Culture in Slovenia
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Totalitarian disco
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We are no ordinary type of group
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We are no humble pop musicians
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We don't seduce with melodies
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And we're not here to please you
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We have no answers to your questions
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Yet we can question your demands
Without a doubt Slovenia's most misunderstood export, industrial band Laibach and their Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) collective emerged from the coal mining town of Trbovlje to smash their first sledgehammer in 1980 and, despite the best efforts of the state they skewered, went on to outlast Yugoslavia and are still going strong. Using totalitarian imagery stretched to the limit, with band members decked out in military uniforms, memorable moments include reworking Queen's starry-eyed "One Nation" into a Wagnerian march (sung in German, of course) that would make a Teuton blanch. Keep an eye on the NSK website and try to catch a concert when in town.
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Tartinijev trg in Piran (Tartinijev square)
For a small country, Slovenes are fiercely proud of their culture. Two names you will run into over and over again are national poet France Prešeren (1800-1849), who penned (among other things) the Slovenian national anthem, and the architect Jože Plečnik (1872-1957), credited with Ljubljana's iconic Tromostovje bridges and, seemingly, half the modern buildings in the country. It was the monks of the Catholic Church that kept Slovene alive over the centuries of relentless Germanization from the north. As a result Slovene survived in its unique form different than Serbo-Croatian to the south. Part of both the countryside and city architecture in Julian Alps shares a lot in common with neighboring Austria, including countless roadside shrines and pretty baroque steeples, giving the interior of the nation a truly alpine flavor. One could easily mistake parts of mountainous Slovenia for Tyrol, Salzburg or Bavaria. In modern times, industrial band Laibach (see box) has served to put Slovenia on the map. In the decades before them, Slavko Avsenik and his Oberkrainer (as known in German) did the same.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Slovenia
