Borders have always been flexible affairs in Slovenia. The town of Kobarid, better known to readers of Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms as Caporetto, snuggles in the Julian Alps in the country's westernmost region. But as our guide explains, the same district has also been the easternmost, the northernmost and the southernmost corner of the various other countries it has belonged to this century. No wonder people confuse the place with Slovakia, I tell myself.
Slovenia, in its latest incarnation at least, is one of Europe's youngest nations. In 1990 a referendum registered overwhelming support for independence in what had always been the most prosperous and un-Balkan of the former Yugoslav republics. The following year a nervous Belgrade sent in the tanks, expecting Slovenian resistance to crumble. It didn't. To everyone's surprise the federal army pulled out 10 days and 66 deaths later, and within 18 months, Slovenia was a sovereign state.
Along with 30 or so other poets from all over Europe, I have come as a guest of the Days of Poetry and Wine Festival. Our first port of call is the colourful capital, Ljubljana, whose name means "beloved" in Slovene. A statue of 19th-century poet and national hero, France Preseren, commands the city's central square, set among an imposing Franciscan church and elegant Secessionist and Art Nouveau facades. ze Plecnik (1872-1957), possibly the best-known of all Slovenes. Walking around the city and admiring his work, on the National and University Library, the Tivoli Park, and the churches of St Francis in ikasp and St Michael on the Marsh, I find myself wondering how much of city's striking architecture this eclectic genius did not design.
The real business of the week, is to take place further west, and one short coach-ride later, we are in the village of Medana on the Italian border. Here local winegrower, Aleks Klinec, and the poetry-loving villagers have prepared a punishing schedule of excursions, wine-tastings and readings for their visitors.
As we will discover in the next few days, Slovenia is a country of remarkable contrasts: an hour's drive from Medana will bring you to the Adriatic coast (Slovenia has a narrow coastline and two principal resorts, Piran and Koper) or the Alps, where we marvel at the mountain gullies and crystalline streams of the Soca valley.
Best of all are the evening readings in the villa of turn-of-the-century Medana poet, Alojz Gradnik. From now on I'll be insisting on torchlight and rasping cicadas at all my readings, I tell myself. The poets read their work in the original, with Slovene and (where necessary) English translations supplied too; a babel of tongues, from Georgian to Hungarian, Greek and Estonian fills the warm night air. I commit the mild heresy of reading a poem about beer, culminating in the question "What's a poem if not a message in a bottle?" Judging from the number of Aleks's vintages uncorked nightly, I'm not the only one asking myself this question.
Having extricated itself so deftly from the last Balkan war, Slovenia is already looking forward to full EU membership. Living at the conflux of so many other cultures - Italian, Austrian, Croatian, Hungarian - Slovenes are already exemplary Europeans. Despite its prosperity, for the moment at least, it remains an inexpensive country (Austrians are forever crossing the border to have their teeth seen to). But bring your own reading material: Slovenian books are outrageously expensive.
Visitors attempting to grapple with the language might want to pack a few vowels too, given their absence from words like trg (square), vrh (summit) and crv (worm). Those in need of a good Italian dose of vowel replenishment, however, have only to slip across the border to nearby Trst (Trieste). Italian, German and English are also widely spoken. Misunderstandings will inevitably occur, of course. "Here are your prospects", a guide announces to me at one point. Never having had any before, I snap them up. Imagine my disappointment when they turn out to be glossy tourist brochures.
