And when you're stealing clothes from Marks and Sparks

Slovenia is a very tidy nation; the public areas are generally clean and the houses are well maintained, with neat and colourful gardens. Everyone has productive rows of beans, lettuce, courgettes, tomatoes alongside their gladioli and sunflowers.

The country has taken to out of town shopping with enthusiasm: Every town has a couple of supermarkets, a café and maybe a hardware store on the edge of town. Unlike Poland, where Tesco and others dominated the retail sector, the supermarkets are mostly home grown; Tus and Mercator are the most common, although Spar and Aldi also have outlets. Don't picture these places as soul-less deserts; the cafes at the shopping centres are lively with people having business meetings, friends meeting up and workers having a break. The town centres don’t seem to have suffered because of the lack of shops, the lovely squares in Slovenia’s towns are lively with cafes, restaurants and shoe shops.