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Chapter One

Ljubljana

An August afternoon. The sun beats down on the maize fields that line the road between the airport and the city, and upon the car travelling along it. The road is wide and straight; a good, European road. Overhead, a hawk hangs on a current before dropping into invisibility among the long grass. The rear-view mirror reflects the barbed peaks of the Savinja and Julian Alps. Beyond the maize and grass, the Sava flows wide and deep.

    `What's changed in twenty years?' The driver twitches his shoulders. `Nothing much, except now things are more expensive. The prices here are the same as in Austria or Germany, but our income isn't the same.'

    After a silence he remembers another, small change. `Also, now I can say "Fuck you!" to the government.'

    `And do you?'

    `No. The government's OK.'

    At first glance, Slovenia looks much as it did twenty years ago; but the changes, though small, are there. This new multilane toll road owes nothing to Communism, and the traditional hayracks, a national emblem, are now steel and concrete as often as wood. What hasn't changed at all is the ordered beauty of the place.

    Beyond the farmland, dense, multi-hued forest reaches in all directions, into the suburbs and Ljubljana itself. There are surprises in this city, things I'd forgotten about, like the view of trees from almost every street corner. And the odd density of traffic.

    `The rush hour starts at two and finishes at seven.' The driver waves companionably to a woman sitting in the car beside us at some traffic lights. `That's because people start work at different times, some at six in the morning, some at ten. This is meant to help the traffic, but as you see, it doesn't.'

    In a country with a population one quarter the size of London or New York, the traffic problem is a mystery, but quickly forgotten in the adventure of arrival.

    In September 1978 I reached Ljubljana from the north-west, having travelled by train along the valley of the Sava, between mountain ranges, through the industrial city of Jesenice and past the tourist destination of Bled. The station was quiet; the city was quiet. After London and Munich, this capital of a small Yugoslav republic seemed sleepy and provincial, with an air of Central Europe touched by the Mediterranean.

    My main memory of Ljubljana in 1978 is of red-tiled houses and a river crossed by many bridges. Today, it's still hot and sunny when I leave my hotel in the early evening and wander the short distance to the river, looking for the bridges and red roofs of memory.

* * *

Ljubljana's history is a record of arrivals. The Barje marshland, south of the modern city, was inhabited four thousand years ago by bogmen who lived in houses that swayed on stilts over the wet earth. Tribes such as the Celtic Noricii, Illyricii and Venetii, searching for fertile land, settled on the shores of the Ljubljanica River, beyond the marsh. Emona, the first major settlement on the site of modern Ljubljana, was built by the Romans, a critical point on the military map linking Roman Pannonia with northern Italy.

    Like most of the Empire, Emona fell to the barbarians -- to Huns, Ostrogoths and, in the sixth century, the earliest Slavs. By AD 620, Slavs had formed the Principality of Karantania, encompassing an area much larger than modern Slovenia. In the eighth century Karantania was dominated by Charlemagne's Franks, who brought the Christian religion which would, ironically, preserve the individuality of what became the Slovenian language. By the late ninth century, Karantania was `drowned', as Slovenian tourist information puts it, `in the Empire of the Franks and their German successors for a millennium'.

    Modern Slovenes are very conscious of what they are not . That they are not Balkan, historically, ethnically or culturally, was made very clear to me before leaving the UK, when I informed the Slovenian tourism authorities by email of my planned visit and its purpose. The response arrived within five and a half minutes.

The problem is that Slovenia is not Former Yugoslavia. Yes, it was a Republic of what was Yugoslav Federation, but `Former Yugoslavia' is a synonim [sic] for eternally troubled countries where there are no neighbours only foes, where you can not go to bed without a gun, where you wake up at 4 a.m. scared of being beaten (but found yourself only having nightmares) etc. etc. As soon as one mentions Former Yugoslavia, the listener, wherever in Europe says `Oh God, no! War, fire, nationalisms and refugees!' Slovenia is -- as I know that you know -- different. Much closer and comparable to any Western European countries than to Balkans. A comparison between Slovenia and say, Bosnia, Serbia, even Croatia is absolutely not legitimate comparison. Comparison between Slovenia and Austria, no problem. But ... there is a huge gap on the southern border of Slovenia. In the Middle Ages they called countries like that `Hic Sunt Leones'.

