And back on the road again! We were heading south, leaving the extremely impressionable city of Trieste in the rear view mirror. Now the Renault rental was hitting 140/km per hour and we aimed south, from "Zone A" to "Zone B", to the land call Istria by the Croatians.




Little did I know we were about to immerse ourselves into yet another area of conflict over borderlines. But unlike the Trieste situation which was finally put to bed, this disagreement lingers on today.

Slovenia - a land where the literacy rate is 99.7 %, homelessness is virtually non-existent, and people have adopted the western ways of their European neighbors - claimed its independence in 1991 during the so-called "Ten Day War". Using the momentum from not suffering major infrastructure damage or major casualties during their brief role in the Yugoslavia breakup fighting, they were able to strengthen their economy during the following fifteen years. This allowed them to meet the standards to join the European Union.




We just so happened to be traveling in the country when they were celebrating this inauguration, and the sense of national pride was evident among the festive people of the capital city of Slovenia. But this national pride combined with a distinct ethnic bias can be worrisome. I sense it in our country to some degree, a narrow vision that values some lives over others. It was this myopian vision that was at the heart of the Balkan Wars of the late 20th century. Well, that and of course greed, which seems to always be at the root of bloodshed.

The dispute between these neighbors with a turbulent history is over a certain area with important shipping and trade ties with the western world. With Slovenian and Croatian leaders signing a deal in 2001, the matter seemed resolved. But when the final lines were drawn it did not sit very well with the Croatian public, who made an outcry, eventually terminating the deal in congress before it could it be ratified.

The area called Piran Bay by Slovenia and Cavudria Bay by the Croatians is still a place of unrest. Fishermen from both sides have had violent confrontations over fishing rights. In addition, from an economic perspective, Croatia gets the smaller chunk of land and loses direct access to Italy and international shipping.
With each country within the broken former Yugoslavia having a hodgepodge ethnic makeup, this allowed isolated ethnic communities to be surrounded by their potentially hostile neighbors. Slovenia, for example, is made up of only 83 percent Slovenians. The remaining seventeen percent is mostly comprised of Croats, Bozniaks, and Serbs. A similar breakdown exists in each state of the former republic. This is why it is hard to point the finger at anyone - not even Milosevic, (Read my earlier entries on Slovenia), because pitiful acts of murder were committed in each of the countries for the same reason - belonging to the wrong ethnic group.




You would never tell there was conflict by staying in the quaint little seaside resort town called Portoroj. More incredibly wonderful Slovenian family to share their food and their lives with us! Lots of young kids were out of school for the celebration of independence and so the beaches were filled with frolicking youth and loud music. Definitely no sign of rivalry here.

But the next day we crossed into Istria. There was quite a different feel from the land, and I would hear stories about some of the things that happened, awful stories of massacres and displacement. This was less than a decade and half later, and we were staying among the people who bore solemn witness to this dark past.




We would make our way around the cape of Istria passing green farmlands and coastal bluffs, no town seemed large enough to warrant a Main Street. When we made it to Mareda on the eastern edge of the cape, we were welcomed once again by people with warm hearts and generous kitchens. The apartments had a slightly ragged look, as if they may have held some history.

ER Harris