The Inexplicable Question....

Slovenia, we were in Yugoslavia until 1991 and those were... not such good times; depending on who you ask, leftists will say it was great, rightists say it wasn't, but the fact is you couldn't just get anything you wanted back then. My parents told me you had to go to Austria to buy even some basic things like diapers (like Pampers etc.), or Italy for clothes (like the original levy jeans) and they brought this stuff back into Yugoslavia illegally. This isn't made up, there's even a song about it:

I'm pretty sure you can see the effects of this shortage even to this day, for example in my city with less than 30.000 people you can see 2 shopping centers, a few bigger shops and plenty of small stores. Someone told me a story about some Germans coming to Slovenia on a visit and being shocked at how many shops we had in such small cities. Can confirm, I was in a small town in Germany last year (similar to the size of my town) and there were practically no large shopping centers there. Can't lie, I missed it a bit lol.

These are quite collectable and I know of people who use them on the public network. I am not sure if they will be used for too much longer though as I think BT are planning to phase out the pulse dialling system.

It was interesting to see the clothing of some of the first Eastern European people who came over after the dissolving of the USSR. It was easy to tell just from the cut of the cloth. Some of their coats were refreshingly different, appearing far less synthetic even though they may have been. I do remember the issues we heard about the problems in the communist era. Particularly the value people there placed in western jeans. There were some things exported to here though. They didn't have a good reputation for reliability but I think, for the price, they were as good as you might expect and some things were very reliable.

You've never had spice made of babies!? 

(too morbid..? lol)