SLOVENIA where I was born
I was born in Koper, the main port of Slovenia and when I was 5 years old my family moved to Trieste just 20 km away like many other Istrians and Dalmatians (around 300,000) who decided to return to live in Italy after ten years of blockade of the borders and after the London Memorandum of 1954 gave us the possibility of opting for reunification with the motherland.
As a young man and even an adult I returned to Slovenia many times, for holidays or to visit relatives who still live in Istria. More often in Croatia since most of Istria belongs to this state and has many resorts, campsites and beaches compared to the north coast owned by Slovenia which only has the beach of Portorož and another opposite.
In Slovenia I rather went on excursions to its beautiful mountains and lakes which in Trieste, a seaside city, are considered very precious and coveted.
Slovenia has only two million inhabitants, its people are very civilized, hardworking and orderly and having now a good life standard while at the time of Tito's communism they were much poorer even if they were forced together with Croatia to support the other republics of Yugoslavia and this is essentially why, when a serious economic crisis arose, in the 90s they demanded and obtained independence after about ten days of skirmishes with the Serbian military who in the end preferred to let Slovenia go also because neighboring Austria and Italy had deployed their troops at the borders.
Since then, Slovenia has made gigantic strides in terms of growth and development while we have remained stagnant As an Istrian of Italian culture and language, I have always been conflicted about Yugoslavia and now Slovenia since we had to leave, almost forced by the conditions that Tito's regime had imposed on us, which carried out the first ethnic cleansing of the country with us.
However, since my parents were Italianized Croatian Istrians and my surname is Croatian, I didn't feel like going against the country where my roots were,
Finally, there is another reason that made them less unpleasant to me and that is the fact that first Yugoslavia and then Slovenia and Croatia, with some exceptions, had a lot of respect for nature and the sea while unfortunately the same did not generally happen in Italy, in short my Istria, because I essentially consider myself an Istrian in exile, has remained beautiful and livable with all the tourist facilities that have never been a pouring of concrete.
Lately I saw a nice video about Slovenia on Youtube by my favorite travel blogger, the Mexican Alan por el mundo or AxM (here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GNM1FdT9_g) that after having visited countless countries on the planet, he stated that Slovenia is one of the most beautiful he has encountered and if you go to visit it you will realize it or the photos I include in this post will be enough for you to understand it
As a young man and even an adult I returned to Slovenia many times, for holidays or to visit relatives who still live in Istria. More often in Croatia since most of Istria belongs to this state and has many resorts, campsites and beaches compared to the north coast owned by Slovenia which only has the beach of Portorož and another opposite.
In Slovenia I rather went on excursions to its beautiful mountains and lakes which in Trieste, a seaside city, are considered very precious and coveted.
Slovenia has only two million inhabitants, its people are very civilized, hardworking and orderly and having now a good life standard while at the time of Tito's communism they were much poorer even if they were forced together with Croatia to support the other republics of Yugoslavia and this is essentially why, when a serious economic crisis arose, in the 90s they demanded and obtained independence after about ten days of skirmishes with the Serbian military who in the end preferred to let Slovenia go also because neighboring Austria and Italy had deployed their troops at the borders.
Since then, Slovenia has made gigantic strides in terms of growth and development while we have remained stagnant As an Istrian of Italian culture and language, I have always been conflicted about Yugoslavia and now Slovenia since we had to leave, almost forced by the conditions that Tito's regime had imposed on us, which carried out the first ethnic cleansing of the country with us.
However, since my parents were Italianized Croatian Istrians and my surname is Croatian, I didn't feel like going against the country where my roots were,
Finally, there is another reason that made them less unpleasant to me and that is the fact that first Yugoslavia and then Slovenia and Croatia, with some exceptions, had a lot of respect for nature and the sea while unfortunately the same did not generally happen in Italy, in short my Istria, because I essentially consider myself an Istrian in exile, has remained beautiful and livable with all the tourist facilities that have never been a pouring of concrete.
Lately I saw a nice video about Slovenia on Youtube by my favorite travel blogger, the Mexican Alan por el mundo or AxM (here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GNM1FdT9_g) that after having visited countless countries on the planet, he stated that Slovenia is one of the most beautiful he has encountered and if you go to visit it you will realize it or the photos I include in this post will be enough for you to understand it
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