One sun-kissed lunchtime in a Llubljana market in 2024, a vendor hawking row upon row of wooden beehive panels convinced me to part with the hard-earned wisdom that I would desist from buying holiday knick-knacks that would eventually find its way to the tip. So I bought one of those elaborately hand painted beehive box panels depicting scenes of daily life, local lore, and bawdy humor. No sooner had I parted with the requisite euros that my precocious child snatched the beehive panel for a bit of show and tell.
My kitsch new acquisition depicts a not-so-fantastical scene of two seemingly hardworking men who are coming to blows over a cow while a lawyer milks it. One of our party, a good friend who has always taken an excessive degree of pride in being a scion of a long and evidently illustrious line of colonial lawyers, immediately voiced her objection over the wounding and folky depiction. The truth hurts?
A wooden beehive box panel depicting a scene with verse (roughly translated) ‘two hardworking men are fighting over a cow while a lawyer milks it’.
It would have been easy enough to engage with my friend’s objections were it not for the presence of children who insisted on a trip to one of the ice cream stands catering exclusively to tourists like ourselves who bear nil resemblance to sophisticated travelers of yesteryear. There we were, draped in sneakers, water bottles, and iPhones, gawping and poking at the splendor and quiet dignity of a city that still feels as if it’s only just coming out of its Communist past.