Evidently, the colonisers of the past have become the standard by which Slovenia wishes to be measured, its more recent confederates relegated to `lion land'. But if Slovenes are not Balkan, neither do they see themselves as being related to Austria or Italy (despite those Holy Romans and Austro-Hungarians, and the desire for comparability with Europe), though aspects of both cultures are evident throughout Slovenia. Driving from the airport, I'd found myself looking for points of reference and thinking, `It's like Italy, like Austria, like Switzerland.' But it's soon clear that Slovenia is like all and none of these places. It's like itself, and Slovenes are very much themselves, whether they know it or not.

* * *

`Now you're here, you can see it isn't the Balkans -- this is Western Europe, it always has been.'

    Over the telephone, Jelko Ertl, author of the `lion land' email, persuades me that when we meet for dinner I'll know him by his aura. We meet in the early evening; his aura is distinctive and resembles cologne.

    `We're a romantic people,' he says, as we walk slowly along deserted cobbled streets that have little evidence of the cars and buses of a few hours ago. `We're romantic like the Italians, but also cool-headed like the Germans.' He waves a hand at Slovenia. `We've taken pieces from all the cultures around us and made them our own. That's what small nations have to do.'

    It's a Monday, and everyone must be at home relaxing after work because the city seems empty and suddenly large; the occasional strollers and shoppers are notable for the space between them. Ljubljana is the largest and most populous city in Slovenia, the place where everything of importance starts and finishes; but things happen, it seems, at a certain time, and nightlife starts late and finishes early.

    We reach Prešernov Trg, a small yet spacious Baroque square and the heart of modern Ljubljana. This is where I came earlier in the evening to look for bridges and red roofs. And there are plenty of both here. The square, bordered by the earthy waters of the Ljubljanica, is an elegant confection of architectural styles and colours, and, of course, trees.

    On the steps below the statue of national poet France Prešeren and his Muse, a few young people smoke and chat. Taxis wait with their doors open, the drivers sitting, one leg in, one leg out, gossiping. The cars point at Tromostovje, the Three Bridges, ready to whisk their passengers across the river to the castle on its hill above us, or maybe to the forested suburbs. At first sight, the three parallel bridges crossing one narrow stretch of river seem strangely cluttered, an architectural affectation.

    Jelko and I sit in the Old Town, under the walls and flaming bollards of the Church of St Florian, patron saint of fires. Above our table in stone relief. Florian is being submerged upside down in the Ljubljanica. Beside our table a large oak tree spreads its branches above what was until the nineteenth century the main Ljubljana-Zagreb highway. The modern road is little more than a lane, which our waiter, who looks like Brad Pitt, must cross in order to feed and water us. Elegant and handsome in a floor-length white apron, he produces a fifth variety of wine with a flourish; the label sports a naked man dancing to celebrate a very considerable erection. My host offers a toast to Slovenia in Slovenian style, gazing directly into my eyes. It's faintly unnerving, but less so than the declamation of erotic poetry which follows. This is a man of many parts, and poet is only one of them.

    `You won't believe it perhaps, but I was a punk when I was a kid.'

    `Really?'

    `Well, a sort of punk. Young Slovenes liked what it stood for, that way of opposing authority. Punk was part of that, maybe. We were always too small to fight for ourselves as a country, so we had to become intellectual fighters. Our conflicts have always been about books and language and religion, not military things. This is one of the reasons our separation from Yugoslavia was almost painless for us, our language being different.'

    `And the other reasons?'

    `That our population is almost entirely Slovenian, that was the main reason. Nearly 90 per cent of us are Slovenian by birth. And then the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians who were living here in 1991 were happy to be here. This was always the best place in Yugoslavia, they didn't want that to change.'

    `Was there no support from inside Slovenia for a federal Yugoslavia?'

    He laughs as if I've missed a joke. `We thought we were part of Yugoslavia, most Slovenes wanted to be ... but look what they did to us!' He grasps the air. `So in the end, no, there was no support here for Yugoslavia.'

    `Why do you think things happened differently in Croatia and Bosnia?'

    `They had mixed populations, Bosnia particularly, and they had bad governments. We had a good government, we were lucky with that.'

    It's odd being in a country with a well-liked government.

