Nebojša Popov and I go a long way back. About ten years my senior, he was prominent in the student uprising in Belgrade in 1968. Soon afterwards he lost his job at the University of Belgrade together with a bunch of other professors who got too close to the students. We were quite close in the 1970s, when we both attended meetings of hopeful rebels close to Zagreb. Anyhow, a couple of years ago we met in Motovun quite by chance. He told me that he was still editing a newspaper in Belgrade, as well as that it would be great if I would contribute something about the student uprising in time for its fortieth anniversary last year.

This is what I did, and Republika published a collection of my pieces about a year ago. I now receive the newspaper regularly. Each issue is embellished with interesting pictures. It was paintings by James Whistler in September and those by Diego Velásquez in October. The November issue is embellished by color photographs by a certain Vera Vujošević. “Istria,” I mumbled to myself as soon as I opened the newspaper. Most of the fourteen photographs in this issue are of buildings with bright façades from coastal towns like Rovinj, Poreč, and Labin. I can imagine that such pictures strike many a reader in Belgrade as rather exotic after the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia.

As I was going through the November issue this morning, dipping into several articles on my way, I focused on the color photographs once again. “Venice,” I mumbled to myself all of a sudden. Indeed, every single building pictured in Republika looks as though it comes straight from the Serene Republic itself. This is hardly surprising, for much of coastal Istria had been in Venetian hands for centuries, but I was still taken aback by my discovery. It was a real discovery, too. To wit, Istria minus Venice would be like… Well, it would be like a cultural desert, as a matter of fact.