Generosity

Before we ever came to Ljubljana Dahlia and Georgia had a really good impression of Slovenia because of one person: Maja Dvorcev.  She is a lovely Slovenian woman who studied at the University of Tennessee and was dating (and has since married) my former student Tyler Roy.  The girls met Maja and Tyler when I had one of my torts classes over to my house and they have been big fans ever since.  She is a warm and kind person and ever positive in all regards.  When the girls worried about moving here I would remind them that Maja was from here and was basically representative of the country.

In 2013 we had a visitor from China at the law school and we had her to our house a few times and she seemed to really appreciate the gesture.  When the girls asked why we did this, I tried to explain that when you are a visitor to another country the very best thing that can happen is when someone invites you to their home.  You can see how others live.  You can see their family photos.  And you know that these people have welcomed you to their home.  Here are Georgia and Dahlia with Visiting Professor Cuifeng He at our house in 2013:

This weekend Maja invited us up to her home town of Rogaska Slatina, a beautiful old spa town on the eastern border with Croatia.  We went to see the sights, but mostly because Maja invited us.  She toured us around the town, found us a place to stay, organized a dinner for us on Friday, accompanied us on an amazing spa adventure (including european style nudity!) and even had us out to her Grandmother's farm for dinner on Saturday night.  Here's Maja and Dahlia at the spa:

 
The dinner at Grandmother's was one of those magical evenings you can only have when you visit someone's home in a foreign country.  The meal was delicious, the farm was gorgeous, and the company was the best.  Maja's sister Sonja and her boyfriend Gaspar and Maja's dad and grandmother (who spoke almost no english) all joined us.  The girls got to see the coolest kind of working farm, one with heaps of things ripe and in bloom and right next to each other.  Here they are checking out the grapes:

We ate them right off of the vine, warmed by the sun.  They were so much more delicious than grocery grapes, they just exploded in our mouths.  Georgia was particularly psyched about the walnuts, which gave me the chance to crack some by hand:

Maja's Dad met us with homemade Jagermeister (in a "Don't Mess With Texas" shot glass no less!):

Which was followed by house made wine, aged in these barrels:

After dinner we hiked up a small hill to the local church, which Maja asked the caretaker to open for us.  The view was amazing:

The company was even better:

We returned for a homemade gluten free strawberry walnut cake that blew our mind:

The cake said it all.  We were indeed welcomed.