{"id":166,"date":"2020-05-30T15:51:55-07:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-30T22:51:55+00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/?p=166"},"modified":"2020-05-30T15:51:57-07:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-30T22:51:57+00:00","slug":"mercurial-pursuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/2020\/05\/30\/mercurial-pursuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercurial Pursuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sunday, August 25<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We drove on to Idrija.\u00a0 We stayed in a humble little room over a bar (TripAdvisor) some 6 km out of town, up a hill.\u00a0 As we were getting ready to go to sleep, a bunch of people musicians arrived to the bar below, with an accordion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through all of this, we were continually chatting with our friends who went to Hisa Franko with us:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Received 25 Aug, 2019 22:01:24 Dave Oppenheim
The Wi-Fi here is called TP-LINK. I wonder if the admin login is default too. No Wi-Fi password needed. \u00a0 Also, here they use no top sheet. The duvet is too hot and using nothing is too cold. A sheet would have been just right.<\/p>

Received 25 Aug, 2019 22:01:49 Emmett
Byos<\/p>

Received 25 Aug, 2019 22:02:01 Dave Oppenheim
And there are mosquitoes.<\/p>

Received 25 Aug, 2019 22:02:50 Emmett
Our airbnb host is ridiculous<\/p>

Sent 25 Aug, 2019 22:02:52 Hisa frankers
and a tuba<\/p>

Received 25 Aug, 2019 22:03:23 Emmett
Oh you play the tuba to scare off the mosquitos<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If Ibn Battuta had had chat, he would never have got anything written.\u00a0 Or maybe much more.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday, August 26<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago, on the way back from NAMM, we attempted to go to New Idria, an abandoned mercury mine east of Hollister.  We never reached it, there was an impassable pile of asbestos dust.  Idrija is what that was named after, which had the second largest mercury mine in Europe (after Almaden in Spain, which another mine in the Bay Area was also named after).  The mine in Idrija closed down about 20 years ago, but it is of course open for tours.  Like the tour of the silver mine in Potosi, we were issued protective gear (this time only a jacket and a hard hat).  Unlike that tour, this mine was easy to walk through standing all the way up, and there were no workers scurrying by as we explored.  It was interesting to see deposits on the walls of cinnabar (mercury ore), and tiny inclusions in the rock of liquid mercury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our guide had backpacked through South America around 2000 but did not go into the mines at Potos\u00ed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The part of El T\u00edo is played here by Prekmandlc the dwarf.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then we went to another building several blocks away, the smelter.  It had a fairly comprehensive museum detailing all the things mercury is used for, and showing the history of the Idrija mine.  We walked up into the smelter, though there really wasn\u2019t much left to see.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guide at the smelter was funny, though.\u00a0 When you meet somebody in a faraway land, you speak slowly, but you also listen slowly, and you aren’t parsing for irony and zingers the way you listen to Emmett.\u00a0 So he got the drop on me at first.\u00a0 I don’t remember the conversation \u2014 another characteristic of witty talk \u2014 they must have had wall-to-wall secretaries at the story conferences for “Your Show Of Shows”.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a bite of lunch featuring Idrija\u2019s signature lamb dumplings, we went to the museum and saw many historical exhibits, including several showing Idrija\u2019s history as a center for lace-making.\u00a0 Apparently lace was an industry which permitted money laundering from the mining industry.\u00a0 It also was Women’s Work.\u00a0 Since the mines closed, gender became redundant, and now boys do lacework, too.\u00a0 One of the guides said that boys even win some lace competition but I can’t find evidence for this on the merciful Internet, p.b.u.www.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We arranged with the museum guy to meet us at a historic water wheel a few blocks across town.  We tried to drive there.  Google sent us around tight curves and down a bike lane.  Fortunately nobody seemed to care.  The water wheel was immense \u2014 10 meters in diameter.  It had been used to pump water out of the mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We drove a short distance away to \u201cWild Lake\u201d, a curious tiny lake by the side of the road.  The curious part was that it was in a very small box canyon, with a fault at the far end.  And beneath the fault, there was an underground cave, full of water.  We would frequently see ripples from the cave on the surface of the lake.  A sign next to the lake showed the various dives into the cave which have happened, people have gone quite deep into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had dinner at the Hotel Jozef Restaurant, and went back to our little room.\u00a0 I like Hotel Jozef.\u00a0 Don’t be put off by the second floor view of the Hip Hop Petrol station \u2014 HJ manages to avoid most “view restaurant” tropes, like high prices and tiny creative portions.\u00a0 The salmon came with carrots, not broccoli (as was on the menu) because they hadn’t any broccoli. Our guide at the mercury mine told us this afternoon that nobody here grows carrots because they pick up mercury from the tailings.\u00a0 Hopefully these carrots came from upstream.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, August 25 We drove on to Idrija.\u00a0 We stayed in a humble little room over a bar (TripAdvisor) some 6 km out of town, up a hill.\u00a0 As we were getting ready to go to sleep, a bunch of people musicians arrived to the bar below, with an accordion. Through all of this, we … Continue reading Mercurial Pursuit<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"venue_id":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/sa2019\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}