Arrival in Slovenia

Wednesday, 27 March 2002, 30,000 feet above Europe.

Yesterday I had a case of time zone disorientation, otherwise popularly known as jetlag.

After my flight across the Atlantic and changing to five time zones earlier than New York, my flight arrived at about 7 AM at London's Heathrow Airport. It was a sunny and fairly pleasant early spring morning.

Bhakta Andrew was there to pick me up, but somehow we didn't connect and I was stranded at the airport for about an hour and a half. Finally, after several calls to the Manor, Vaikuntha Krsna called from the Manor and managed to get Andrew on his mobile cell phone and then we found each other.

Anyway, Andrew is quite a talented Russian devotee who, as an aspiring disciple, did a lot of work fixing up my little closet-room at the Manor, as I mentioned yesterday.

By around 4 in the afternoon I felt exhausted and took some rest, and then I slept until 8:30 in the evening. So when everyone else was going to bed, I had no tendency to sleep and remained awake working on my novel and answering email. Around 1:30 in the morning I took a little rest until 4 AM, when I rose, took a shower and attended Mangal Arati.

After that I worshipped my Govardhan and Salagram Silas, put Them away, and repacked all of my things. Packing isn't that difficult, but it is a one man job. When I arrive somewhere, the first thing I have to do in the morning is unpack my deities and all of Their paraphernalia, then worship Them. On the day that I leave I have to reverse the process. The worshipping of the deities and packing and unpacking Them takes a little extra time. Of course if I'm in a place a few days I don't have to pack Them away until the day of departure.

This morning was the eighteenth time since the 1st of January that I've been in an airport waiting for a flight. The other day, when I was in Newark Airport, there was a long line and I had to wait over an hour to get to the ticket counter. While waiting, I started looking around and suddenly thought, "Where am I?" It was a momentary thought. Airports look so much alike. Was I in Seattle, or San Francisco, or JFK in New York? Newark Airport is one of the three international airports serving New York City. The other two are LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy (JFK). Usually I fly in and out of JFK, but my last trip it was in and out of Newark. Anyway, so I became momentarily bewildered, probably by the excessive traveling. Eighteen times in an airport in less than three months is a fair amount of traveling.

As of my last flight across the Atlantic, I am now a Premier Member of United's Star Alliance frequent flyers. This will enable me to do things like avoid the long wait in line that I had to experience at Newark Airport, and also avoid waiting until my seat and row number is called to board the plane. Preferred travelers can board the aircraft as soon as it starts boarding and have special lines at the check-in counter that bring them right to the front.

One of the things I did last night was print out the latest, revised version of my novel (see: www.timegods.com). I have been rewriting the last third of the book and adding further scenes and characterization in earlier chapters on suggestions I received from Hari Sauri Prabhu who reviewed the book for me in December. I gave the printed version to Radha Mohan at the Manor who will be going through it with a fine tooth comb.

Radha Mohan is an actor for the Bhaktivedanta Players at the Manor. He's got quite an talent for drama, and also was, when he was younger, interested in writing science fiction. His imagination and enthusiasm for my book has been a source of tremendous encouragement and help. He definitely deserves honors on the acknowledgement page when the project is finished. I hope the readers of this Pilgrim's Diary will also consider purchasing copies when it eventually finds its way into print. But don't wait up for it. It has already taken me more than seven years to get to where it is now, and I really have no idea when it will be in print. Right now it's in a pretty rough state again, after having carved it up and redesigned major portions of it.

It's now 11:40 AM on my watch, but actually below me it's 12:40 PM. I'm at a window seat on the left side of the plane. Suddenly I can see jagged, snow-peaked mountains poking through the scattered clouds. This must be the Alps.

So where is Slovenia, you ask? Well, if you go to the northern part of Italy and turn right, you'll run right into it. Slovenia is a small country of 20,256 square kilometers. It borders Croatia, Austria, Italy, and Hungary and has a 46.6 kilometer coastline on the Adriatic Sea. The capital is Ljubljana (pronounced Loobliana - leave out all the "j's"). It has a population of 2 million people. The in-flight magazine, where I'm getting all this information, says that there are three major climates: Alpine, Continental and Mediterranean. No visa is required to visit. Only a valid passport is needed for short stays up to three months.

