tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69804797447916110452024-10-24T22:54:23.423+02:00Starting with the purchase of small house, our dream to renovate our first new home the way we always wanted, gave place to disillusion, hurdles, and immense stress; in a word: a nightmare. WARNING: Slovenia is a great place, but a pity about its people. Fortunately there have been some exceptions; we are still determined after nearly 3 years in this country to fight through and win over with our challenge.. !JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-89731003914800234472010-01-11T15:16:00.000+01:002010-01-11T15:16:01.542+01:00

Today we took all the money we could find and tried to get our lawyer to transfer it to the victor in a court case he very thoroughly lost for us. No go. We had to do it ourselves, leaving us in doubt of the viability of making a part-payment in the first place, but we wanted to show good faith despite having none of our complaints heard or even listened to. How would we know? We don't talk

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-16647773214284611292010-01-05T21:27:00.003+01:002010-01-05T21:30:56.384+01:00

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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-36083998620444552562008-08-16T21:14:00.004+02:002010-01-08T07:48:03.349+01:00

http://www.insightnewstv.com/d77/ watch the video ... no comment...

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-45269829369309102732008-08-16T19:30:00.004+02:002010-01-05T20:55:51.412+01:00

Don't know how you choose real estate, but we spotted this place while browsing the internet, and virtually all the positives have become negatives and everything we've come to expect of the Slovenian lifestyle has, for various reasons, been eroded to the point where every day is a challenge of just getting motivated to tackle the next hurdle. I'm a 'go and do it' sort of person, and create from

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-6739014686896958042008-08-16T18:58:00.001+02:002010-01-05T20:57:33.149+01:00

It is our proximity to the Croatian border which has benefitted us most of all; the same shops across the border have better ranges, more up-to-date, and we get a decent tax rebate when we pass through customs, but spending half a day searching big, homogenous shopping centres for little bits of plumbing's niceties/soldering flux that doesn't spoil your water supply/adhesives that are taken for

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-56921686123721446242008-08-01T17:04:00.006+02:002010-01-05T20:48:54.633+01:00

I'm not big on buying magazines, but I subscribe to Technology Review, which is my source for a lot of facts on all manner of global issues. It tests my patience at times though, as I've always been a keen observer with vivid memories from before I was two years old, and have always exercised my brain in as many multitasking ways as possible. I've also dealt with a lot of people in my time,

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-78541140231616157182008-01-08T18:24:00.000+01:002010-01-04T22:06:46.176+01:00

Well I´ve seen it all now. Planned to bring a guitar back from my next trip to the UK. The airline insisted I book a seat especially for the guitar; It did not allow me an extra ten kilos of hand baggage, just the seat for the guitar..... but now plans have changed, I figured `well, if I´m not bringing back a guitar, there´s a couple of nice bathroom fittings I could get instead´...&nbsp; No, the

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-86511912085988106642007-12-19T13:47:00.000+01:002010-01-04T22:06:03.147+01:00

Listening to some tunes I´ve downloaded, I constantly marvel at how far off people´s notions of identity run. Would you think many people regard Eric Clapton as interchangeable with Dire Straits? Some of the mixups are hilarious, some plain sad, and you may be, yourself, unaware that the rare Dylan track you´ve got is actually a Donovan, and could probably invest some time checking what other

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-59835466011603348972007-12-07T09:55:00.002+01:002008-08-16T21:30:46.127+02:00

So last night, real late, I got the call I´d been waiting for; my lady had finally found a hotel. She´d driven from Slovenia up past Maribor into Austria taking the December high road across Europe aiming for Mulhouse, (I bet you don´t know how to pronounce it; Moolooze) France, but somewhere before Salzburg the red light for the alternator came up, and she spent about five hours driving all over

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-49505133468920526782007-12-06T20:04:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:58:40.163+01:00

Very early this morning I sent my partner off on a drive to France, in our venerable R11 Renault, but not before discovering that the recently filled fuel tank, brand new, was leaking from a connector hose between the filler and the tank; when I´d replaced the tank, I´d felt it was wise to replace the tubes and other rubber components, but I kept all the old bits, so I had the original, dated,

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-3000645773920132092007-12-06T00:50:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:57:37.589+01:00

´ve just been talking with a friend back in New Zealand who told me how the Pacific Ocean is the only ´clean´ocean left on this planet; he may be slightly right, but in the fifty years I had in that part of the world I knew of many horrific anecdotes of accidents, spillages, and deliberate dumpings of things toxic around the shores of those Pacific isles, not to mention the extensive history of

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-90344021143940350692007-12-01T11:14:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:56:51.003+01:00

Saturday morning checklist; Central heating? Off. Electric 'friendly as possible' heaters? On. Temperature? 14.5°C. Shopping? One of us must stay home in case the missing computer materialises. Work? The supplier didn't deliver the materials. Money? Half the slow payers have coughed up. Get more materials? The materials places with the best stocks are in the opposite direction to the shops with

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-33696663615511957512007-11-30T21:58:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:29:48.803+01:00

After this morning's fiasco, the third day of telephoning the La Poste service numbers and getting shoved from phone to phone, and finding they all know nothing, or, only what WE know, (nothing), and spending this afternoon trying to get on with our project here in Slovenia, and calling the company we ordered aggregate from Monday, and being told tonight, 'ena ura', one hour, I stayed around the

