Not only that, but Steven and Slovene composer Urška Pompe have a delightful daughter just about Philo’s age, and it was great to see them become friends.

This town we were in is about forty minutes north of the capital city Ljubljana at the edge of the mountains and near much natural splendor, such as Lake Bled.

Ljubljana itself is a very charming city I would like to see more of. I had an unexpected opportunity to walk around for about two hours…

…because we stayed an extra day so that I could go see Steven conduct a concert of new music presented by the new music ensemble MD7. This is an interesting ensemble indeed, founded by Slovene composer Pavel Mihelčič. They only play music written expressly for them, and the instrumentation is as follows: flute, clarinet, trombone, percussion, piano, viola, cello. It’s actually a pretty good combination. A little weird, but not bad. I wonder about the trombone, but it worked well in the pieces on this concert. Highlights were “Pas de Sept – Hommage à Stravinsky” by Belarus composer Dmitri Lybin and particularly for me, “The Team from the Flower Shop” by Slovene composer David Beovič.

Today: Abundant sunshine. High 103F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.
Tomorrow: Generally sunny. High 103F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Saturday: Sunny. Highs 99 to 103F and lows in the upper 60s.

So, basically, it’s hot. Too hot to enjoy anything. Right now it’s unbearable in the shade, and torture in the sun. Most people here seem to be taking it in their stride, but I live in San Francisco, where I’m very happy because it rarely goes above 75 degrees.

We’re going to Slovenia for a few days to visit this guy. It’s also hot there, but there’s more natural splendor.

We were supposed to go yesterday, but we missed the train. It’s so embarrassing I thought it would be a good thing to blog about. I’m hard-wired to think like a 25-year-old when I’m here, I guess, so I thought it would be nothing to take a bus and two Metro lines. The combination of traveling with a 4-year-old and the Hadean weather made that a really stupid idea.

They have taxis here.

Fortunately, Budapest has a number of places like this, where we spent yesterday afternoon, after the whole, you know, “train” thing.