Right in the heart of Zagreb, this evening we bumped into Lojze Peterle. The last time we saw him was late last summer, if I remember correctly. He even slept over in my house in Motovun before continuing on foot in the direction of Slovenia. “What are you doing here?” I asked. He said a few words about his meetings with the Croatian political elite, but then he pointed at a bagful of books that he had just acquired down the street. “My wife mustn’t know,” he chuckled. “Our place is brimming over with books.” We went for dinner at our favorite restaurant, where he opted for a glass of lemonade only. “Just imagine a former prime minister of Croatia having problems with books,” I told my beloved when we parted our ways. “First, the books,” I continued. “Then, the space.” Indeed, leading politicians in this country would quickly move from any old apartment to a sumptuous villa, but Lojze and his family are still in the same apartment he got well before Slovenia’s independence.