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-20049902838979044122007-11-30T10:59:00.000+01:002008-08-16T21:57:39.811+02:00

We've been awaiting the arrival of a new computer, being sent from France, for a variety of good reasons, and the freighters have a very cute blobby window which pops into our life and allows us to track our parcel; well, that's the idea, however, the tracking blob does not seem to be attached/connected to any sentient lifeforms at the other end, and for a week we've watched a 'no progress'

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-59379198265259431642007-11-29T19:49:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:34:46.685+01:00

'm indignant. Is this century 21? Are we beset with 'Branding' everywhere? Well, if these brands are so big and important, (to the point of seeing all the minor competitors off the adjacent shelves..) isn't there an obligation for those big names to make sure their place in the shelves is always full/well stocked/at least some stock to choose? It is not high summer where I am, but the Raid brand

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-67420243833168545312007-11-26T23:09:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:33:47.297+01:00

What do you know about hygiene? A fair few years ago I ran a small and entertaining pub in a ski region, and had a funky little restaurant that specialised in cool jazz on the soundsystem, backgammon evenings with fondue, and some pretty crazy nights prompted by beer tanker driver strikes, plumbing explosions and other hazards of the funky pub trade. I also had a crazy local Swiss guy who brought

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-11286608068780967442007-11-26T22:39:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:33:07.819+01:00

Reality check; here in Europe, where there is no sense of environmental awareness AT ALL, we've had our thermostat not control the central heating for the last four weeks. The result; we've been forced to open windows to keep the temperature down to bearable, while warming the poor old universe again; now, do we pay for the two hundred litres of fuel we've used in one month? Figure another four

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-30381222784490447552007-11-23T09:50:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:56:05.872+01:00

Ever had the notion to live in New Zealand? Do you have some nice pictures in your mind of those isles? I lived there for more than fifty years of my life, but fell in love with a foreigner, the process of which, naturally enough requiring to discover this new heart-course, meant I went and lived in her world for a while. Great; I'm totally happy with that; returned to briefly settle up my

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-54821370853051564912007-11-21T09:52:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:55:29.593+01:00

Since I wrote Blog J, the golden girl has retired from athletics and returned her Olympic Gold Medals. New event? The Retro Olympic Ceremony? The Silvers get a Gold, and some really good athlete, unable to get a podium ever, gets pulled off the delivery truck he now drives, to get a Bronze which would have changed the course of his/her career had this all happened four years ago.... the golden

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-8922227318573436422007-11-20T15:39:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:54:49.628+01:00

Years ago I was always fascinated by the cartooning ability of Giles, always a dry and cockney accented wit of observation, and THE image of his, that is indelibly printed in my grey matter, is of an arab sheik in a Cadillac convertible, followed by a fleet of totally veiled wives on motor scooters, and his shouting 'once more around the block oh loved ones, we've got to use this stuff up somehow

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-76858539816715051592007-11-20T13:44:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:54:07.107+01:00

Since my first 'news' blog, there's been another classic snafu in Bangladesh; people dying like flies, unaided, unreported, unadministered, villages with '70 daeths' have over 500 dead, unburied, or perhaps in a shallow grave in a nearby field; have you seen the Bangladeshi Parliament? Go look. I say, give the people cellphones, let them call their own salvation, as there is more good stuff

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-48791128713297974462007-11-19T17:24:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:53:25.107+01:00

Spent Sunday across the border in Zagreb; for years I've heard jokes about cities in the South Pacific being 'closed' or 'put your watch back ten years', but on the fringes of Europe, Sunday, not a decent cafe/snackbar open; a petrol station offers as much as is available in the rest of Zagreb on a Sunday. I always wondered why the incredible supply of Catholic churches in this region had so

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-30160449686417627502007-11-17T23:03:00.001+01:002010-01-04T21:32:25.149+01:00

This is an afterthought of Blog V2; last Tuesday, after two successful removals of the vet's row of stitching, we finally created a dressing/truss which Holly, our superactive little rat, could not rapidly remove, and hence, we have been able to supervise the so far successful healing of the large scar left from surgery, to remove a growth that these little critters are prone to. Now I have to

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-31513515925319995932007-11-14T14:32:00.000+01:002008-08-16T21:29:37.973+02:00

We don't use buses very much for getting about, but if we have a major voyage to make we always check the buses out, and this is a big shout out to EUROLINES, a French company who cover Europe, and for the three years we've had them on our list, have made fucking sure our chances of actually making any successful contact with them are fraught with failed emails and more unresponsive telephone

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980479744791611045.post-67110663849751569322007-11-13T18:01:00.000+01:002010-01-04T21:19:02.072+01:00

Great Burdock Oil; someone told me it was good for a dry scalp, which I get, and while in Ljubljana I spotted an industrial size pharmacy, and asked the bright tight thing for the aforesaid oil, and she went straight to it, which is commendable in comparison to the average staffer in the average pharmacy. I paid my seven Euros, or somesuch, and tried it out; yuck! Not good! I felt contaminated!

JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07818957743303242118noreply@blogger.com0