I’ve just had a fabulous holiday in ex-Yugoslavia; I’d recommend a trip to Croatia and Slovenia to anyone, with the possible exception of people I dislike.
The new-found prosperity in both countries is amazing, given their past of communist stagnation and civil war – even in Slovenia, albeit briefly – as is the scenery. And the mountainous railway journey from Split to Zagreb is simply fabulous, except for people who suffer from motion sickness (such as my girlfriend, who enjoyed the view rather less than I did).
Vaguely relatedly, given that Slovenia is planning to replace its currency with the Euro in January 2007, I’ve written a piece at The Sharpener using economic data to address a couple of bizarre anti-Euro myths.
At roughly the same time, I was attending the Sarajevo Film Festival – and because I was one of the few English-speaking journalists covering it, the VIP treatment was embarrassingly effusive, though I naturally lapped it up (along with the generous hospitality).
It was difficult to forget the war, though – aside from the fact that the famous Holiday Inn (where I was staying) was still pockmarked by bullets and shells, a clear majority of the films I saw at least mentioned it, and quite a few had it as a setting. Not that that's a criticism – just as the 1940s was Britain's cinematic golden age, Balkan filmmaking is enjoying a new lease of life for similar reasons.