4

Apart from the fact that it also means five years of news and features about Slovenia, the round number itself shouldn't mean much for a reader. For us who create it, the survival of the project in the unfavourable conditions (small readership, poor support from public funds etc.) itself is a success! Driven with loads of enthusiasm beyond economic sense, we have every reason to be happy and proud.

So, let us just for this occasion take a look back how the country looked like according to the first issue of the Slovenia Times, in April 2003.

The cover story and most of the politics pages were made of essentially historical stuff, we could even say a dream come true: Slovenians said yes to both EU (90%) and NATO (66%) in a referendum a year before our actual accession to the union and the alliance in April and May 2004. That was exactly four years ago. We have covered So much about the EU from our beginning. The other item on the front page was about the Iraq war, featuring the Slovenian PM's statement that he regrets the situation, advocates a peaceful solution and indicates that Slovenian army would not take part in military actions. The Iraq war is still on, with - call it involvement or not - a couple of our boys instructing the good Iraqi guys.

Leaving the first, Euro-Atlantic part of the April 2003 paper, we introduced another burning debate about finally building a mosque in Ljubljana, the idea that keeps hitting formal obstacles and people who object. There is still no mosque here, however, according to the latest info, the wait should end by 2009. Unintentionally, but interesting, on the same page we have a typically Slovene thing: we wrote about a new law on limitations to alcohol sale. Despite all attempts, drinking culture is rooted deeply enough that no law can move it. Moving from drinking to sports, or combining each other, we presented a report on Planica ski-flying cup finale. Since it was the end of skiing season, the rest of sport section was also dedicated to alpine skiing evaluation. When the snow melts, Slovenians become even more interesting in hiking the surrounding hills. Needless to say, we dedicated a feature to this too, describing some best treks around Ljubljana.

The business page featured a story on a frequent news item - fuel prices, and, not exactly a business story about the annual Slovene Advertising Festival. Cultural pages presented a festival of Australian culture, a SKA punk band, an Oscar-winning Bosnian film with Slovenian participation and for at end, a brief overview of who is who in our celebrity scene. Following the idea that a paper should link expats to Slovenes and vice versa, we had an interview with a domestic-foreign musician and placed a feature on learning Slovene a less formal and entertaining way.

Fast-forwarding through our hundred-issue collection we can see that Slovenia, a small country in the conjunction of Mediterranean, Alps and Pannonia, made its five turns around more or less standard, some seasonally cyclical, the other less predictable stories. Fuel prices went up and down, each year we checked on the overcrowded skiing competitions and advertising festivals, stock were rising and falling, companies were introducing innovation, publishing results and changing ownership, laws were introduced etc... We also changed one government, one president and sadly, buried one.

The euro-integration process seems the only story with a continuous, ongoing progress, all the rest are oscillations. Or does it just seem that way?

Apart from many anniversaries, which coincide with The Slovenia Times number 100, we are also remembering 20 years of the summer of '88. At that moment, 20 years ago, Slovenes stood up to protest in support our guys, put on a military trial, named the JBTZ trial. The happening in fact gave acceleration to the process that ended up in the national independence. And that indeed was the a period of big stories, of memorable moments worth more than just a mention in schoolbooks. It is all relative, along with the historical importance of the stuff we write about.