Ljubljana related
STA, 16 January 2019 - The Slovenian Housing Fund plans to start building two housing complexes in Ljubljana and Maribor this year. In the capital, some 110 apartments for young people will be built, while in Maribor the new complex will offer some 400 apartments with an underground garage.
The fund has already filed for the construction permits and expects construction to start this year.
The youth complex in Ljubljana will be located in the Vič borough, where there are several student facilities already. The new apartments with either one-bed or two-bed rooms will be intended for young people aged between 18 and 29 who want to study or live in Ljubljana.
The 110-room facility will also feature an intergenerational centre, a kitchen with a dining room, a living room, an office, a maintenance room with a separate entrance and an atrium, the Housing Fund said.
According to the fund's head, Črtomir Remec, the construction is to start in the first half of the year.
In the southern part of Maribor, near the city's landmark hill Pekrska Gorca, several two-storey apartment buildings will be constructed in the form of four unfinished squares.
Each building will have a basement, ground floor and two floors, with the complex offering a total of some 400 apartments, 35 to 80 square metres big. Each apartment will also have an underground garage space.
In the first phase, 212 apartments will be built and another 188 in the second, Remec said.
A total of 60 apartments in the complex will be intended for elderly people who need assistance, while the centre will also feature a daycare centre for the elderly, and some shops and offices.
The two projects are in line with the Housing Fund's goal of providing 2,000 new apartments for rent by 2020 and three times as many by 2025 to have a total of 10,000 publicly-owned apartments available for renting.
All our stories on real estate in Slovenia are here, while our “property of the week” stories, showing various properties around the country, can be found here
STA, 2 January 2019 - The Slovenian National Theatre (SNG) Maribor (Slovensko narodno gledališče Maribor) will mark its centenary in 2019, with celebrations culminating on 27 September, exactly 100 years after its founder Hinko Nučič staged the first play there.
Maribor had a vibrant cultural scene even before the professional theatre was formally established in what is now Slovenia's second largest city.
But the new theatre enhanced Slovenian national identity and positioned Slovenian as the national and official language.
The building housing SNG Maribor was built in 1852, and since then Maribor has had a professional theatre, but at the time it was fully German.
"Slovenian actors were not allowed to perform there," director and author Vili Ravnjak, who has worked for SNG Maribor for many years, has told the STA.
While first productions in Slovenian were staged as early as the middle of the 19th century, they were performed at a different location.
"It was only when Maribor became a politically and culturally Slovenian city that acting naturally moved to the former German theatre", which closed shop after WWI in early 1919.
In 1941, when Slovenian lands were occupied by the Nazis, German theatre was reintroduced, while Slovenian professional theatre was revived after WWII in 1945.
Although it is hard to say when SNG Maribor had its heyday, Ravnjak highlighted the 1930s and 1990s for drama and the last decade for opera and ballet.
Plays at SNG Maribor attracted the most media attention when director Tomaž Pandur (1963-2016) put on stage his controversial extravaganzas in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ballet and opera ensembles have meanwhile made a name for themselves under artistic directors Edward Clug, a choreographer of world renown, and conductor Simon Krečič.
SNG Maribor is the largest public cultural organisation in Slovenia and the only one bringing under one roof drama, opera and ballet.
It formally consists of Drama, Opera, Ballet and the Symphony Orchestra, while also housing the Maribor Theatre Festival as a separate unit.
In 2003, it was granted the highest status - that of national theatre, which means it is fully funded by the state or the Culture Ministry as its founder.
Danilo Rošker, SNG Maribor's director for the past 15 years, believes that ever since its beginnings, the theatre has enriched the cultural scene and extended the boundaries of what is possible.
The celebrations will be launched in January when SNG Maribor's production is presented at Ljubljana's Cankarjev Dom, accompanied by talks with acclaimed artists.
But it will be particularly festive in September: an exhibition tracing the theatre's history will be put up in the streets of Maribor, a monograph and a special postal stamp will be published and a special ceremony staged.
September 27 will see the premiere of Grmače, a play by acclaimed Slovenian author Dane Zajc (1929-2005) staged by Nina Rajić Kranjac, a rising star on the Slovenian theatre scene.
