Reflections on Life and Work in Slovenia from Local Expatriates.march 2004 Quality of Life... “In Ljubljana you have all the upsides of a capital in a small city and one hour away you can either snowboard or wake board!” - French expat with a telecom firm, 3 years in Slovenia. “There is something rather Hobbit-like about the Slovenes! In spite of my frustrations, I do rather admire people who take their home-life/family life and traditions so seriously! We have become very Slovenian in many ways - we eagerly await the first salad of the season (the regrat), have a fine collection of slippers, and prepare our window boxes on exactly the right weekend of the year.” - British expat with an international distributor, 11 years in Slovenia “Quiet family life, no traffic - unlike Ireland, and good access to nature, mountains, the sea, etc. But we find it very hard to crack the local scene, no Slovene friends, sniff sniff. We lived in Russia for some time and it was more welcoming.” - Irish expat with a consumer products firm, 3 years in Slovenia. Working Style... There is more talk about “stress” in the workplace but stress levels here still cannot compare with those in the U.S or Western Europe. I think it’s more the stress of “will I be able to leave at 15.00 to go to my vikend on the coast on Friday”. - British expat “Easy to work here like in any other Western European country, though the big monopolies dictate terms like any small country. Payment terms and risk are quite low, and corruption is manageable. What I do find difficult is recruiting good people, the market is quite small and there is not much turnover. People are not anxious to move around and get experience, and there aren’t enough experienced people out there. And as for moving abroad for experience a big No! People like their 9 to 5, or 7 to 3 as it is here.” - Irish expat “On the down side, businesses are highly incestuous and there is a tendency toward monopolies and links with politics. Far too many business deals are done at CEO levels with a very small pool of people who mostly know each other since childhood. One layer down, basic management and any other arts and sciences are studied at the highest levels. Most Slovene companies compare favorably with companies world wide. The biggest weakness is that there is limited professional salesmen. It is almost total reliance on personal relationships. This limits the ability of Slovene companies to enter markets where they do not already have contacts.” - American expat with a high-tech firm, 5 years in Slovenia. Bureaucracy... “We have had some “inspections” by the immigration authorities backed up by police, and they have asked people to leave the country and also fined them in court, only because the expats in question were waiting months for documents from the government itself.” - Irish expat “Slovenian’s must loose millions of Euros a year in the bureaucratic crater, waiting, queuing, driving, filling out endless forms not to mention frustration and mind boggling requirements. I was once refused a visa due to the fact that I had forgotten to write down the measurements of my toilet in my flat rental agreement! I have the papers to prove it if anyone dares to question this.” - British expat with a Slovene food distributor, 8 years in Slovenia Copyright 2009, Wagner & Associates and Ljubljana Life Magazine.
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