   Listening as Jelko talks, it strikes me that perhaps the most remarkable thing about this country is that it seems to have created itself in less than a decade. `Seems', because despite the lack of a state, its fluctuating geo-political boundaries and only the most minor of national mythologies, Slovenes managed to create their own unique identity in the face of what must at times during the last twelve hundred years have seemed overwhelming odds. Between 1990 and 1991, Slovenia freed itself from Yugoslavia, from the Balkans and the `nationalisms' so anathema to Jelko.

    Slovenia as a political entity didn't exist until the mid-twentieth century. The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was created in 1945 after Tito's Communist Partisans took power. Borut and Cheitmar, the eight-century Karantanian principalities which roughly corresponded to modern Slovenia, left no traces. And the medieval Counts of Celje, viewed with pride by many modern Slovenes for defending Slav rights against the Hapsburgs, may in fact have been Germanic warlords. Slovenia's national consciousness was historically strongest among the peasantry and intellectual bourgeoisie, who had little contact with the imperial court in Vienna. Peasant uprisings in the Middle Ages and serf emancipation in the eighteenth century were taken up by later urban intellectuals and turned into cultural rather than sociopolitical events.

    `That's why Prešeren was so important to us,' Jelko tells me over dessert, a stunning concoction of fresh, wild fruit. `He encouraged people to see themselves as Slovenian, even though there was no such place at that time. He used our language instead of the imperial language, German, and he wrote about love and the beauties of our country. He was a great European Romantic poet.'

    In his attempts to raise national consciousness, Prešeren was up against more than just the German language. Slovenia was always a team player. In the nineteenth century, it was keen to remain in the Austrian part of the Hapsburg Empire, wanting only the unification of Slovenian-speaking regions in return. It didn't get it. In the twentieth century, between 1987 and 1990, Slovenia tried to find new ways to improve Yugoslav federal unity while the larger republics flag-waved and demonstrated increasingly xenophobic tendencies. Slovenian opinion was ignored once again, and when confronted by confederates who were not team players, the game collapsed.

    `No-one knows where Slovenia is,' Jelko says as we stroll back towards the river by a different route; after only a few hours, it's clear that Ljubljana is a place where it would be hard to get lost. He's serious as we part, a man on a mission, punks and poetry forgotten.

    `Because we are a new country and small, with a small population, we are always being confused with somewhere else ... Slovakia, Slavonia. People think we're one of those countries in the middle of Eastern Europe that no-one visits, a place with a national debt the size of Africa and a problem with reason. You'll tell them differently.'

* * *

The subject of independence from Yugoslavia is one that still occupies Slovenes. The following morning I meet a student named Simon in an Internet bar under Slovenska cesta, Ljubljana's main road. He's eager to talk about his country and what happened, though he can't have been much more than thirteen at the time.

    `I don't remember it myself, but everyone says that the first signs of Yugoslav trouble started in Kosovo in 1987 because Miloševic was stirring national tensions there between the Serbs and Albanians. So then our government had to look at this new threat, not only to Yugoslavia, but to us. I remember my mother, who's a lawyer, talking about a charter of constitutional amendments which the opposition parties wrote and presented to President Kucan in 1989. I don't remember exactly what it said, though we had to learn about it later in school.' He smiles and drinks the rest of his coffee in one gulp. `Something about wanting Yugoslavia to respect the sovereignty, rights to self-determination and equality of all the nationalities and minorities.'

    `What happened with this charter?'

    `Our government accepted it, but of course the Yugoslav Central Committee in Belgrade was pretty mad! So Kucan went to Belgrade to explain the amendments in the "charter", why he thought it was a good idea. The whole of Slovenia watched him on television.'

    Simon is obviously moved by his memory of that day. `What we saw was us, little Slovenia, standing up to the centralists, to the bullying Serbs! We were proud of our leaders, proud to be Slovenian. But that was the difference, you know, between us and the other republics. We were proud of what we'd achieved , not of what we were or who we are ... all that means nothing, that's just nationalism.'

    He orders another coffee for both of us and continues talking.

    `I wasn't old enough to vote for independence in 1990, but I was really excited when it happened. Everyone was, because we all knew that something big was happening. Eighty-eight per cent of Slovenes voted for independence, and six months later, on 26 June 1991 ...' he smiles as he says this, repeating it like something learnt in the classroom, but proud too, `we celebrated as Slovenia declared itself a nation with its own flag. We were all in the square, my parents and my older sister.' He leans forward, his youthful face and slender hands mobile with memory. `Thousands and thousands of people were there and we had flags that day. Someone put a flag in Prešeren's arms -- you've seen his statue? -- that was the best bit. I thought Prešeren would have been happy to see us celebrating, drunk and happy. The president said we should dream, that it was OK to dream on that day, that tomorrow would be a new day. He was right; the next day the Yugoslav army attacked us.'

