Yesterday I arrived in Slovenia after 3 flights, about 18 hours of travel time, and the usual array of hassles accompanying long trips, including bad weather in one part of the world causing delays, a consequent flight change, more than one security screening queue, an airline change, an unprinted boarding pass, and an airline agent who politely told me (twice, in fact) to “please run” the length of the terminal to the gate where my flight had already boarded.  I did make it to the gate in time – breathless of course – and as that flight was the last stage of the trip, I actually arrived as scheduled.

Miha – a graduate student in the Department of Geography who has already spent a lot of time helping me with all the logistics of this move – met me at the airport across the border in Trieste, Italy and brought me to Koper.  We had some time to kill before I could move into my new flat, so he showed me around the department and then we had a kava with another one of the grad students.  Mid-afternoon, I was finally able to get into my flat on the fourth floor of a building in the historic district along the marina.  The interior has been renovated and is quite nice, but it is still a drafty old building, which is already putting me in mind of my apartment in Kent.

I spent a little bit of time trying to get settled in but ultimately left my suitcases open in the middle of the floor while I made a trip to the shops up the street.  I wanted to do a little bit of exploring, but really I just wanted to have something to eat on hand so that I didn’t have to forage first thing in the morning.  One would think it wouldn’t be that hard to identify products based on appearance alone.  Apparently one would be wrong.  Case in point: I thought I was buying milk.  It was in a carton.  It had a cartoon cow on it.  It even had the word mleko on it, which I thought at least sounded like I was on the right track.  But, as I found out this morning, it was in fact not milk but yogurt.  Which, actually, wasn’t a total disaster on my cereal.  It was, however, a disaster for my tea…