"You've been in Slovenia on business? Just tell me where that is." He said it was the country to the east of Trieste, formerly of Yugoslavia. Right. What impressed him most? Well, not necessarily in this order, the cherries, the birds and the bears, of which latter he saw none.
The cherries alone made the journey for him (that is, leaving aside his important business.) In the market in Ljubljana there were tables with mounds of the fruit, each mound a subtly different shade. He was encouraged to taste them all. He did so and was full even before he bought any. (And he did bring a lot home.) He and his party were taken to a castle in the middle of the river Krka close to the border with Croatia.
Everywhere cherry trees. "An incredibly peaceful, prosperous, rural idyll. Hard to believe that not far away atrocities had taken place. "On the way to the airport he was the only passenger and sat be side the driver. He was suddenly excited to see huge birds in the sky over them. The driver, Alex, couldn't understand what the fuss was about. They were as common, probably to him, as magpies in Ireland. They were buzzards. (Our travelling friend checked them in his books on return.)
But bears. Now there was really something. Alex said that only one person had been savaged in the last year, and it was often a case of a mother bear protecting her young. He had grown up in a part of Slovenia where he would see bears every week. His father had been a forester. And this wasn't in the long, long ago, for Alex was only about 25 years old.
The bears are still around, and the Minister for Health had told a dinner, the night before, which our travelling friend had attended, that Slovenia had given France one of its bears. For France wants to keep the bear population in the Pyrenees going. Pity the Slovenes couldn't have risen to a couple. In The Greed Book of Poetry, Ivo Mosley, the compiler, gives this short gem by lshmael Reed, an American contemporary.
Today I feel bearish
I've just climbed out of
A stream with a jerking
Trout in my paw
Anyone who messes with
Me today will be hugged
And dispatched.