LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — To be Slovenian is to be in the largest high school class ever. It is to be at a small concert venue for a one-hit-wonder band, singing unknown deep cuts with the only other hundred people who care. It is as though your neighborhood stretches across eight thousand square miles, and you know all your neighbors, and you actually like them, or at least share a comforting sense of familiarity with them. It is to feel closeness without needing the usual intimacy.



I realize this not even an hour after landing here, some time after a returning vacationer named Jan offered me a ride into the city. We had sat next to each other on the plane, talking for much of the flight; him returning from an early September vacation in Istanbul, me on the final flight leg en route from Dallas. Then, together with a friend of his, we continue chatting during the half-hour drive. When I mention my plans to meet two Slovenians the following morning, Jan stops me and asks for...