Motovun comes to my mind out of the blue. “My mother’s birthday,” I realize at once. Indeed, the hilltown has not crossed my mind for days. Suddenly, I see my parents. We are in England. They seem to have just arrived from Belgrade, and I tell them about my life in Istria, as though it is about my life in the States. I tell them about people, politics, landscape, architecture, tourism… I talk and talk, and they just listen. “Horrible,” my mother sighs tearfully from time to time. “Idiot,” my father sniggers every now and then. As I keep going on and on about everything I have experienced on the peninsula both of them would call their own, I feel elated by my parents’ verdict. They do not agree, that is. They do not agree at all, as a matter of fact. To my surprise, my father’s side gives me so much more comfort than my mother’s. “Idiot,” I repeat after my father. “Horrible,” I brush my mother’s reaction out of my mind. And Motovun comes out ahead. Slightly, but still ahead.