This time, instead of a piece about the beautiful sides of Slovenia, I’m writing about a less pleasant side that I experience as a foreigner in Slovenia. And because I can’t include suitable photos for that, I’m simply throwing in a few beautiful photos I’ve taken recently 😊.

Last week, I read a post in a Facebook group for expats living in Slovenia, that immediately caught my attention. What this person wrote resonated so much with me. And obviously not just with me, as several people responded who agreed with this person. Nothing against the Slovenians (after all, I am married to one), but it seems almost impossible for a foreigner to build real, close friendships with Slovenians. After living in Slovenia for 23 years, I have encountered this often, but never really dared to speak out about it. It even made me doubt myself. Only in the last few years, when the conversation turns to my experiences here, do I sometimes tell people about how I feel about this.

In the Netherlands, my experience is that you can build close friendships with people easily and quickly. I lived there until 2003, and even in the last year before our emigration, we met a couple of new people with whom we became very close within a few months. We saw them daily, visited each other’s homes, went on day trips together, helped each other with the children or help around the house, or cooked and ate together. I have never been able to find a friendship of this level with Slovenians in the 23 years I have lived here.

Don’t get me wrong, Slovenians are generally incredibly friendly and hospitable. You are always welcome, and you will be offered a bite to eat and a drink immediately almost everywhere. Bine and I always enjoy meeting new people and don’t mind driving a bit to visit someone. The problem is that they then never, or at least very rarely, come back. And I find that hard to understand. No matter how nice your interactions with people are when you visit them, they will rarely call on their own initiative to make an appointment or simply drop by unexpectedly. Even when you explicitly invite them, for example to a birthday, they will often make an excuse not to come. I find this really difficult. And I simply don’t understand why. Somehow, they always keep you at a bit of a distance, no matter how nice they are, and the contact remains superficial.

Especially now that the children have left home (and live far away) and my role as a mother has largely ceased, freeing up a large portion of my time, I feel lonely more often and miss the companionship of having nice people around me. Fortunately, we do have a few very wonderful, close friends, but they are Dutch people (living in Slovenia as well) and Americans. With them, we did manage to build a close friendship in a short time. Unfortunately, they don’t live nearby, so popping in for a cup of tea and a chat isn’t an option, but we regularly make time to visit each other and I know I can always count on them, just as they can count on us.

I hesitated for a long time about whether or not to post this piece, because it is certainly not my intention to offend anyone. As mentioned, the Slovenians are always very friendly and hospitable, but I just genuinely wonder why we have never been able to build a close, mutual friendship here. I think I can say of myself that I am very hospitable and everyone is always welcome at our house. I am also very quick to invite people over for coffee and provide food and such. I do that willingly and with great pleasure. But since I hear more and more often from other expats that they have a similar experience, I wanted to bring this up. I am therefore very curious about the reactions, from both my “foreign” readers and the Slovenian readers. “Brez zamere” 😉.