Quite by chance, today I met with Danilo Balaban in one of my favorite watering holes in Zagreb. He joined me at my table, and we had a good talk. A photographer of renown, he has a house in Brkač within sight of Motovun, and he has an apartment in the Croatian capital. We know each other for about ten years. Like me, he goes back and forth all the time. As we were talking about our double lives, which combine the best features of the two places, he kept returning to the solace he gets from so many people of worth he knows. “Out of seven-billion people on the planet,” he grinned, “there are many worth one’s while.” I nodded in agreement, but I was a bit more guarded. “Indeed,” I said at some point, “there must be at least ten of them.” Seeing that he was a bit surprised, I jacked up my numbers: “There are perhaps a hundred or even a thousand of people worth knowing!” He frowned. “But I know so many of them already,” he protested in the end. We left it at that, but it was clear that our assessments were quite far apart. Before Danilo got up to leave, we agreed to meet in Motovun, where we are both about to return for another stint. Forever in search of people worth the trouble.