech (and has already broken down during a test run, trapping people inside) it is not a landmark and I cannot imagine scores of tourists barging down on Ljubljana just to take the 2,5 € ride to the top of the Castle hill. Especially not when Ljubljana sports a lovely (even somewhat mooshy) train service from the Triple Bridges (Tromostovje) to the Castle – that is to say from one landmark to another.
But now that we’ve got it, there is no use bitching about it. Sure, we could use a couple of more apartement buildings, but hey, they decided to spend the money… Ah, therein lies the rub… If this project fails (i.e.: doesn’t create profit), heads will roll. One of the most prominent heads on display (should an unfortunate chain of events occur) will most definitely be the head of Darko Brlek, general manager of Festival Ljubljana. This city-owned company won (or – some say – lost) the tender to manage both the Castle and the escalator. And should there not be enough fat German tourists to fill the city coffers, the manager of the Castle might face decapitation – in a political sence, at least.
Nothing like that is obviously going to happen to Mayor Janković, of course. Not only is he still in his bullet-proof stage, when little can hurt him, but he also made sure that people remember who is actually responsible for the project. Despite the fact that he maintans his anti-political facade, he acted in the shrewdest political manner, as he invited both former mayors to the grand opening, sacrificing a litlle limelight just to make sure people remembered who concocted the whole thing. Cunning little bastard…
Oh, and if you want to see how the thing looked like just before the opening, check out Jonas’ post.
Foto by Stane Jeršič, www.ljubljana.si
And thus it begins… Ljubljana City Council convened for its first (and second) extraordinary session yesterday. The substance wasn’t all that much interesting unless you count raising parking fees from 100 SIT per hour to 0.60 € (SIT 144) per hour or if you hold a keen interest in City of Ljubljana filing an appeal with the Constitutional Court to strike down the ammended Law on Financing Municipalities which in effect reduces Ljubljana expected income by some 11 bln SIT (45,6 million €).
The fun part was watching the three-times-Maganer-of-the-year-award-winner Zoran Janković trying to control 45 people whom he can’t fire. He boldly announced that both sessions will take three hours altogehter, but instead the debate raged on for seven hours.
Janković learned a couple of things: Procedure is the basis of democracy. On at least two occassions he blatantly violated Rules of Procedure: If the Rules stipulate that a decree comes into effect a day after being published in the Official Gazzette, that means precisely that and cannot be read any other way. Zoran Janković however rammed through a decision (obviously invalid) that this particural decision – on forming a Committee for Sports – becomes valid upon its confirmation in the Council. From a legal point of view Ljubljana City Council now doesn’t have a Committee on Sports and its members are holding their positions illegally.
Secondly: If Rules allow a broad debate then the Councilors will use every millimeter of this broadness. That’s what democracy is for. The Rules stipulate that a Councilor must stick to the issue on debate, but the nature of a Councilor’s debate is entirely up to him/her. As is the length of the debate. As expected, Miha Jazbinšek took full advantage of this, contributing at least an hour and a half of a seven-hour session.
Thirdly: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. Janković apparently takes great many things personally. He will have to let certain things go, otherwise he will keep getting involved in a pointless exchange of words, whose only aim is to throw the Mayor off guard. Yesterday several Councilors succeeded in doing that.
Janković will have to learn these things by heart since he has set out to complete his twenty-two projects in four years. Yesterday’s session lasted for seven hours. I wonder how long the budgetary session will take? And even if he manages to ammend the Rules, imposing a time-limit on debate, he will have to brace himself for a fiery hell when he will try to ram a decision through the Council. And I see no way of limiting the sessions to below five-to-six hours. Not with all the projects he has set out to complete.