    The war lasted ten days and cost sixty-six lives. The success of the Slovenian government in a situation that many thought suicidal stemmed from the fact that while Kucan and his ministers talked federalism, they'd been preparing for independence for years. And, of course, the Yugoslav Army was still federal, drawn from every region, including Slovenia. There was no real will among the soldiers on the ground to attack their former confederates, and Belgrade misjudged Slovenian preparedness and resolution. Most importantly, there were no major territorial claims or minority issues between the Slovenes and the rest of Yugoslavia, and on 7 July the European Community set up a truce.

    `The soldiers were all gone by the next autumn. Then the European Community recognised us as a nation in 1992.'

    `Are you a history student?' I ask.

    Simon laughs aloud. `No, I'm studying to be a teacher of mathematics. But we all know these things. I think you remember history differently if it happens to you.'

    One of the Internet bar's two computers becomes free and I say goodbye. An hour later I try to pay for my coffees, only to find that Simon has paid and disappeared.

* * *

In a clothing shop on Slovenska cesta the elderly owner wraps my socks and looks worried when I seem pleased at the price.

    `Cheap, yes?'

    `Cheaper than London,' I smile, trying to convey that price and quality are not related in this instance.

    The anxious look remains in her faded blue eyes. `People already shop in Austria, in Italy ... things are cheaper and better quality than here. We know that, but what can we do?'

    `You are worried that people won't buy from you any more?'

    `Why should they, when they can buy nicer things in another country? If Slovenia joins with Europe, what will happen to shops like this?'

    I explain that my new socks would have cost 60 per cent more in London, but she's not listening.

    `I have food, clothes, a warm house. What more do I need? People don't realise the trouble that will come if we join this EU ...' She almost spits the letters out, which is surprising, as she looks a mild person. `We will be at the bottom of the pile, the poorest.'

    Another customer needs to be served and I make my escape. Later, sitting in a pleasant tea-house in the Old Town, I don't feel I'm in an impoverished country. Slovenia is the most successful former-Communist state in Europe, and by regional standards it's wealthy. It's that word `regional' and all it implies that causes the anxiety.

Ljubljana has a feel to it. All cities have a feel, but most are so big or overwhelming that the specificity is lost; here, there's space and time to look. In so small a city things happen side by side, there are few divisions. Ljubljana's feel is post-Communist and Western; rural and upbeat; Catholic and Protestant. It's not all architecture and trees.

    In the concrete underground of a mostly empty shopping mall, Skriti Kot, a café somewhere between a school canteen and `greasy spoon', serves up vast portions of food to businessmen, labourers and women with shopping bags. Chicken in rust-coloured gravy. Whole fish on mounds of rice. Strangers line up at the steel counter, trays at the ready. Real food and lots of it for about US$3. The tables are covered with white cloths over blue, each with a tiny vase of plastic flowers and a bottle of pale-pink vinegar. On the walls, original works of rustic art are displayed for sale. Outside in the dingy mall, posters advertise The Blue Room by David Hare, Hysteria by Terry Johnson and something untranslatable by Dario Fo.

    The city's contrasts are most evident on the streets. Men and women wait dutifully at red lights on thoroughfares empty of vehicles, only to narrowly avoid being run down by a cyclist on the pavement. There are cycles everywhere, but the illegal pavement is the most popular place to ride. After two days I'm convinced that the majority of heart attacks suffered in Ljubljana must occur on the pavements as a result of cycle terrorism.

    Modern fountains dot the pedestrian shopping areas of the city centre, each sparklingly unembarrassed by dirt or coins. This isn't a surprise. After a few days acquaintance, Slovenes appear neither superstitious nor profligate. Catholic by tradition, Ljubljana strikes me as having a very precise, rather Calvinist feel to it, almost as though the Counter-Reformation, which decimated the Protestant population of Slovenia in the sixteenth century, never happened.

