In Melania Trump’s Slovenian hometown Sevnica, where cakes and chocolates are named after her, residents on Wednesday welcomed her return to the White House as first lady.
“I’m glad. She is ‘ours’ after all,” Irena Mavric, a 68-year-old pensioner, told AFP — though she was less enthusiastic about her husband’s politics, intimating that she did not share “the Americans’ choice”.
Donald Trump won a crushing election victory, defeating Kamala Harris in an astonishing comeback to the White House.
“I am proud and satisfied… I believe she (Melania Trump) will once again fulfil her duties responsibly and with excellence, as she did during the first mandate,” Sevnica’s mayor Srecko Ocvirk told AFP.
Coincidentally, Sevnica — a town of 4,500 inhabitants some 90 kilometres (60 miles) east of the capital Ljubljana — was holding a town festival on Wednesday with people crowding the usually quiet streets.
Though nothing was planned in particular to mark Trump’s victory, it was the talk of the town.
Ocvirk said he was particularly proud of the fact that Trump’s son with Melania, Barron, speaks Slovenian.
He added that he hoped Melania Trump could pay her hometown the visit that many had expected during Trump’s first four-year mandate from 2017.
Role model
After that win, local businesses hoping to benefit from her fame launched multiple products, including wine, chocolates and slippers, named after or referring to Melania Trump.
But few have been as successful as the Melanija cake created in 2016 to honour her.
“The Melanija cake is as popular as it was when she first became first lady,” Tjasa Ana Strucelj, a 19-year-old employee working at the Julija bakery, told AFP.
“Melania is a role model for Sevnica, the same goes for the cake that has the best and richest ingredients,” she said, adding that Melania Trump has tried it.
Born as Melanija Knavs in 1970, Melania Trump left Sevnica in her late teens to embark on an international modelling career, which would eventually lead her to New York where she became Trump’s third wife in 2005.
A year later, she took US citizenship and has only rarely returned to Slovenia, where her parents still own a house in Sevnica but mostly also live in the US, according to local media.
Student Ida Gustin, 18, said Melania Trump’s return to the White House “means nothing” to her.
“I believe she hasn’t been around for quite some time and do not expect her to come now,” she told AFP.
But Ocvirk remains optimistic, and believes Melania Trump’s success gives hope to people in Slovenia, a small Alpine EU member of some two million people.
“From an average Slovenian town she reached the top of the US, that should show the young that if they try, they can become whatever they want,” the starry-eyed Ocvirk said.
