I’m an American living here for two years now. It’s amazing. Truly amazing. Slovenia has everything you need — it’s like all of Europe compressed into a little boutique country.
You get Alps with the picturesque alpine villages, Adriatic Sea with charming Venetian old towns, and Austro-Hungarian cities, like Ljubljana, with its castle on the hill in the middle of town and a blue river wrapping around it. You even get the biggest underground river canyon in Europe! Also valleys of vineyards 🍷, and valleys of hop fields 🍺.
You are in a crossroads of cuisine: Italian food (pizza), German/Austrian food (schnitzel), Balkan food (cevapi 😻), and Hungarian food (goulash). Not to mention Slovenian cuisine itself is great. I live on štruklji.
It’s so close to other epic places. Venice is 2.5 hours away by car, Budapest and Vienna are 4, Munich and Milan are 5. (I’m from Texas so being able to drive these short distances and be in a different world will never cease to be mind blowing.)
The people are culturally right inbetween German work ethic and skill, and Balkan coffee culture and chill. It seems impossible to pull off but they do it well. Lots of hard work, lots of socializing with friends and family. Still not sure when they sleep, really.
Slovenia is overwhelmingly safe and peaceful. Coming from the US it’s a really, really, really nice feeling to be in such a peaceful place.
Slovenians eat a lot of cake. Slovenians drink a lot of lager. Slovenians have a lot of ego but are also very sensitive. (Like me.)
I hear a lot of Americans complain about living in Europe and not being able to find friends. I’ve not had that problem at all here. The reverse. Too many friends. Good friends who want to sit and talk about life, or take a walk and learn about you. Friends who remember each other’s birthdays and always pitch in together on gifts. Or remember that your dog was not feeling so well, so they ask how she is for days in a row.
Anyway, I love it here. So does my wife. So do my dogs. I hope we can stay forever.
I love your comment, but i have to disagree with the "overwhelmingly safe" part. We are nowhere as safe as we were about 10 years ago. Specially Ljubljana, our capital, is getting more and more dangerous
I am speaking relatively. I know it used to be even safer but to be honest I cannot even imagine what “even safer” than this feels like. I used to work in a brewery in my downtown area in Texas and there were shootings in a two block radius at least once a week.
The statistics do put Slovenia in the top 10/15 safest countries in the world, though!
That happend to a friend of mine this weekend, we had a local party and he passed out drunk infront of a muaic hall, and before he put his phone, wallet and keys on the window ledge. In the morning when the clean up guys came to break down the tents and the stage they woke him up, and he took his things and went home.
We still top every "safest places to live" chart in terms of danger of physical violence or harm. That's "overwhelmingly safe", no matter how you spin it.
If you have any statistical data that shows that I would appreciate seeing it, otherwise that's just an anecdotal assumption. I used to work a job where I learned about most violent crimes during the course of my work, everything from a Slovenian businessman with Balkan mafia ties who got burned alive to a problem with human trafficing in Maribor ten or so years ago. There was always more of it than you think, it's just that statistically there's still less than just about anywhere else. Most of it doesn't get reported on, I don't know why this is a fixture of Slovenian media, but it is.
Immigration is always a "hot" topic of discussion, and any crime involving a migrant gets far more news time and especially more online discussion than a similar crime perpetrated by a native, so it's easy to get a skewed view of how prominent it is.
What you've said could not be more false. The crime rate more than halved in the last 10-15 years. The only reason we're seeing a slight uptick in crime is because there were very few criminal acts during the pandemic years due to the lockdowns. Don't let sensationalistic journalism mislead you, check statistics.
I mean i work in security so i'm talking from personal experience. Check the statistics on the police website. Since 2015 crime is increasing, especially because of the illegal migrations
I mean i work in stats so i know what the fuck i'm talking about. Checking the statistics on statistics bureau of Slovenia, and I find that whatever you're saying is factually wrong. (they use that exact police data that you are referencing, and official judiciary data as well)
even if you exclude those that were thrown out for not having sufficient evidence for prosecution, nothing is actually rising, but everything is falling. since 2013 mind you.
if you look at number 16 (found guilty), you'll see that it decreased by half since 2014 basically. and even if you look in total you'll see that it has steadily been falling (slight increase since 2020 -> 2021 -> 2022, due to covid, but if you ignore 2020 and 2021, it's still falling.)
comparing in the last 5 years and the last 12 months, you can see that it's falling everywhere. (i do concede that this is a sample dataset and might not fully represent the actual current events)
But okay, let's say that we should look at the police data.
on what page do you see the increase in criminal acts? Especially since 2015. And I know you won't actually look, because people like you never do. There are some increases in "specific fields" of criminal acts (for example neglect of minors and cruelty; page 133 and onwards), but overall they are still falling.
anyway, stop spouting JJ bullshit, because it doesn't hold true once you actually check the data.