    There are a surprising number of shoe shops. Having noticed over the years that shoe shops abound in countries experiencing change, I wonder, as I stare through windows just like the ones next door, whether footwear is intrinsically related to transition, to going places. Nearby, philately shops display multi-coloured stamps from around the world in semi-opaque and carefully labelled bags. I peer through the windows at tiny images of birds of paradise, orchids, tropical fish, beaches and aviators, and wonder at the attraction of collecting them; until it strikes me that each small square of paper is a passport to anywhere.

* * *

On Wednesdays Prešeren Trg is busy. It's a beautiful day, the sky cloudless above the salmon-pink Franciscan Church that dominates the square. On the bridges, books are being sold. Men and women cross the square from the nearby market carrying beeswax candles, boxes of blackberries and pale-orange mushrooms, jars of honey and cobs of sweet corn. In the upmarket outdoor cafés, waiters, each taller and more slender than the last, swish around calico chairs, arms laden with coffee and fruit and ice-cream sundaes. The square seems full of life, yet it's barely a third full. It's like watching a stage, waiting for the entire cast to appear, but this is as busy as it gets.

    Only metres from my table, the dark surface of the Ljubljanica, unmarred by ripple or splash, reflects the perfect white of the Plecnik Colonnade and the trees along the bank. Now that I've spent a few days in Ljubljana, Joze Plecnik's Three Bridges seem neither cluttered nor affected. The central, original bridge carries vehicles; the ones on either side, pedestrians. How wonderful that in a European capital city the pedestrian still has an advantage.

    The humane designs of Plecnik, who restored Prague Castle and worked in Vienna and many other major European cities during the first half of the twentieth century, pervade his home-town. While he lived, his eclectic blending of classical, Islamic, Byzantine and Egyptian themes was considered too individual for the mainstream of modern architecture; more recently, he's been acknowledged as an early master of post-modernism. To the visitor at least, modern Ljubljana is Plecnik. His bridges, walkways, churches, libraries, markets, cemeteries, steps and gardens, many with his trademark columns and columnar lights, create a unique beauty. Ljubljana has its own blend of Art Deco, Baroque and Renaissance architecture -- central Ljubljana lures the eye in all directions -- but most vistas lead back to Plecnik and Prešeren Trg.

    This square is a gentle feast for the senses. Cobbles underfoot; smells from cafés and nearby markets; river sounds almost lost in traffic and humanity; the green of willow and birch tree hanging limp with heat over the poet's statue, shading the young people sitting at his feet.

    `Can you see the head on that building over there?' From our table overlooking the river, writer Andrej Blatnik points to the bust of a young woman, her head and shoulders twisting out of the wall of a house across the square. `Julija Primic ... Prešeren is supposed to be looking at her.'

    `Didn't he look at pretty much anything?'

    Andrej smiles. `Pretty much.'

    A coffee arrives with a whiff of aftershave and starched apron.

    `You have very elegant waiters here in Ljubljana.'

    `Elegant? Surely you mean pretentious?'

    I grin. Taking a closer look at Prešeren's gaze it's clear that he's not looking at the young woman after all, but past her, towards the river. At a time when it was fashionable in the `right' circles to be a poet, lecher and drunkard, Prešeren was all of these things and yet managed to be a social outcast. Cast in bronze, he's still looking beyond the frame.

    Andrej Blatnik, a writer of novels and short stories not at all in the Prešeren tradition, explains about his great forebear.

    `He's considered Slovenia's greatest poet, the man who raised Slovenian into a language capable of challenging German, which was what intellectuals and the educated mostly used at the time. He wrote our national anthem, "Zdravljica!", which means "Cheers!" It's a drinking song. He was an articled clerk for most of his working life, probably quite bored a lot of the time.'

    A colourful group sits at the poet's feet, the young women as scantily dressed and the young men as seriously fashionable as anywhere. If Prešeren's reputation is anywhere near true, he would have loved modern Ljubljana.

    After the biggest fruit salad I've ever seen is placed in front of me, I ask Andrej how Slovenian has changed in recent years.

    `It's a very rule-bound language these days, and some people are concerned about the introduction of Anglo-Saxon words. For example, the "language law" says that we should write a foreign word in its original spelling if it's not "domesticated" enough, not part of everyday Slovenian use. The problem is that there's no rule to say when it is domesticated enough. A small example is the word "whisky". For some people, whisky is like a pet and so is spelt " viski "; for other people it's an invader. The same goes for rock'n'roll, rokenrol , and pizza, pica .'

