Rotaract Conference in Slovenia

I am back from an exciting weekend in Slovenia, where I was part of a Europe-wide Rotaract conference attended by 110 Rotaractors from 12 different countries. What is Rotaract? It's basically Rotary for people ages 18 to 30- a sort of "prep" for becoming Rotarians. From the Rotary International website, I quote: "Through the Rotaract program, young adults not only augment their knowledge and skills, but they also address the physical and social needs of their communities while promoting international understanding and peace through a framework of friendship and service."

Four Budapest Rotaractors traveled to Slovenia for the conference, and kindly invited me and another Ambassadorial Scholar to attend as well. We left Budapest at 5pm on Thursday afternoon, and arrived in Celje, Slovenia at 11pm that evening. From the time of our arrival to our departure from Celje on Sunday at noon, we had a jam-packed weekend full of tours of the capital city Ljubljana and the country's oldest brewery (Union), many shared meals and of course nights out on the town. I love to play dress-up so Saturday night's formal gala was a lot of fun (pictures to follow!).

Slovenia is a very interesting country. It is very beautiful, with rolling green hills and milder weather than Budapest since they are further south. Slovenia has a certain quaintness about it- the entire country is only slightly more than 2 million people (the size of the city of Budapest); the capital Lubjlana has a population of around 250,000 people and is Slovenia's largest city. The prices are slightly lower than in Hungary, and you can pay in both local currency and the Euro (though they haven't technically adopted the Euro yet, so you can't take Euros out at any ATM but they are accepted everywhere... weird).

You can view more pictures from Slovenia here.

As beautiful as Slovenia was, by the end of the trip I was ready to come back to Budapest. It felt good to come "home."

An update on the "protests": I finally went by the Parliament on Monday to see for myself what is going on. In the morning there were plenty of tents on the front lawn of the Parliament but only about 30-40 ppl standing around. By 7pm the crowd had definitely grown, and someone was speaking to the crowd using a microphone (don't ask me what he was saying though!), with around 150-200 gathered. The entrepreneurs have turned this into an opportunity and are selling Hungarian flags and hot food- they seemed to be doing a pretty good business. There were police everywhere, but it seems like now that the police know what is going on they are more than in control of the situation. The Prime Minister seems pretty adamant about staying on, but God forbid if someone should die in the violence, I am positive he will resign. But other than the first two nights of the protests, which were fairly "violent," the "protests" have been very controlled. Outside of the area of the Parliament and the square where the state-owned radio headquarters are located (which happens to be where the American Embassy is located as well!), the city is operating on a normal schedule and I can assure you that I am perfectly safe.