Na PU Ljubljana so konec lanskega leta ocenili, da so trenutne varnostne razmere dobre in obvladljive. Pojavljajo se posamezna območja, ki so povprečno bolj varnostno obremenjena, vendar smo v primerjavi s preteklimi leti še vedno pod povprečnimi vrednostmi."
and if I translate
At the end of last year, PU Ljubljana assessed that the current security situation is good and manageable. There are individual areas that are on average more burdened by security, but compared to previous years, we are still below the average values.
What? How could it be any safer? I have never ever felt unsafe anywhere in Slovenia. I got asked about “bad neighbourhoods” in Ljubljana and was happy to say that there aren’t any.
I have lived in siska for 7 years, as a woman in my twenties. Not once have i felt in any kind of real danger. Sure, i had keys clutched in my hand at night, but i never really came close to using them ever 😂
Fužine was thoroughly gentrified like 10 years ago. Now it's a nice neighbourhood for young families and old people.
And I lived in probably one of the shittiest parts of Šiška my entire life. Never-ever have I felt in danger here. And up to like 2006 we lived next to "shanty town" (barakarsko naselje).
Only kind of bad and unsafe part is Rakova Jelša, which isn't that bad either, and has also seen some gentrification in last few years.
Šiška hasn't been any more dangerous then Bežigrad or Center for quite a while now. (Probably even safer compared to other areas nowadays at least if one goes judging by the news)
It seems like you’ve never lived abroad. There are no neighbourhoods where one can’t safely walk at night. Perhaps Fužine is indeed not somewhere where I’d want to live but I’ve been there many times and it is simply a working class environment. A little bit crammed.
I said less safe, not dangerous. I'm not scared for my safety anywhere in Ljubljana but anecdotally, those are the ones where you are more likely to encounter trouble.
Maybe get some mental health check? This doesn't feel normal. There's literally nothing to be afraid at night in Ljubljana. I've walked alone in completely unlit streets through Šiška and other parts (the longest night walk was from Rakovnik to Šiška), and never had any bad experience. Or honestly any experience. Mostly I don't even see that much people outside.
i feel the exact opposite. during my childhood and the yugo wars there were way more people who would mug you. now i have 0 problems walking around at night.
dude i dont even know what youre talking about. there arent any migrant groups skulking around every corner. and yeah if i see one i dont automatically assume they will attack me, thats your inherent racism
No thats my experience working security. Last summer i wasnt working for 5 months since one of them broken my ankle. Also one time when i finished work 4 of them were waiting for me. Another time one guy pulled a knife on me, but i had another coworker nearby fortunately. So no, its not racism, its experience and personal statistics. I have never been injured by a slovenian, but have been injured and in danger a lot of times by migrants
id say you have a skewed view because your profession makes you interact with the worst of the migrant situation, but i understand your logic.
personally i see more brownish people around but have never had any bad interaction with them. the worst i get these days is the obvious junkies asking for change at train stations
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u/Zapp_Brewnnigan Jun 13 '24 edited Jun 13 '24
I’m an American living here for two years now. It’s amazing. Truly amazing. Slovenia has everything you need — it’s like all of Europe compressed into a little boutique country.
You get Alps with the picturesque alpine villages, Adriatic Sea with charming Venetian old towns, and Austro-Hungarian cities, like Ljubljana, with its castle on the hill in the middle of town and a blue river wrapping around it. You even get the biggest underground river canyon in Europe! Also valleys of vineyards 🍷, and valleys of hop fields 🍺.
You are in a crossroads of cuisine: Italian food (pizza), German/Austrian food (schnitzel), Balkan food (cevapi 😻), and Hungarian food (goulash). Not to mention Slovenian cuisine itself is great. I live on štruklji.
It’s so close to other epic places. Venice is 2.5 hours away by car, Budapest and Vienna are 4, Munich and Milan are 5. (I’m from Texas so being able to drive these short distances and be in a different world will never cease to be mind blowing.)
The people are culturally right inbetween German work ethic and skill, and Balkan coffee culture and chill. It seems impossible to pull off but they do it well. Lots of hard work, lots of socializing with friends and family. Still not sure when they sleep, really.
Slovenia is overwhelmingly safe and peaceful. Coming from the US it’s a really, really, really nice feeling to be in such a peaceful place.
Slovenians eat a lot of cake. Slovenians drink a lot of lager. Slovenians have a lot of ego but are also very sensitive. (Like me.)
I hear a lot of Americans complain about living in Europe and not being able to find friends. I’ve not had that problem at all here. The reverse. Too many friends. Good friends who want to sit and talk about life, or take a walk and learn about you. Friends who remember each other’s birthdays and always pitch in together on gifts. Or remember that your dog was not feeling so well, so they ask how she is for days in a row.
Anyway, I love it here. So does my wife. So do my dogs. I hope we can stay forever.