Trieste

A side trip from my usual Balkan haunts to visit the fascinating city of Trieste (or Trst in the south slavic languages), and to meet up with some colleagues there doing interesting work on multiculturalism, 1980s Yugoslavia, and Italian emigration from Istria after the second world war.

Very good first impressions (although the bora is blowing so it's a bit windy...), although you'd be hard pressed to swing a cat in the hotel room I've been assigned. Oh well, it's for one night only.

And at least today we don't have a hotel reception like yesterday's.... You really need to look at my backblip for yesterday to appreciate its true horridness.

Wandering past these houses put me in mind of the old cosmopolitan days of Trieste, as the main mediterranean port of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Or maybe Mr Joyce would swing by here, looking for the first coffee/beer (delete as appropriate) of the day. Who knows?