The celebrations will end with an opera premiere in May 2020 to remember 1 May 1920, when SNG Maribor's predecessor staged the first opera, Hervé's Mam'zelle Nitouche.
The theatre’s English website can be found here
While Slovenia gears up for New Year’s, and Ljubljana billboards show the latest editions of the Petarde? Ne hvala posters - as seen above and below - Maribor has taken the lead in making the celebrations more peaceful for the city’s animals.
"Would you kill your friends?" Poster: Tam Tam
As reported by Večer, among other outlets, the usual sponsors of the annual firework display, Večer and Nova KBM, have decided to spend the money they usually donate for explosives to humanitarian societies and organisations. The groups supported are Red Cross Maribor, Karitas Maribor, Pika - day centre for children and youth, Varna House Maribor, the shelter for homeless people on Šentiljska cesta, counselling for victims of violence and abuse, Association Toti DCA (a daycare centre for seniors), VDC Polž, Sonček Society, Bresternica Maternity Home, Hospice Maribor Association and the Friends of Youth Association Maribor.
Related: New Year’s celebrations around Slovenia for 2018/19
Related: Why fewer Slovenes are now born on January first
STA, 23 December 2018 - The University of Maribor is planning to establish with partners a national supercomputer centre whose performance would be comparable to global centres of the kind. The university, which has acquired funds EU and national budget funds for the HPC RIVR project, hopes it will launch the centre in 2020.
"This is a huge thing for eastern Slovenia and Maribor, which brings numerous multiplicative effects," Zoran Ren, the head of the project and the vice-chancellor for research and development has told the STA.
Ren believes that the boosting of the supercomputing capacity at the university will not only contribute to the development of the field in Slovenia and research in numerous scientific fields, but also provide an impetus to the economy.
According to him, the emerging supercomputer system will help in prediction of weather phenomena, simulation of social phenomena, optimisation of individual products, simulation of elementary particle physics, development of crypto technologies, deep learning, AI and similar.
The partners in the project are the Maribor-based Institute of Information Science (IZUM) and the Faculty of Information Studies in Novo Mesto (FIŠ).
"Currently the best supercomputer in Slovenia has the capacity of around 38 teraFLOPS and is owned by a private company. As part of the HPC RIVR project, we will set up a supercomputer with the capacity of 1.5 petaFLOPS. If set up today, it would be the 23rd best-performing supercomputer in Europe and 90th in the world," said Ren.
The project has been estimated at EUR 20m, of which EUR 16.5m is planned to be spent on high-performance computer equipment. The supercomputer will be housed at the IZUM.
In the coming months, a prototype supercomputer with the capacity of 220 teraFLOPS* will first be set up at the university's computer centre, which will serve for development and testing of solutions that will be used for the main supercomputer.
The project is expected to provide jobs to an additional 30 development engineers at the university, IZUM and FIŠ.
* A teraFLOP refers to a trillion floating point operations per second, as explain in the following video
STA, 29 November 2018 - Slovenia has been fixated on Maribor and Koper as local elections enter the run-off on Sunday. Maribor will get a new mayor in any case and in Koper the incumbent faces the biggest challenge of his career. But there are plenty of other races that could produce surprises as well.
In Maribor, Slovenia's second largest city, former mayor Franc Kangler, the candidate of the right, and businessman Saša Arsenovič, an independent running on the Modern Centre Party (SMC) ticket, are neck-and-neck with just days to go until the polls open.
The latest poll by Večer, the Maribor-based daily, puts Arsenović less than two points ahead of Kangler, but the race is too close to call. In the first round, Arsenovič was well ahead, with 38.2% to Kangler's 31.4%.
While the campaign ahead of the second round shifted a gear lower from the tense and at times aggressive campaigning for the second round, the race is lively given that the candidates represent two very distinct visions of Maribor.
The more urban Arsenovič, a businessman credited with helping to revive the struggling centre of the city, looks up to the long-term mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, as he tries to infuse town hall with a bit of business acumen.
