The end of slavicity

I think that's the right word: slavicity. I would be leaving the Balkans and going from a Slavic culture to a Latin one. Before crossing the border into Trieste, Italy, I had put away my Slovenian guide book and taken out the Italian one. In the bus I changed memory cards to the Italian one (I wanted to group pictures by country). The last picture on it was taken in Trani, in Apuglia, just under 7 weeks ago. What a great time it had been. But on reflection I probably could have done Croatia in about 3 weeks and Slovenia in 10-12 days. Or I could have covered more ground in the time I had. I just couldn't predict ahead of time how much of interest there was to me. Ironically a car would have been useful in Slovenia, a small country, because the small population meant that transport services were sparse.


In fact, I already had a foretaste of Italian culture in Istria, which retained considerable Italian influence. I had noticed how people in the street would say ciao ciao. But I would probably not notice much Slavic influence in Trieste. If anything, the minor influence would be Austrian, for historical reasons.


Slovenia was 16 yesterday. I had expected fireworks or something in Piran to celebrate. Perhaps it was only in Ljubljana. They got their independence cheaply compared to the other unfortunate former Yugoslavian states. Now they were in the EU and making up for lost time. And today marked 2 months into my trip. Yes, I admit it, I was starting to get homesick. I missed familiar food, I missed my music. But there were still a few more Italian cities to intrigue me yet.