Slovenia is a country with a population of two million people, located in the center of Europe. Slovenians are a Slavic people who travelled during the great migration of nations in the 6th century to reach the westernmost limit of their diaspora. This means that Slovenia is only a stone’s throw away from some of the tourist icons of the old continent.
It takes only a little over two hours to get to Venice, a beautiful coastal city, from Ljubljana to the west. Extend the drive for another two hours and you will find another tourist pearl - Florence in the center of Tuscany, the birthplace of the Renaissance.
In the other direction, Slovenians need only three and a half hours by car to taste the original Sacher cake in Vienna or enjoy a pint of beer in Prague, the Czech capital, only three hours later.
Slovenia has many extraordinary things to show you
It can be misleading to present a geographically small country by economic numbers – after all, Slovenia is just over 20 thousand square kilometers in area.
Many people will probably be unimpressed when they hear that this member of the European Union since 2004, which has had the Euro as its currency since 2007, has only a 41 billion dollar gross domestic product (GDP). This is about the same as one of the medium-sized multi-national companies.
But Slovenia still has many exceptional things to show, from biotechnological innovation to sports and cultural achievements, all of which seems hard to believe of a country with only two million people.
There is also a wealth of exceptional natural beauty in Slovenia, the third most forest covered country in Europe, right after Finland and Sweden. Several thousand brown bears live in Slovenian forests, along with wolves and lynx.
Slovenia holds an interesting position as it is located at a crossroads of European corridors running from east to west, and from north to south. Beyond the 1,370 kilometers of state border, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia are Slovenia’s neighbors. In the west, Slovenia is bounded by the Adriatic Sea, the northernmost bay of the Mediterranean, and has 46.6 kilometers of sea coast.
The Port of Koper, with its extensive container terminals, is Slovenia’s international cargo port and an important link on the maritime routes between the Mediterranean, Near and Far East, the markets of Central and Eastern Europe and the USA. The Port of Koper has transshipped the most containers in the Northern Adriatic for several years in a row and has the second largest car terminal in the Mediterranean.
Ernest Hemingway wrote about the Isonzo front
Having been in existence for only 25 years, Slovenia is one of the younger European countries. That’s why older generations still think of it in the context of the former socialist state of Yugoslavia, of which Slovenia was a part from 1945 to 1991.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia came into existence in 1945 after the Slovenes, with the help of the other Yugoslav nations and in cooperation with the Allies, including the Americans, expelled the armed forces of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which had been created in 1918 at the end of World War I, was invaded by the Axis in 1941.
Before 1918, Slovenia was a part of the Habsburg Monarchy for about a thousand years. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy clashed during World War I in the Battles of Isonzo in the high mountains of the western part of Slovenia.
The world-renowned American writer Ernest Hemingway, who was a war correspondent at the time, wrote about the Isonzo front in his book, A Farewell to Arms.
The Republic of Slovenia became independent on June 25 1991. Due to its rapid economic development in the 1990s, the new nation became a member of NATO in April 2004 and entered the European Union on May 1 of the same year.
Slovenia was the first of the ten new countries in the European Union to adopt the Euro, which has been the nation’s official currency since January 1 2007. Slovenia’s accession to the OECD came about six years after entering the European Union.
Economic growth is driven by exports
Exports were one of the most important factors of economic growth following Slovenian independence, and this aspect of the economy has been growing almost ever since. The only exception was in 2009, when Slovenian exports decreased by 16.6 percent due to the effects of the world economic crisis.
Some 65 thousand companies in Slovenia attained 91.3 billion dollars of income in sales in the past year, which is four percent more than in the previous year. Of this, 33.8 billion dollars were generated in foreign markets, which is an eight percent increase over the previous year.
The most important products for Slovenian exports are road vehicles, medical and pharmaceutical products, and electrical equipment and devices, which represent one third of goods exported.
Germany, Italy and Croatia are in the first three positions among the foreign trade partners of Slovenia. Slovenian companies generated 20.6 percent of all sales in foreign markets on the German market, which translates to 5.53 billion dollars, while 11.2 percent of their income, or over three billion dollars, came from Italy, and an 8.5 percent share in Slovenian export income was generated on the Austrian market, accounting for more than 2.23 billion dollars’ worth of goods.
Cleveland is the most“Slovenian” city in the USA
According to unofficial estimates, there are 300,000 to 600,000 people in the US with Slovenian origins. 175,099 Americans defined themselves as of Slovenian origin in the 2000 US census. Three quarters of Slovenians in the US live in six states - Ohio (58,402), Pennsylvania (19,006), Illinois (15,519), Minnesota (10,420), California (9,489) and Wisconsin (9,108).
There was a massive migration of Slovenians to the US in the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, and then another wave of immigrants followed in 1945.
Cleveland is the most “Slovenian” city in the USA, so much so that it is called the “American Ljubljana”. Cleveland not only has the largest Slovenian population, but also a considerable number of Hungarians, Slovaks and Macedonians; but it’s said that no one has made such an important mark on the city as the Slovenians. They are particularly proud of the only polka museum in the world – the Polka Hall of Fame. Frank Yankovic, the king of American polka, sold over 30 million records in his career and also received a Grammy. One of the squares in Cleveland is named after him.