To my surprise, Mirko Gabler knocked at my door a couple of days ago. He and his wife, Anne, are rarely in Motovun this time of year. As it turned out, he came for a quick visit only, and we had a nice chat over a few glasses of wine. Soon enough we came upon the economic crisis, which is likely to affect him in the States much more palpably than it will affect me in Croatia. “But I don’t scare easily,” he laughed, “for I still remember all the hoopla about the nuclear holocaust when I was a kid.” He grew up in Czechoslovakia. “Funny,” I jumped in, “I don’t remember much of that in Yugoslavia.” In fact, I remember some serious talk about nuclear war only in the army. “Well,” he nodded, “Yugoslavia was kind of out of the two blocs at the time, but we were on the front line.” Ever since Mirko’s visit, I keep returning to our talk. Is it possible that I simply forgot all the scaremongering when I was a kid? Or is it possible that we in Yugoslavia felt quite secure in our non-aligned status, as though nuclear war was none of our business?