The differences between Canada and Slovenia: what Lonely Planet won’t tell you

What you should know before reading this post is that much of what I write is generalisation. It does not make sense to take everything as “true” because of the impossibility of considering everyone in Canada or Slovenia the same in any way. Those people who tell you that everyone in their country shares similar traits do not know what they are talking about. There are always exceptions. My comments are merely general observations that will help Canadians and Slovenes understand each other better. As always, if you disagree, I would be happy to argue with you about it.

Culture

I will start with one similarity: I like neither Canadian nor Slovenian music. In both countries there are a few musicians that are both talented and popular and a whole lot who are either no good or unheard of. My favourite music that is popular in Canada is American. My favourite music that is popular in Slovenia is Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian. The significance of the music of these countries is that Canada and Slovenia both get their most popular music from their bigger neighbours. When I say bigger, of course, I mean in population. Canada is a big country in area. That affects mindsets more than you might think.

Slovenia is a small country and Canada is a big one. I never realised how much this difference affects mindsets until I went to Slovenia. You see, when you live in Canada, and can afford to fly from one end of the country to another (say, five hours from Vancouver to Montreal), it is not an especially long distance. It is, of course, only from one end of the country to another. All Canadians I know have friends or family in another part of the country. Slovenes often go their whole lives not knowing people who come from 200km away. To a Slovene, the thought of taking a five hour journey by any mode of transportation is almost inconceivable. Since it takes five hours in the car to get from Lendava to Koper, you have to be highly motivated by something to take so much time to make the journey. Most Slovenes have no desire to see many other parts of Slovenia, except to visit the coast. As a result, I, as a tourist and friend of people from different parts of the country, have probably been to more places in Slovenia than most Slovenes. In fact, there are differences in unemployment in different regions of Slovenia that could be largely cured by more internal migration; and yet very few Slovenes will travel or move more than 30km from their birthplace to get a job. That said, the same is true of Canada.

Nevertheless, Canadians are more open to moving to different parts of Canada (or other parts of the world) than are Slovenes. Many European families have lived where they live for generations, and so they would not consider moving. This concentration in one spot has led to an amazing variety of dialects.

Language

Slovenia has a different dialect for every little town you go to. It is fascinating to me, someone interested in languages and speaking Canadian English, to see the differences among them. Someone a mere 100km (or less) away from you will not understand your local dialect. As I began to learn Slovene I thought that everyone would teach me “slovensko”, the official language, as distinct from their dialect. Well, they told me they were. But as I said certain words to some people they would laugh and tell me “no no, THIS is how you say that word.” I would take that word to someone else, who would in turn laugh because I was speaking a different dialect. It was confusing and I eventually decided it was much easier to learn and speak to people in their dialects rather than learn standard Slovene, which nobody seems to know anyway. I realise that many other countries or regions of the world are similar in this respect, but coming from Canada and having been taught North American and British English (which are almost the same, apart from a handful of words and accents), I am used to little variation in English. You see, English was spread around the world only in the past few hundred years, and the British empire only ended in the past 60 years. Moreover, English speakers were more connected to each other through things like railroads and colonial administrators. For that reason, English is similar from place to place because it is based on recent British English. Slovene, on the other hand, is an old language, and people in different places had far less contact with each other and simply less in common.

In fact, the contact they had with other countries is just as likely to have influenced the development of each dialect. For anyone who knows Italian, you will hear Italian words used in Slovenian dialects that come from near the Italian border (anywhere west of Ljubljana). Likewise, there is a considerable number of German words in many dialects because many Slovenes live close to the Austrian border. There is, of course, Croatian influence in the south of Slovenia, but Slovene is already similar to Croatian so it is less noticeable. As for the eastern border, in Lendava, where they learn Hungarian in school, they speak the closest thing to standard Slovene I have ever heard. Foreign influence is a feature of all languages, of course. In both Canadian English and French, the influence comes primarily from the United States. Foreign influences also affect Slovenian food.

Food and drink

Italian food is popular in Slovenia. All of the classiest and most expensive restaurants are stocked with a wide variety of pasta dishes. I don’t know why, but the pizza in any decent restaurant in Slovenia is better than any I have had in North America. Those who have been to Italy assure me it is better than Italian pizza as well. Along with Italy, a lot of food in Slovenia (the best, in my opinion) comes from the former Yugoslavia. Čevapčiči and pleskavica, a kind of pork sausage and patty respectively (although their ingredients vary with the country), are perhaps the most widely eaten, and come, according to Macedonians at least, from Macedonia. So does ajvar, a kind of red pepper and eggplant relish that Slovenes eat with čevapčiči and pleskavica and Macedonians with bread. Some people eat burek, a pastry filled with meat, cheese or pizza toppings (although in other countries you can find other kinds of burek), hot dogs, hamburgers and even horseburger, a rarity in Canada. Drinking is pervasive in Slovenia and alcoholism is more of a health issue than it is in Canada (where obesity is more the issue). But instead of focusing on the bad side of alcohol, let’s look at the good side!