    He pauses, while I spoon giant blueberries into my mouth.

    `I'm surprised you find this grammar stuff interesting.'

    `It's not so much grammar as the way language reflects national developments.'

    He nods. `Slovenia is in an unusual position. We're on the fringe of the Balkans and the West, and so belong to both and neither. In many ways we're isolationists, and always have been. We've no foreigners in positions of influence in any academic or artistic institution, as other countries do. We're still not certain who we are as a nation, and until that changes we'll remain inward looking in many things, language being the most obvious. This inwardness can be a problem, especially for writers, because there's a very narrow criteria of what's "good" in a literary sense. Anything remotely popular can't be "good". My wife Nataša and I know a woman who wrote a really great book about Burkina-Faso which sold extremely well here in Slovenia -- at least two thousand copies, and with a population like ours that's massive sales. But good sales mean it must be badly written. Great literature requires great pain and suffering you see, for the writer and the reader. If a reader doesn't have to read each page at least three times in order to understand it, the book's not worthy of being called literary.'

    `Is it possible to live just by writing here in Slovenia?'

    `Not really. There are subsidies of course ... a leftover from Communism which we're glad of. I also work as an editor for a publishing house. With this and the writing, it's possible to have a reasonable income now, but it wasn't always so easy. We've just moved, with our son Brin, to a new apartment. It seems very large. Before that we lived for years in one room. Strangely enough, it seems to me I'm one of the more fortunate writers of my generation.'

    My fruit salad finally finished, we walk along the embankment past ochre-roofed houses, their walls painted white and yellow, their many balconies laden with flowers. We pass through a small glass door into the building where Andrej works. From the outside, it looks much like all the other old buildings that line the river, but inside all is new. The building is modern and efficient, yet at the same time perfectly in keeping with its surroundings.

    `Come around to our house tomorrow, if you're not busy. Nataša would like to meet you too.'

    `That would be great,' I say. `Thanks.'

    I leave Andrej to wrestle with grammar, and stroll along the embankment past Plecnik's Steps and over his Shoemaker Bridge into the Old Town. The buildings are slightly dilapidated here; grass pushes up between the cobbles and grows in waving tufts amid the roof tiles. Away from Plecnik's influence, the sense of being at a cultural crossroads is more acute, the Hungarian, Italian and Austrian influences more evident. The ripples of a Chopin étude, played by someone who knows the keyboard, drift out through the open windows of a large, tattered house. From the other side of the building, a violin cuts across the piano, playing something fast and wild. A worn plaque beside the entrance says, `The Academy of Music'.

    In the medieval streets that wind below the castle mound, potters and ceramists display their work in shop fronts that have changed little in six hundred years. Among this Central European architecture, the effect of `Hemmingway', a shoe shop filled with the latest American boots and sport footwear, is close to surreal. Inside, Jim Morrison is singing `Light My Fire', and between the door and the window someone has graffitied a small sailing boat, with the caption `The Old Man and the Sea'.

* * *

Ljubljana is a city where people are at home when you telephone in the middle of the day. At home, available, and willing to talk. Andrej Košak arrives at the steps of Prešeren's statue, late, flustered and, with his sombre clothes and flowing hair, looking rather like the poet himself, or at least like his statue.

    We sit on the square, in another café with yet more tall waiters, and talk about film, mutual friends in Bosnia, and Slovenian culture.

    `I was a punk you know, in the eighties ... we all were, it was the thing to do.'

    I feel I need to get to the bottom of this `Slovenian punk' thing.

    `Did you have safety pins in your face?'

    `No!'

    `Did you have a mohican haircut?'

    `No.'

    `Swear, spit a lot?'

    `Of course not!'

    `So what did you do?'

    `We just liked the music, you know, and the attitude.'

    Film is not what Slovenia is best known for, and its output is one of the smallest in `Europe. Košak's film Outsiders released in 1997, was a rare success.

