LUCKY CROATIA (December 18, 2012)
As I am sitting in the Kolding Caffe, I cannot but see the Croatian newspapers a fellow sitting next to me is reading. “There Are Still Less of Us,” the front cover blares. The results of the 2011 census are apparently out. “A city the size of Rijeka has gone missing since 2001,” I read on the next page, where the census results are discussed in some detail. Graphs comparing the last two censuses are all over the pages. Croatia keeps shrinking, indeed. And now I know by exactly how much. By the next census ten years from now, a city the size of Split will have gone missing, I calculate in my mind. Would that the world census headed the same way by 2021. The calamities of climate change would be so much easier to endure. Lucky Croatia, I shake my head wearily.