Slovenian alcohol is good and I want to point out my favourites: borovničke, a liquor fermented from blueberries; medica, another liquor, this one from honey; and Laško, generally regarded as the favourite beer of the Slovenes. On top of these I drank a lot of wine—unavoidable in a country that has several regions that consider themselves to be the wine growing region—mixed with coke (bambus) or fanta (mišmaš) or water (špricer). What a strange idea this was to me. I had never considered mixing wine with anything. I don’t like wine, even after all the wine I drank in Slovenia, so I prefered it mixed with something else. But it was still a wild idea. Most wine one buys in Canada comes from other countries and I have never seen someone mix it. I’ll consider doing that more often when someone offers it to me in Canada. “Wine?” “Do you have any coke to mix?”

There is not much native Slovenian food—or at least not much that is popular—but there are some desserts such as gibanica and potica that almost everyone eats, and for good reason. Canada has very little homegrown food as well. There are still some indigenous people in Canada (about 2% of the population) but the food they bring to the Canadian table is not widely eaten. Most food eaten in Canada is fast food, Asian food or, like Slovenia, European style meat and potatoes. Fast food’s popularity in Canada could in fact be one of the reasons that prevalence of obseity amongst Canadians is nearly as high as amongst Americans. By contrast, I did not see a single Slovene I thought was obese, and very few I would have considered overweight. In fact, Slovenes generally all look the same.

Ethnicity

Again, bear in mind that I simplify: do not take me literally. But it seems to me that most Slovenes’ faces look in some ways like most other Slovenes’ faces. Moreover, their bodies are all more or less the same too: hardly anyone is overweight or underweight, short or tall. That is because, barring about 10% of the people, Slovenia is monoethnic. In Canada you can find people of almost every conceivable ethnicity and there is no clear majority (except perhaps “white”, but even the white majority is shrinking relative to non whites). The other 10% of the population of Slovenia is mostly ex Yugoslavs and Gypsies. Though there is some racism, the non Slovenes are well integrated—even, unlike in surrounding countries, the Gypsies. Nationalism is not as strong in Slovenia as in most of the rest of Europe, partly because of tight immigration policies and effective assimilation policies and partly because most Slovenes are prosperous. Capitalism runs deeper in Slovenia than in most of Central and Eastern Europe, because it was the industrial hub of Yugoslavia, and the transition to capitalism was not as hard on Slovenia as on any of the other centrally planned economies. That is not to say it has been easy for everyone.

Economy

Most people have adapted as well as one can expect to the collapse of central planning and the introduction of capitalism. They have found jobs in the private sector, investing is spreading and young people will take a bigger role in the knowledge based economy. There is quite a generation gap, as can be expected in a former socialist (don’t say communist or you could get a lecture) country. Many older people have coped but many others have found themselves without jobs, as factories closed down, without skills to compete in a capitalist economy and without a government to provide for them. They need to gain the new skills the economy demands and learn to be entrepreneurs. Slovenia has more opportunities for growth, in my opinion, than any other country in the world. There are a number of strong Slovenian corporations, a lot of consumer power, good market knowledge of Central and Eastern Europe, especially the former Yugoslavia, and low inflation. But there is a lot the government should do to draw its hand away from the economy and let it grow organically.

There are some foreign corporations in Slovenia, but not many. There is not a lot of foreign competition or investment in any industry, and the service sector is poorly developed. Innovation lags. Entrepreneurship is weak. Taxes are among the highest and most complicated in Europe for both business and households, discouraging the investment that could create a shareholder society. It would be understandable if that money went into encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship, to tackle issues such as unemployment, but it is a bit harder to see where the money goes. The welfare system is fine: while Canada has a small number of very poor people, Slovenia does not seem to have any. But education, especially post secondary, could improve. (Likewise for everywhere else in the world.) Foreign business could inject the competition that forces

Slovenian businesses to upgrade their quality. Privatisation is overdue in banking, insurance and telecommunications. The government is proposing some much needed liberal reforms and deregulation but seems to lack the will to carry them out. Quality of service in finance, restaurants and government is low and the government has too much control over the economy. The fact that it can force mergers, bar foreign investment and remove CEOs is disgraceful. But diatribe against economic nationalism and protectionism is a topic for another post. If you are going to reply to this part of this post, please bear in mind that I consider any arguments about Slovenes not being ready for privatisation or the lifting of trade barriers to be excuses that will only restrain Slovenia’s prospects for economic growth until the economy is no longer competitive. Suffice it to say, the government should back away and entrepreneurs should take their place.

Conclusion

While I will not claim this is an exhaustive list of the differences or similarities between Canada and Slovenia, I think it will be good insight into my day to day experiences and observations of the past year for those who know me and an enlightening read for others. I have looked at the small versus big country mindset, the countless Slovenian dialects versus the nuanced English ones, foreign influences in music, food, language and ethnicity, and the economic reforms I think are required for Slovenia to reach its potential. To those of you experiencing something similar, I would love to hear about it and I bet everyone else would to. To anyone who thinks I left something out, you’re probably right, so tell me about it. And to everyone else, hvala za brati.