Kangler, a former police officer and MP who was ousted as mayor in 2012 in mass protests sparked by allegations of corruption, has a can-do attitude but connects better to Maribor's suburban and rural population with his populist, salt-of-the-earth rhetoric about returning the city to its industrial glory.
The race in Koper, the biggest city on the coast and home to Slovenia's sole seaport, pits incumbent Mayor Boris Popovič, who has run the city with a penchant for strong-arming for 16 years, against radio host Aleš Bržan.
It had been widely expected that Popovič would be a shoo-in for his fifth term, but he has spent years fending off corruption allegations, and spent months in courtrooms, sometimes for cases that became statute-barred in odd circumstances.
Local political pundits say the people appear to have become fed up with his authoritarian style, hence the shift to the mild-mannered Bržan, who has led a low-key campaign while letting Popovič defend his record in office.
Popovič edged Bržan by almost 14 points in the first round, but since then nine unsuccessful candidates, who together accounted for nearly a fifth of the first-round vote, jointly backed Bržan. There have been no polls for Koper ahead of the run-off so far.
Another major race is in Kranj, the centre of the wealthy Gorenjska region, but polls suggest the result will be more clear-cut.
Matjaž Rakovec, the former boss of insurer Zavarovalnica Triglav who is running with the support of the Social Democrats (SD), is expected to carry the mayorship easily against independent Zoran Stevanović, a prominent councillor.
Both focused their campaigns on buttressing the city's economy, with Rakovec pledging to bring over a thousand jobs to the city under his watch. Rakovec is projected to win about 70% of the vote, according to a poll carried by Dnevnik.
In the absence of local polling it is difficult to gauge many other races under way in the 56 municipalities that are holding run-offs, but many are interesting merely by virtue of the illustrious and industrious candidates on the ticket.
In Jesenice, which vies with Kranj as the economic centre of Gorenjska, incumbent Tomaž Mencinger has had to surprisingly enter a run-off against Delo journalist Blaž Račić. In the first round, they were neck-and-neck at just over 23%.
In the nearby Tržič, the incumbent Borut Sajovic faces former mayor Pavel Rupar, who is attempting his second return to politics after spending time in prison for defrauding the municipality and who became a tabloid sensation after phone conversations with a mistress were published in 2006.
In southern Slovenia, all eyes are on Črnomelj, where a local member of the opposition Democrats (SDS) managed to enter the run-off with a staunchly anti-immigrant agenda, ousting the incumbent Mojca Čemas Stjepanovič in the process.
But the real surprise there was Andrej Kavšek, a local businessman who carried 45% of the vote with a distinctly pro-business platform emphasising the need to revive the economic fortunes of the community.
In Kamnik, the party of Prime Minister Marjan Šarec, who served two terms as mayor there, faces a major test. Its candidate, deputy mayor Igor Žavbi, finished neck-and-neck with New Slovenia (NSi) candidate Matej Slapar, another deputy mayor.
Smaller communities scattered around the country could deliver surprises as well, as many famous and infamous candidates are on the ticket.
Journalists Bojan Traven in Bohinj and Dejan Karba in Ljutomer are in the run-off. Disgraced former ambassador Milan Balažic will try his luck in Moravče east of Ljubljana, and Roman Leljak, a former convict and amateur historian well liked in conservative circles, is in the run-off in Radenci in the east.
Overall, the second round is much more local since only mayoral run-offs are held and parties at the national level have mostly stayed out of campaigning, which dovetails with the increasingly pronounced trend of established parties giving way to independent and semi-independent local lists in local elections.
In the first round, independents carried well over half of all mayor offices and as a bloc they are the strongest contingent in municipal councils.
All of our local elections coverage can be found here
STA, 19 November 2018 - The first round of the local election in Maribor has brought the expected run-off between entrepreneur Saša Arsenovič and former mayor Franc Kangler. After almost all of the votes counted, they won 38% and 31% respectively. Incumbent Andrej Fištravec is far behind in third place with 9%. Turnout in the country's second largest city reached 49.67%.
While the mayoral race still remains to be decided, the seats in the 44-member city council have been distributed. Arsenovič's list has won 12 and and Kangler's 10.
