Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Time and social networks
106 Rajkó Muršič difficult for them to adjust to the new situation. Only a few of the forty colonist families that settled in Trate in 1946 still live there today, and only one of the colonists in Trate still works as a farmer (even he was employed in a factory until his retirement). The majority of them moved to town to find work. Some of them simply did not have any luck - alcohol was a major problem which some of these families had to face. In the post-war period, the shape of the village changed constantly. Many villagers found jobs either in the paper mill factory Paloma, in Sladki Vrh, or in the industrial town of Maribor. Others found work across the border in Austria. Some people moved out, other moved in. Among the newcomers were agricultural workers employed in the large agricultural economy (Kmetijska zadruga Lokavec-Trate, later incorporated in Agrokombinat Lenart). Some of them were highly educated agronomists. These agronomists and some police officers took up residence in apartments in the Upper Castle. Near the bridge over the river Mura, border administrative workers settled. Furthermore, in the sixties, two blocks were built across the road near the Lower Castle for employees in the asylum (psychiatric hospital) which was located in the building of the old castle. With the arrival of some other newcomers who built their houses in a typical suburban style, the professional and social structure of the village changed significantly. The everyday life under socialism was not at all depressing or tragic. On the contrary, a new (socialist) public life was introduced to the village. Daily life improved progressively and radically. Gradually, the village received electricity, modern roads, water supply and other infrastructural necessities. With a better education, the younger generations were in a position to shape their own worlds with local cultural and leisure activities. The unintended new era had indeed begun: the era of popular culture (by "popular culture” I mean culture mediated by mass media) in the rural-urban continuum of the northeast Slovenia resulting from the gradual suburbanisation of the countryside.