Wow. Those mountains look spectacular now. They are directly beneath the aircraft. Very rough looking. Deep snow and glaciers. A treeless wasteland. Ahead, suddenly the jagged mountains come to an abrupt stop and beyond them are distinctly different and rounded mountains without snow. Very rugged country down there. The flight is still smooth. Sometimes you get turbulence over mountains.

3 PM, ISKCON Ljubljana, Slovenia

I have arrived. I was greeted at the airport by Bhakta Anton and Mukunda das and driven to the temple in the city. It is a very big temple building and the building where I am staying is an adjoining building. I’m staying in a very big room with a very high ceiling, perhaps 10 or 12 feet high. When we arrived there were a group of devotees having kirtan and singing Hare Krishna to welcome my arrival. We went into the temple room and greeted the Gaura Nitai deities and had more kirtan.

Bhakta Anton and Mukunda das inform me there are about 30 active Hare Krishna devotees in Slovenia and about 100 semi-active. There is one temple in Slovenia and about two Nama Hatta meeting groups. They estimate there are about 1500 congregational members and 200 initiated devotees. At the high point, in 1996, there were 60 devotees living in the temple, but after the falldown of Harikesa the numbers went down. The devotees say that Prabhupada mentioned Ljubljana two or three times, though I could not find a reference for this in the Vedabase. An interesting historical fact about the temple: The temple building was formerly used by the German Gestapo during World War II to torture prisoners. I haven’t seen any torture going on around here. The Hare Krishna devotees here seem very friendly!

The temple room is spacious with a series of large columns down the middle. On the altar is a painting of Lord Caitanya and His associates (the Panca-tattva), and a set of Gaura Nitai deities. Unfortunately, the Gaura Nitai deities are backwards. Lord Caitanya is being worshipped as Lord Nityananda and vice-versa. Who knows how long that has been going on? The base of Lord Caitanya is painted blue and He stands where Lord Nityananda should stand, and the base of Lord Nityananda is pink, and He stands where Lord Caitanya should be.

This is not the first time I have seen temples with their deities installed backwards. I saw this in Boise Idaho last year and again in one of the Australian farms. Another place where the deities are the wrong way around is Hong Kong.

How do you tell if your Gaura-Nitai deities are the right way around?

Well, there are two main characteristics of most Gaura Nitai deities.

The first and foremost is that Gaura Nitai deities should lean AWAY from each other.

The second thing to look for is Their feet. If the feet are in a dancing pose, rather than just standing with Their feet side by side, the outer foot should be stepping inward. Lord Caitanya’s inner foot, the foot closest to Lord Nityananda, should be straight, and the foot farther away should be stepping forward and placed in front. In other words, the outer foot should be moving in toward the other deity.

In some cases, as here in Ljubljana, Gaura Nitai deities may have one hand up and one hand down. In such cases, the hand that is up should be the outside hand, and the hand that is down should be the hand towards the other deity.

And remember: Gaura Nitai deities lean AWAY from each other, not in toward each other.

It is just the opposite on all counts here in Ljubljana. That’s kind of unfortunate, because it means they will probably be worshipping Lord Nityananda tomorrow on Lord Caitanya’s appearance day, thinking Him to be Lord Caitanya. Indeed, to change the deities around would mean not only switching places, but also repainting Their stands.

Unfortunately, I made a mistake. I left the charger for my Canon digital camera in Vancouver, Canada. I didn’t realize it until last night when I was searching for it. I had forgotten to take the camera with me to New York recently, so I didn’t come to know of the missing charger. I can only think that I left it in my room in Vancouver, which is the last place I remember using it. That means that although I have my digital camera here, I won’t be able to include pictures in my Pilgrim’s Diary stories once the battery runs down (it is a proprietary battery shape and size). I looked on the Internet to see if I could find a charger to replace the other one. I did find one, but only in the United States, not in England. I am going to the United States for two days again at the end of April, so I will pick it up then.

In the meantime, the battery in the camera is already dead. I can probably squeeze one or two more pictures out of it before it completely dies, but then I really think I have no other way to power the camera. Regular batteries won’t fit in this camera.

Well, I just discovered that I'm really disadvantaged with this camera thing. I did manage to squeeze some pictures out of the camera, but I didn't bring the thing that I need to get the pictures out of the camera into the computer. So I do have some pictures, but they will have to wait until I get back to England on April 5th.