My beloved and I had our dinner right next to the table where a Croatian politician of great renown had his dinner with a small retinue. Until the last elections, he was among the top three potentates in the country. Still in the parliament, he has fallen far behind in the last year or so. Now he is but a shadow of his former self. Anyhow, it was strange sitting so close to a politician of his ilk. Short and stout, endowed with a round head and a billowing belly, he looked like any old peasant. Which is perhaps why he was so popular in the first place. Peasants trust their own kind first and foremost. Come to think of it, this is how they have survived to this day. Without them, Croatia would have remained but a distant dream. It was the peasants who endured all the indignities of history to eventually become their own masters. And the politician at the neighboring table said it all with his round head and a billowing belly. Peasantry incarnated, to put it in a nutshell.

Addendum (November 12, 2016)

For the record, the politician in question was Vladimir Šeks. A lawyer by training, he was among the founders of the Croatian Democratic Union, one of the leading parties in the country since independence. Also, he was a member of the Croatian Parliament since independence. And so on, and so forth. As for his retinue, neither my beloved nor I could recognize anyone else. Alas, both of us are pretty innocent of Croatian politics. But we can still spot a peasant in a jiffy.