Trafika Europe 5 - Slovenian Interlude

The village of Višnjići, in eastern Slavonia, was now on my conscience, even though I couldn’t have found it on a map. I knew even less about what had happened there, on the night of 13 November 1991, at a time when Dusha and I were already living in Ljubljana. But I felt guilty all the same, and this feeling grew stronger now that I was nearing it.

‘Anything else?’

‘Sorry? Uh, no... no thanks.’

‘Twelve kunas.’

It seemed that my time at the Javori Restaurant had come to an end.

*

This was the first time I had come to the country of my birth and also my first contact with Croatian citizens, if you set aside the encounters on the streets of Ljubljana, and the customs officer in the nice light blue uniform at border control. I thought of Nadia, whom I hadn’t even managed to inform of my departure. When I set off, she was still in sweet dreamland, and I couldn’t bring myself to wake her. I would have been able to concoct a story that would plausibly

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