It was nearly eleven o’clock this morning when there was a power failure in Motovun. A couple of hours later, there is no power still. God only knows when it will come back. My beloved and I just returned from a walk around the hilltown, and it was clear that many a tourist was lost under the circumstances. No coffee or tea. No pizza or pasta with meat, either. It did not take me long to remember Darko Lorencin, the Croatian minister of tourism who hails from Istria. He got into the government through the Istrian Democratic Assembly, the leading party on the peninsula. I came across an article in a leading Istrian newspaper a few days ago in which he lauded himself for all the money that had been poured into tourism in the region this year. According to Lorencin, more than seventy-million euros was invested into the only economic sector that is still humming in these parts. Electricity came to my mind at once. By way of proof, today’s power outage shows the vital connection between electricity and tourism that seems to be beyond Istrian politicians, the minister of tourism included. Water supply is another such mystery for them all. And so are roads and parking facilities. It is the infrastructure, stupid! All this is way beyond the Istrian politicians, though. The same holds for all other politicians in Croatia, it goes without saying. Tourism, schmourism.