    `It's not easy to raise money. Some of it comes from European sources, which you apply for like everyone else.' He waves at a folder resting on the table under his mobile phone. `I'm just about to apply for funding from Rotterdam for a new film, as it happens. The rest, around 80 per cent, you have to raise here, from the Slovenian Film Fund, and that's the hardest. Usually they want to give cash to boring projects, you know ... costume dramas about serious historical struggles. Every film-maker here wants to be Bergman. Why? No-one watches films like that any more! Here's an example,' he points at the bronze figure under the birch tree and the raised arm of the Muse. `Prešeren, they're making a film about him right now. The Slovenian Film Fund put millions into it because of the subject, because it's an epic-type film, and it's Slovenian , of course!' He snorts. `It'll be rubbish, and if they use the actor I think they will, it'll be worse. He doesn't have the range to play a character like Prešeren. It will be a cardboard film, all long dresses and long sighs! That's where the money goes for film in this country. There's nothing for directors like me who want to make new things.'

    `Have things changed much in film since the end of the war?'

    `In some ways. A lot of Serbian actors are leaving Belgrade and moving here to Slovenia and to the West. That's not just because of the war and Kosovo and the lack of money ... a lot of really good actors are leaving because everything is bad in Belgrade now. I tell you, the only cultural experience the Serbian Minister of Culture ever had was as a singer in a kitsch restaurant! Who could work in such a situation! Can you imagine it?'

    Strangely enough I can. `What about American and European films ... are they popular?'

    `Of course, look at what's on in the cinemas here. And that's a problem too. The Film Fund is afraid of everything becoming Anglo-Saxon, another reason why they give money to projects like Prešeren .'

    `What about Croatia, do they make good films?'

    `They used to make more than we did, but I don't know if they were better. Now they have the same problems as us with funding. Anything they do now must be about Croatia, of course, about how great it is and how wonderful its leaders are.'

    He sweeps an arm towards the square. `Do you see many flags here?'

    `No.'

    `When you go to Croatia you'll see flags ... flags everywhere! It's a Fascist state, everything's in trouble, the film industry, everything. Soon it will all collapse. It's like Berlin in the thirties.'

    I point out that in thirties Berlin, things were on the up.

    `Yes, well, you know what I mean ... decadent, artificial.'

    He looks sheepish for a moment, then opens the folder and places a dozen sheets of close-typed A4 paper on the table in front of me. `This funding application, it's got a proposal with it, an outline. In English. Would you look at it for me, just to check the English?'

    Eight hours and several bottles of wine later, we emerge from Andrej's pleasant family home accompanied by an actress, a dramaturge and an engineer. The plot of Headline , Andrej's putative new film, rattles around my brain ... every word, every character. I'm stiff and square-eyed, but the moment is not without satisfaction. I may have just made a very minor contribution to Slovenian culture.

* * *

Nataša meets me at the door to their apartment, Andrej Blatnik grinning behind her. In the kitchen of their bright, white home, we eat macadamia nuts from Zimbabwe and drink Slovenian wine.

    `We just came back from Africa,' Nataša tells me. `I was attending a conference in Harare on African women's writing ... it's what I'm writing my PhD on.'

    A young blond boy comes in holding a book from which he barely raises his head. `This is Brin, our son. He's always reading.' Brin shows neither shyness nor interest in the foreign visitor; at seven years old, he's already seen enough of the world to be blasé about everything but books. And there are books everywhere here, or so it seems. One wall of the large sitting room is covered in bookshelves and CDs acquired from around the world.

    `How do you find Slovenia?' Nataša asks.

    `I like it very much,' I answer truthfully. `Slovenes seem cool and efficient but with Mediterranean warmth -- a great combination.'

    Nataša and Andrej both laugh at this image of themselves.

    `And your project? Andrej tells me you' re going to Croatia and Bosnia ... will you be going to Serbia and Montenegro too?'

    `No, but only because I didn't go there in 1978 and this journey's about rediscovery.'

    I explain about 1978 and my present plans. `There are so many things I see and don't understand,' I say. `Like the underlying feeling towards neighbouring countries, Croatia especially.'

    `Partly it's because there are still so many matters unresolved from the Yugoslav era,' Andrej explains.

    'Like the matter of the embassies,' Nataša says. `When the old Yugoslavia collapsed, the embassies went to whoever was ambassador at the time. So if the ambassador was Serb, and many of them were, then the embassy automatically became Serb. The same was true for money and any property across the world.'

