The tourist season is now over. The fair-weather residents are long gone, as well. Although there may be several busloads of visitors on the next few weekends, there is hardly anyone in Motovun during the week. Most of the shops are already closed. The last weekend was unusually busy, mainly due to a religious holiday, thus only adding to the present gloom. Streets and squares ring empty under the leaden sky. A trickle of smoke from an occasional chimney is the remaining sign of life. And this is how things will be for some five months until Easter. Christmas and New Year’s will bring small crowds, but only for a week or so. It is thus time to get used once again to this dying town. It is the switch from the tourist season to reality that is most difficult to bear, but it can be mastered in time, especially when one accepts the fact that the switch will get worse from year to year. For even a dying town eventually dies. For good.

Addendum (November 8, 2016)

In spite of the tourist boom that started three or four years ago, and a boom it surely is, the end of the tourist season is as palpable as ever before. And it starts in early November without fail. Motovun was still teeming with visitors last weekend, but this week has started with many a closure. Left and right, all manner of shops, cafés, and restaurants are closing their doors. Tables and chairs are disappearing from streets and squares. By the middle of this month, only a few places will remain open. It is happening so fast that I am surprised anew after thirteen years in the hilltown. Out of the blue, it appears to be bereft of life. What the hell is going on? Doomsday? For better or worse, tourists will come back sooner or later, but quite a few of my friends who were still around when this piece was written are nowhere to be seen any longer. Many are gone never to return, and some are dead and buried. Which makes the title of this piece hard to swallow so many years later. It is a bit too true to life for comfort.