Think Slovenia was set up by Dan Bendall & Pia Tuma Bendall in 2005
At the time Pia, who is Slovenian, was based in London running the precursor to Think Slovenia – called The Slovene Consultancy, set up in 2002 and specialising in assisting UK companies to do business in Slovenia as well as offering various Slovene language services including translation, language training & cultural briefing, not to mention a Slovenian school for kids run with the assistance of the Slovenian Embassy in London.
Prior to starting Think Slovenia, Dan, who is British, was also based in London - with 10 years of experience working in the marketing industry working as a media strategist for a wide range of clients in various advertising and media agencies.
Having met Pia in 1995 and spent most holidays since then travelling around Slovenia, Dan always suspected there was more to life than the London rat race, so, longing to escape the long hours and the daily commute in the rain, in 2005 we took the plunge decided to move to Slovenia permanently and set up Think Slovenia. The idea was to create a business that offers expertise in most of the main areas where non Slovenians may require assistance in Slovenia - a more consumer focused version of the Slovene Consultancy also offering a range of real estate and tourism related services.
With our backgrounds we were always more interested in offering high levels of service to clients than just acting as an advertising portal and this remains the way that we run the company today. Many real estate agencies claim to offer property search or help with renovations, letting and management – the difference with Think Slovenia is that this isn’t just a casual claim and doesn’t just mean passing you to a third party – but involves us being as actively involved in these areas as our clients need us to be, calling on significant experience and contacts in each area to deliver a quality hand-on service. Hopefully our very long list of testimonials from our clients illustrates this.
Unfortunately the long hours didn’t stop (we live in hope) but coming to live in Slovenia (or coming back in Pia’s case) has been the exciting, life-changing, at times challenging move that we hoped it would be. We are still constantly amazed by the beauty of Slovenia, by the pace of change in the country and perhaps, more surprisingly, the depth of the cultural differences that exist between Slovenians and other nationalities. Slovenians are very warm, friendly and welcoming people always ready to help foreigners in the country make themselves understood, but subtle differences in communication and ways of working exist which mean that it is not always straightforward for non-Slovenians to operate effectively in Slovenia - whether its renovating a house or looking for business partners. This is the gap we aim to bridge with most of our services.
When not Thinking Slovenia we are often to be found walking up or skiing or mountain biking down Slovenia's beautiful mountains, which was one of the main motivations of moving to Slovenia. Dan is at the time of writing still grappling with the Slovenian language, but definitely winning!
Since 2006 we have been operating through a Slovenian Ltd company whose details can be found at the bottom of the page. Our offices are in Ljubljana. We are fully licensed and insured as a real estate agency and rather than just hiring brokers or worse, operating without a license, we remain the only real estate related company specialising in assisting non-Slovenian buyers to be part owned and run by a licensed Slovenian real estate broker.
Helping us to run Think Slovenia we have a multitude of tried and tested partners around the country from architects to handymen, cleaners to insurance brokers and are assisted in the office by the indispensable Sonja Hladnik.
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