Together with their spouses, a bunch of my closest colleagues from the Urban Planning Institute of Slovenia in Ljubljana, where I worked from 1975 to 1979, visit me in Motovun about once a year. As it happens, they are great cooks all. Every time we get together, we have a big feast. Meta Blejec, Jože Dekleva, Lojze Peterle, and Smilja Repič came yesterday for another bash. Lojze came without his wife and slept over, so that he could hike around Istria today. All of these people have done pretty well in the meanwhile, but Lojze’s path since my departure from Ljubljana has been the most spectacular. He was the first prime minister of Slovenia from 1990 to 1994. Although he lost the presidential elections last year, he has been a member of the European Parliament since 2004. The most fascinating thing about Lojze is that one would never be able to guess any of this from his behavior. He has remained as unpretentious as when I first met him. Whenever I would introduce him to people in Motovun, he would point at me and crack a small smile: “He used to be my boss.”