While I was selecting pieces for the book about my “return” to Istria, I searched my Residua on the World Wide Web. The first keywords I used were toponyms: Istria, Krk, Pazin, Rijeka, Trieste… But tell anyone here that Rijeka and Trieste are part of this peninsula, and they will most likely look at you incredulously. Some of them will give you all kinds of reasons for exclusion of the two cities, all of them spurious. Of the three cities that describe the Istrian triangle, they will accept only Pula at its southern tip, although most of the Istrians have ended up by migrating to Rijeka and Trieste, located at the eastern and western tips of the triangle. For better or worse, the narrow definition of this region is true to the character of Istrian people, however. My broad definition, even if correct, only goes to show that I grew up in Belgrade.

Addendum I (February 5, 2004)

Try as I may, I cannot persuade anyone I meet in Istria in the virtues of my broad definition of the peninsula. All the reasons they give me are spurious, but they are unassailable nevertheless. At the risk of flaunting my cultural origins, I am forced to coin a new geopolitical term that fits my perception of my new world: Greater Istria.

Addendum II (November 28, 2015)

Over the years, I have stopped mentioning Greater Istria to anyone from the peninsula. And I have also stopped thinking about it. As it turns out, the term appears in the first addendum to this piece and nowhere else in my magnum opus. It smacks of Serbian expansionism, it goes without saying. Although I think of the Istrian triangle in cultural rather than political terms, the recent wars are too close for comfort for many people in these parts. Every mention of Italy brings back memories of World War II, which ended seventy years ago. The same is true of Slovenia and the war of independence, which was brought to a close only twenty years ago. In this sense, even the rest of Croatia is mired in nasty history. Rijeka is thus far apart from Istria. Mountain Učka is the vaunted border between the two, and most Istrians take it pretty seriously. The rest of Croatia is forever over yonder. For all these reasons, my broad definition of the peninsula is best forgotten. After so many years in Motovun, it rarely crosses my mind, either. Whence this carefully concocted addendum, of course.