Yugoslavia Our Ancestors Homeland and Heritage

Here is our homeland of our ancestors. Someone my phamily knew told them when they traveled to the old country they visited Austria and they noticed many people with  the last name of  Kocman buried in the cemeteries in Austria. I know on the marriage certificates of the grandparents lists the town of Ljubljana as the place of their marriages. Although I have never been there and am not familiar with the stories and the lay out of the cities I have researched a bit and found some interesting facts. I hope you won't mind I combined this post with Ms. Jenny and the Alphabe Thursday gang for the letter "H".

The city of Ljubljana is shown here. I thought this was a wonderfully magnificent photo and you can see the sun in the background. The city looks really clean and there is a lot to do there. You can take a short 1.5 hours walking tour.  You will be able to see the main sites of the city. From Congress Square with University and Philharmony to the Old square  and walk to the City Hall and the Cathedral. You have to visit the marketplace area with Dragon bridge, just to end on Preseren square with the Three bridges and Franciscian church.The KSKJ Lodge Number 7  has a "big house" in Rye, Colorado and the square named Perseren caught my eye.  The house in Rye is called "Perseren Home". It is certainly part of our heritage. There are boat tours and longer walking tours and even a Foodie Tour.

This image reminds me a little of Venice, Italy where you can ride a gondola. Ljubljana is the largest city in Slovenia and it has quite a charming quality to it. You can learn about different architechtural styles including Art Nouveau, Baroque and Classic along the Lubljanica River  and feel the beat from local bars while the locals enjoy their free time with their coffee. A sweet memory I have from my childhood is coffee. I spent a lot of my time with my grandmother Cecilia Steblay and she lived during the depression era and if you were lucky enough to have a little coffee you made it go a long way. she taught me to drink coffee with lots of milk and sugar and crush saltine crackers into it. She said it was filling and she enjoyed it during the great depression. I am still prone to make this drink in honor of my grandmother sometimes.

This is just as pretty as a postcard. I would love to have a collection of postcards from Slovenia. I am guessing this background shows a local castle. It looks so pretty and I am sure it is rich in history.

You can take the Foodie Tour and I am sure you would be able to enjoy many local delicacies. My mother cooked all those traditional dishes. She would fix fresh beef kidneys and fix them with gravy and cornmeal . I can not currently locate my cookbook and the internet is no help finding my mother's recipes. I just remember the taste of this dish and it was delightful. Did you know the first Slovenian cookbook was published in 1779? My husband loves goulash but he makes his with lot of cheese! It is very different from the days that my mom cooked this traditional dish for us.

My mother made the best potica hands down! No one has ever come close to her recipe. Her dough was pulled so paper thin you could see your hand as you were pulling it but she filled it with such goodness, ground walnuts, cinnamon, butter, cream, honey! Many people use raisins, mom did not. Also many make a variety with poppy seeds. I found a company in Evergreen, Colorado that makes potica from their heritage which is in Ljubljana! It was decent, not my mother's potica! Sigh! She made this dish for all the holidays like Easter and Christmas. Some enjoy eating it with a slice of ham or even a slice of kolabasi. It is the full "Bojon experience".

Mom made wonderful homemade chicken noddle soup too. She would grab a bottle of ketchup and if it was close to empty she would add a few tablespoons of water and shake it up and pour it into her soup for added flavoring. Growing up and living through the depression made their generation very conscience of waste. My mother never wasted anything. Grandma Steblay would cut the noddles paper thin too and that was after she lost her eyesight. I miss that delicious soup. I can duplicate closely but not those noddles. Sigh!

The Dragon Bridge is one of the best examples of reinforced concrete bridges and the Vienna Secession style . The bridge is today protected as a technical monument. It is used primarily for motorized travel. That dragon is a scary fellow but it is part of our unique heritage and the Dragon Bridge is quite interesting. I wonder why they chose a dragon? Hmmm....more research!


I am not a storyteller like Mike Barnett but I enjoy writing here and I am hopeful you are learning a few things and sharing more. Have a blessed day and Lako noc  until we meet again!