Slovenia

“They said I’d make a good lampshade,” says Julia Ioffe.

The flow of migrants and refugees into Europe is not slowing down. Thousands are sleeping at bottlenecks along various international frontiers. Cold, driving rain is creating what the UN is calling a real humanitarian crisis.

Although we don’t have to contend as much with the hassles of bills and coins, another window into culture is being slammed shut.

Gottscheers are a small immigrant group in the US. The thing is, their homeland doesn’t exist anymore. They come from a German speaking city in what is now Slovenia. And the whole community was uprooted after World War II. Here’s what’s left of Gottschee in New York.

Slovenia’s Tina Maze comes from a hardscrabble mining town that has turned out a half-dozen Olympians. Tuesday Maze managed to capture her second gold at Sochi, in giant slalom. Last in the race: a virtuoso violinist competing for Thailand.