Arsenovič is a businessman
Arsenovič, a political novice who has earned respect in city with several successful restaurants and by helping renovate and revive Maribor's run-down old town, said the people of Maribor had shown they wanted change.
"The real winner today is Maribor. I thank the people for going to the polls. I feel Maribor wants real change and I promise...that this time all the projects being announced for so many years will also be executed," said the 52-year-old, who is running with the support of the Modern Centre Party (SMC).
The law graduate, who is said to have earned his start-up capital working long days abroad as a tennis coach, entered the race at the eleventh hour and has mostly had to defend himself over his companies' project-related debts.
He hopes the campaign ahead of the second round on 2 December will bring more content: "I hope we will finally start talking about Maribor's development and less about my personal affairs."
Kangler is a former Mayor of Maribor
Kangler, who ran Maribor from 2006 to late 2012 when he resigned amid violent mass protests, was also happy with the result, arguing the people had recognised "our work".
The former police officer, who is supported by several right-wing parties, said that his campaign had been positive, respectful to other candidates and that things would get interesting in the second round.
Asked if the results showed the voters had forgiven and forgotten, Kangler said there was "nothing to forgive". "All the court cases against me are closed, this was a political process against me," the 53-year-old told TV Slovenija.
Outgoing mayor also lost in the city council
Meanwhile, Fištravec, a 61-year-old sociologist who won his first term in 2013 with the support of the protest movement that swept away Kangler, commented by saying that the only thing that mattered was that Maribor was doing better now after it had been stagnating for 30 years.
While the outgoing mayor is widely perceived to have failed with efforts to boost the city's economy with the help of Chinese investments, he argued that all the indicators were positive, including those for employment and investments.
Fištravec's list also suffered the heaviest losses in the city council. While it had nine councillors in the last term, it got three this time.
Three councillors were also secured by the Democrat (SDS), which thus lost one seat, and by the SMC, which had 6 in the previous term.
Analysing the results for the STA, journalists and Maribor experts Peter Jančič and Aljoša Peršak both see the race as completely open.
"The clash will definitely be interesting and it is not possible to say that Kangler, a more familiar face in politics, has an advantage," said Jančič, who also noted that turnout had increased substantially from the 38% four years ago.
Peršak feels that Arsenovič beating Kangler in the first round was a slight surprise as polls had had the former mayor in the lead.
Peršak expects Arsenovič to cast himself as the "change" candidate ahead of the run-off, while Kangler is likely to focus on successful past projects, steering away from the "memory of 2012, which has obviously not faded".
Both analysts also highlighted the crushing defeat of Fištravec. While Peršak argued that the negative campaign had not paid off for Fištravec, Jančič said "the defeat serves him right"
"He did not pay for the election campaign four years ago, not for the councillors nor for his own. He should have not even been running the city," Jančič said.
STA, 22 October 2018 - Večer's first public opinion poll ahead of the 18 November local election shows Franc Kangler, the mayor who was forced to step down amid mass protests in 2012, emerging as the top candidate, while his closest rival is a businessman who entered the race at the eleventh hour, Saša Arsenovič. The incumbent is far behind.
STA, 17 October 2018 - The Maribor City Council okayed on Tuesday ambitious, EUR 25m worth plans for the slopes of the Pohorje hill that rises above the city. The investments include a renovation of the ski lifts, a midway stop for the cable lift, a new water reservoir, adrenaline park and the acquisition of section not yet operated by the city-owned company Marprom.
STA, 13 October 2018 - The 53rd Maribor Theatre Festival will get under way on Monday, bringing almost 70 events until 28 October. Ten Slovenian productions will be competing for awards. Its new artistic director, Aleš Novak, who took over for five years as of 2018, would like the festival to become a genuine "celebration of theatre creativity".
STA, 11 October 2018 - The incumbent and former mayors of Maribor, Andrej Fištravec and Franc Kangler, considered the favourites in the upcoming local election, have gotten a rival who might prove dangerous to them. Saša Arsenovič, an established businessman, will allegedly run with the support of the Modern Centre Party (SMC) and some influential local players.
