WHEN TRBOVLJE BECOMES YOUR ALMOST HOME
After spending some time somewhere, even though you are not a local and you will never be, you start having some feelings for the place, since you are slowly getting to know it and its inhabitants, buildings, hills more and more… And since you are slowly getting to know it, you start feeling a bit like at home. The following lines describe how it feels after spending 12 months in Trbovlje.
When do you know that you are not a completely foreign anymore yet not a complete local in Trbovlje?
- …when you go to the train station and ask for a train ticket to Trbovlje, the woman who sells the tickets, doesn’t asks you three times anymore to make sure she sells you the ticket to the right town
- …when you are on a train and your face seems so familiar to a random woman that she suddenly and curiously starts asking you about the well-being of your family
- …when you are so much used to the hills and your body is also so much used to the that places without them look simply strange
- …when you start becoming proud of one of the main “attractions” of the town – the biggest chimney of Europe, and when you talk about with others, you proudly add that it is even higher than the Eiffel tower
- …when almost every time you leave your home, you meet someone you know
- …when you mention someone which town are you from and that person contemptuously asks you ‘and what can you do there?’, you can come up with at least 5 things you can do
- …when you already know almost all the workers from Spar (and they also recognize you when you go there and you great each other)
- …when you hear that some other small town doesn’t have traffic lights, but you are proud because yours has
- …when you still don’t know how to speak the language, but you can distinguish your town’s dialect from some other and you can even give some word examples which are specific to the town
- …even though you were not using slippers so often before, now you are addicted to them and when you go to some other house, you desperately ask for them
- …when there are still hills around to discover
- …when you can get almost anywhere in 20 minutes by feet (except to the train station)
- …when you are somewhere else, but you feel relieved when you find out that you have to walk less than 40 minutes to the train station
- … when you are somewhere else and you are planning to leave, you refer to Trbovlje as home
Author: Csilla Szasz, EVS volunteer
