Found on Reddit:
I’m a dentist and I can tell you exactly what he likely meant. Slovenia of course was never a part of the USSR but the USSR had largely friendly ties with Yugoslavia, which Slovenia was a part of. And part of that was knowledge exchange in Healthcare between the Soviets and Yugoslavia/Slovenia.
The USSR developed a number of… Interesting… dental techniques independently of the west. To be clear, these techniques DO work, but they are distinctive and a little bizarre to us westerners. So your dentist likely looked in your mouth, saw some of those techniques – which are occasionally done in the US as well, largely from ex-Soviet/ex-communist dentists – and made the connection. As for why he asked Slovenia specifically? A lot of Slovenian dentists migrated to the US and brought their know-how over.
And as for why the dentist acted that way, he thought they’d say, “Holy shit! How did you know that?” or “No, but I had a dentist from Slovenia!” and they’d be amazed by the dentist’s knowledge.
The dentist had no fallback plan if his amazing guess didn’t work, and he didn’t know what to do, so it became super awkward.
Slovenia! Now on dentistry!
Slovenia was always quite close to the west, so were the dentists. And the prices were never so low, that we would have dentist tourism. Not lower than Italy for instance.
I wonder if it’s the modern equivalent of a hairdresser checking someone’s roots and asking “have you been to Turkey lately?”
European health tourism is a thing after all, and my understanding is that the budget option dental work or hair replacement therapy leaves telltale signs of treatment styles that generally come from that nature of procedure.
That, or they found a “Made In Slovenia” sticker on the back of one of your dentures 😂
Just because a dentist in America or Europe charge $5000 vs $500 in other countries doesn’t mean they are a better dentist lol. There’s just different ways of doing things, and of course your local denstist is going to assume their way is the best, or why else would we do it that way?
If anything, they are the regular price and yours are inflated, always other perspectives.
My dentist upgrades like every year or two. It’s groundbreaking stuff, I’d hate to “go back in time” to sone other dentist.
Like a long time ago they used higher speed drills, like half the pain. Or lately the 3D camera, or low emitting xray, …
Then there are the materials! Things nowadays just lasts, all my old stuff has like fallen out, the newer (but still oold, like 3 layers of plastic with the big ir dildo) not at all.
My dentist would pull that 1960’s xray machine on the arm attached to the wall out. It was that industrial pea green color with a nice metal data tag. He’d set it up, give you the lead vest, and leave the room. Oh yeah. You gettin’ some real radiation today, boy.
