Adventures With Phil, Part 2
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
77
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Ljubljana,
Slovenia
Sunday, November 12, 2006
We were starting to give up when a Phil saw a guy smoking at a bus stop and tried to bum a smoke from him. No luck there. Meanwhile a bunch of fifteen year old girls walked by and Phil followed them trying, to strike up a conversation. He followed them a block into a kebap store. I don't know what he was thinking but he was trying to strike up a conversation with six girls and their one guy friend. In English, no less. Lest I remind everyone that in Slovenia the people speak Slovene.
It took them a while but the kids finally remembered their school lessons and told him to "Go Away." Ironically, two of those girls seemed to want to talk to me. I was trying to pretend I wasn't seeing all this and they saw that I might be (for lack of another term) normal. But I couldn't talk. I was too busy cringing, lingering beside the door waiting for an opportune moment to bolt. Phil got the idea but he was righteous about his behaviour and pissed off because, as he said to me "that doesn't happen. People always talk to me."
"But fifteen year old girls don't talk to old men that approach them on the street after dark."
He accepted that but I don't think he liked it. Another woman came along the sidewalk and Phil thought to say hello to her. "Where are you going this evening?" he asked. She remembered her English too, and said "Away!!" a second before literally sprinting there. I imagine there is a Slovene blog out there and the entry for November 11th is how some girl was completely freaked out by two Anglophone tourists.
Generally the impression I have of Slovenia is that the locals did a pretty good job learning English in school. Sometime after the incidents on the street, but before I loaded Phil, unconscious, into a taxi, we found ourselves at a local's drinking hole. One of the groups of people Phil talked to decided to talk back, in a friendly sort of way.
It was St. Martin's day after all, and locally known as the day that grape juice turns into wine. Everyone with a glass of wine was in a jovial mood, despite Phil's jokes about taking wives back to the hostel with him and leaving those lonely husbands to experiment with man-love. Eventually two guys, Alesh and Luka, brought us to an establishment where we met their many friends, although Phil decided to continue his way along meeting yet more people.
Over the course of festivities, and before I really insulted everyone by calling them "Slovakians," I learned that the Slovenians don't actually expect anyone to learn their language. "There are two million people in Slovenia," one woman told me. "No one is going to learn Slovene. Besides, it's hard. So we learn English."
They learnt it well too. So often I temper my language by thinning back on the vocabulary: I used a hard word ("anecdotally:" I've known contemporaries whom it's confused) and to my surprise they all knew it. "That's easy." We continued to chat for a few hours and the Alesh even taught me a useful phrase. Luka told me "it's a polite form of goodbye," and it seems you use it in order to get yourself slapped by a Slovenian woman. Strange customs out here.
After my tounge slipped and I called them "Slovaks" and they left, I found Phil with more local guys. He was pretty far gone by that point. If it was already going downhill by then, it was about to crash into something because someone had the bright idea that Phil and a guy named Oloush ought to do shots of tequila. Some of this had already been absorbed by those around the table, but some people were more drunk than others and there was a debate going on as to who was who. A contest would bring truth to the table.
Nine shots came on a tray: four for Phil, four for Oloush; the winner got his paws on the last one so the guy who shot it won.
When the smoke cleared the ninth shot was going down Oloush's throat. Phil was clamoring for a re-match, and his wayward elbows knocked two of the glasses to the stone floor before I moved the remainder to another table.
To tell you the truth, I was not doing too much better than Phil. I went aside to clear my head for a few minutes and when I came back, Phil was in the middle of falling on the ground and taking Oloush with him. It wasn't from any violent gesture or that sort of thing. The tequila inside him had turned Phil into a fall down drunk. Somehow another glass was broken by his clumsy hands, and when it looked like he was going to puke, we dragged him out onto the cobblestones outside.
He didn't puke. He lay there like an abandoned baby that's given up hope. It was really cold that night and he was wearing just a dress shirt. Oloush, an incredible man, actually, helped me carry Phil for about ten minutes until we were too exhausted to go any further with him. Phil kept fighting his way away from us and yelling "I do this for a living!!!" and "Do you know who I am!?!" If I knew anything he was dead drunk. He fell down about a dozen times and at a certain point, he would not let us get him up anymore. I was really frustrated by now but Oloush called a cab and arranged everything with a driver for us.
At the hostel his shouting had picked up considerably and he had become seriously belligerent. He was making so much noise that I was worried he would wake everyone up, letting them know that "I do this for a living" (whatever "this" was). I didn't try to get him up the stairs. Last I saw him, he was standing between the urinals, letting what was left of that tequila fly. I left him in there and trod off to bed.
to be continued...
