CONTENT WARNING: Animal Death

When I was in high school, I used to have a small fish tank with guppies and neon tetras. I had an arrangement with my grandma that when we went on vacation, we could bring the tank to her and she would keep the fish.

Everything sounds fine, right? Except, like every average grandma, she fed the fish… a lot. And apparently, the neon tetras were less resilient than guppies, and they all died due to how contaminated the tank got. She didn’t want to tell me what had happened, so she took all the neon tetras out, put them in a bag, and froze them. Then, she took the frozen bag to the pet store to buy new fish exactly the same as those that died.

She pulled it off quite well. I didn’t learn of this until some years after the fact. And afterward, she apparently did learn to feed them less. But the mental image of my grandma walking around the store with a bag of frozen fish in her hands still cracks me up.

A tourist father with his wife and two children, all in shorts, shirts, and flip-flops and with one tiny bottle of water in the height of summer, caused a very complicated rescue mission when climbing the Julian alps.

Us: “Why did you climb a 3000-metre tall mountain?”

Father: “We wanted to see your highest mountain.”

Us: “But you climbed the most difficult path.”

Father: “You have had to make sure that there’s a proper path up to the mountain for people like me!”

On the plus side, he paid for everything because of his own stupidity. And believe me, he isn’t the only one in a very long season.

I work at a bar in Slovenia that is about fifteen kilometres away from the Italian border and twenty kilometres away from the Croatian border, meaning that a lot of tourists who are going to or from their vacation pass there and stop at our bar.

I serve a lady, and after she pays, I have this conversation with her in Italian.

Lady: “So, can you tell me if Slovenia and Croatia are in the European Union? They are not, are they?”

Me: “Um… Sorry?”

Lady: “Slovenia and Croatia, they are not in the EU, right?”

Me: “Yes, they are.”

Lady: “Really? But since when?”

Me: “Slovenia has been in the EU since 2004, and Croatia since 2013.”

Lady: “No way!”

Me: “Well, yes. We, Slovenia, are also in the Schengen area. Did you have to stop at the border to have your documents looked at or did you just pass the border between Italy and Slovenia?”

Lady: “Oooh, yes, you’re right!”

After encountering this, I started to really question myself about what kind of world do some people live in, that they live in a neighboring country and don’t have a clue about what’s going on around them?

For clarification, in Slovenia, you have nine grades of primary school, four years of high school, and upwards of three years of university.

I am browsing a book fair and come across some digital biology textbooks for primary school. I go over to look at them as they are something new at this point and I am always interested in biology. Up comes a salesman.

Salesman: “Oh, hi, I see you’re interested in our textbooks!”

He starts explaining everything about them, how useful they are supposed to be and such.

Salesman: “And they are a great addition in preparation for external exams!”

Don’t ask me why, but this is what final exams in ninth grade are called.

Me: “Umm, well, thanks for the presentation, but I’m kind of too old to use this.”

Salesman: “Well, what year are you?”

Me: “Second.”

Salesman: “You can still use them! Everything in here is up to date and is useful for even children in first or second year—”

Me: “Of university.”

He couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I was twenty at the time and looked like it.

(In Slovenia, as elsewhere, the schools to become a doctor or a nurse are different; medical faculty to become a doctor and faculty of health sciences to become a nurse and other health-related professions. I am a woman, studying to become a doctor and attending medical faculty, wearing a badge saying so when in a hospital. I can’t explain how much every time I have this conversation stresses me out.)

Patient: *always a male, sees the badge* “Oh, so you are still in school?”

Me: “Oh, yes, I’m close to finishing medicine actually.”

(We usually use “medicine” instead of “medical faculty”.)

Patient: “So you’re going to be a nurse soon?”

(Or:)

Random Person: *after finding out I’m still a student* “So what are you studying?”

Me: “Medicine, close to being done actually!”

Random Person: “Oh, so why do you want to be a nurse?”

(This always happens with men. Never women. It’s happened to me over twenty times already and I hear the same stories from other female students. I usually try to gently correct them and most are genuinely confused, but you can imagine how the conversation continues with those that are convinced women should only be nurses.)