    `My father owns a house in Croatia,' Andrej explains, `just south of Portoroz. He built it himself, many years ago. Then our government decided that foreigners couldn't own property here -- isolationism again! -- and the Croats, of course, reciprocated. My father is allowed to keep the house but not to sell it to another Slovene, though I can inherit it. These small issues keep coming up because they're never resolved. They're visible bits of problems which are large and mostly invisible, like the embassies and international finance.'

    `And the Serbs? How do Slovenes feel about them?'

    `The Serbs are "over there" now we don't have a border with them,' Andrej says, `There are relatively few Serbs living in Slovenia today and those that are here mostly consider themselves Slovenian. We've never had many mixed marriages either, though Tito, of course, was a Slovene-Croat. All part of our historical isolationism.'

    `Serbs are usually more fun than Croats though,' Nataša says, `more charismatic and charming.'

    Andrej grimaces.

    `You don't agree?'

    `I just dislike national stereotypes, that's all.'

    Later, I remember that he failed to grimace at my comments on Slovenian coolness and efficiency.

    Unchastened, Nataša says, `The Serbs I know are more fun than Croats.'

    The wine flows as we're joined by Eva Marn, a lawyer who until recently worked drafting international treaties of human rights in Sarajevo and Strasbourg. To help me get a feel for the range of Slovenian culture, Andrej plays a CD of Slovenian nationalist songs from the 1940s, which he says are available through the Catholic Church. The words are mostly a blur, but the sprightly, stamping rhythm reminds me of the `Horst Wessell.'

    `What happened to these people after the war?' I ask.

    `Some went to Argentina, probably with the help of the Church, which hated Communism. Many of them were killed at the end of the war, accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and though some of them undoubtedly did, I think it's now becoming clear that a great many were just anti-Communist.'

    With independence, many of Slovenia's long-buried secrets are coming to light. The matter of the Domobranci, the Slovene home guard which was set up by the Germans to maintain order and fight Communism, remains a source of contention. During the Communist era, the Domobranci were seen simply as Fascists who supported the Nazi invaders. A decade of more-open historical debate suggests that the majority of officers were Slovene nationalists opposed to both Hitler and Communism; squeezed between the two, for many the war ended tragically. Believing that the victorious Communist Partisans were more interested in national domination than liberation, and that they'd stand no chance in defeat, the Domobranci fled into southern Austria in 1945. Most were compelled by the British army to return to Slovenia and Tito's justice. After receiving brief military `trials', over ten thousand were executed, alongside returned Croatian Ustašis, and buried in an unknown number of mass graves around the country.

    `Argentina must have seemed a really good place to be in 1945 if you weren't a Communist,' I say.

    `Which is why so many people went. There's a big Slovene community in Argentina that never really integrated. They had their own schools, churches. After 1991, when we became independent, many wanted to come back to Slovenia and they probably have every right to.'

    `Some of our leading politicians since independence have been from Domobranci families,' Eva says. `It used to be considered an embarrassing heritage, even shameful, but not any more.'

    I ask Eva about her work in Sarajevo.

    She shrugs. `I was working in Strasbourg for the European Commission on Human Rights for a couple of years. When they created a similar institution in Bosnia, I went to Sarajevo to work as an advisor to Bosnian lawyers who were examining human rights violations. It wasn't easy, partly because lawyers had to draw up every document in three different languages -- Bosnian, Serb and Croat. Of course, there's almost no distinction between these languages within Bosnia, and the lawyers would ask me, "How can we make them different?" The same language, spoken in the same country, is being forced into shapes it never had. Mad!'

    `And how was it for you, personally?'

    She looks at me for a moment before replying. `I had nightmares a lot of the time, about drowning and trying to come up for air. When I arrived I was optimistic about what could be done to change things, but that feeling didn't last long. We've been lucky here in this country.'

    `But there's a long way to go too,' Nataša adds. `Slovenia seems to have come out of Yugoslavia smelling good, but there's high unemployment and political cronyism right through government.'

    Eva nods. `I know that if I wanted to advance my career in Slovenia I'd have to choose a political party, but I'm not interested in being part of that Communist legacy. The same goes for religion. The Catholic Church is getting more and more political power, just like in Croatia. Taking sides is becoming very important here but people rarely speak about it openly. Still,' she says, getting up and looking for her jacket, `we are very lucky. When you see how things are in Bosnia and Kosovo, you realise just how lucky.'

Copyright © 2001 Zoë Brân. All rights reserved.