Thursday Doors, 21/10/21: Ljubljana

Since today celebrates my poet friend, we stop the regular posting and look back at the day when I saw him last. Certain doors are waiting to be showed from that day as if they knew today would be Thursday.

Whenever I’m in Slovenia we manage to get together at least once, and I appreciate this. This was our last meeting.

I have showed photos from this day on my blog before but there are certain doors waiting to make their first appearance and certain church door that wishes to be repeated.

Dear Aleš, I wish you a nice celebration, good health to you and your girls, good mood, good words and good friends.

In my blogging memories at the end of the post you will find previous birthday posts. You can click on the photos and be transported there.

And now a poem about how we got to be:

21-10-21

We met late,
even though at our Faculty of Arts 
you were a rare male colleague
and we shared professors of English
and classrooms
and exams, even,
without exchanging a sentence.

You always looked 
positively unapproachable. 
Maybe I did too.
Only after the studies were gone
we learned that it was not so,
that we knew how to have fun,
just that you favoured Romania 
over my California.

I visited you in Bucharest twice.
The first thing you did 
as I entered your apartment
was turn around the newspaper on the table
so that I couldn’t see the corpse on the cover.
And on return I was thrown off the train 
on the border with Hungary
and guarded with a machine gun.

And now the reversible day is here
and you are already how old?
And your daughter is already how old??
I’m not in California
but much farther than Bežigrad,
and even Bestia is eight
which is how long I’ve been gone.
And you are a poet.
And the crown takes over the crowd. 

• 

  With your Lidija.

• 

  Just a happy guy.

• 

  Cheers, cin cin, noroc, na zdravje!

• 

  We ate lovely lunch behind this door.

• 

  Upon leaving the restaurant Kašča Jurček.

• 

  Neighbourhood décor.

• 

  Then we drove up to Orle where the last battle for the liberation of Ljubljana was fought in May 1945.

• 

  The monument in a door.

• 

  The place looked nothing like how we remembered it and we almost turned around.

• 

  Do you like this door? Or overdone?

• 

  They don’t look so friendly.

• 

  Well, that terrace was nice to sit on.

• 

  There were more than these two.

• 

  The goat’s shack without a door. Kozel is a Czech beer, meaning “billy goat”.

• 

  Leaving Orle. Arrivederci, Auf Wiedersen, nasvidenje to them too.

• 

  The church near you that I had never approached before.

• 

  And I would never believe this photo was taken in our city.

For Thursday Doors challenge hosted by Dan at No Facilities

This day in my blogging history

• 2014: “Happy birthday to me” by Aleš Mustar, translated by Manja Maksimovič

• 

  2014: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

• 

  2015: Alone, until I’m not

• 

  2015: You know what children, artists and madmen have in common: they know that everything in this world happens for the first time. There are no repeat performances. —Vitomil Zupan

• 

  2017: Only too much is enough

• 

  2018: Happy Ab day with a walk in Koper

• 

  2019: A walk in Ljubljana with the “submarine door”

• 

  2020: Birthday letter, poetry reading and signs of the times

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