`We never felt we belonged to eastern Europe," says a diplomat. "We are not a part of the Balkans. We have always looked West." And heaven help you if you confuse them with Slovakia. It is to Austria - meaning Carinthia, the medieval duchy - that Slovenians trace their historic nationhood; Austria by which Slovenians judge success or failure.
Ten years after the fall of the Wall and nine since 89 per cent of the electorate voted for independence from Yugoslavia, they have not become Austria overnight. But Slovenia is a model of gradual transition, a solid, prosperous little state of under two million people, peacefully sharing its borders with Italy, Austria, Hungary, Croatia and the sea.
"I'm glad I belong to the generations who were able to use the smile of history," says Lojze Peterle, the first prime minister of the first democratic parliament. "If you can find a better place in the world to live, I'd like to hear about it", says a young Irish accountant, seconded to a bank there six years ago and now putting down roots. "Here, even the beggars are charming."
Slow and steady might be the national mantra. The prime minister, Dr Janez Drnovsek, has been in office for the past 71/2 years and his coalition holds a comfortable 52 of the 90 National Assembly seats. President Milan Kucan, once the country's communist party leader, is a much loved national hero, the man who led the first Yugoslav republic to independence with minimal bloodshed.
Even their 10-day war with Milosevic's Yugoslavia and Europe's third strongest army, was a model. Native cunning and their Western friends kept casualties to a minimum and they never took public support for granted.
Before the final showdown, enormous stores of basic foodstuffs and supplies had been acquired. "It was a psychological thing," says Lojze Peterle. "No one knew how things would develop and we were determined that not one store would run out of things like bread, oil, sugar and so cause the public to lose confidence." They had even printed their own provisional bank notes.
To be sure, the absence of a seething Serb - or any other - minority was of enormous help. "And we were so lucky not have a `glorious' history," says Dr Joze Mencinger, economics professor and rector of the University of Ljubliana, "unlike the Croats, claiming to be the oldest nation in the world, or the Serbs with their endless references to some battle or other back in thirteen hundred and something . . .
"We were, and are, more pragmatic, more selfish, more rational. This was a developed part of the world. That this was a socialist country is not so important as what happened 200 years ago."
This was when Slovenia, for 600 years a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was ruled by Empress Maria Theresa. "She introduced education, administration, everything . . . And so, we developed Austrian habits."
In fact, his theory is that the progress or lack of it in many former communist states may be traced back to membership or not of that empire, down even to which end of it they inhabited. By this theory, those who laboured under the Turks were always going to be struggling.
Whatever the historical factors, by 1989 Slovenia was a country that had undergone 60 years of socialist rule, endured crushing austerity measures in the post-Tito chaos, and been forced by Belgrade - in the minds of many - to subsidise inefficient loss-makers all over the federation. While comprising only 8 per cent of the Yugoslav population, they had produced 20 per cent of the output. Their per-capita GDP, for example, was seven times that of Kosovo.
Still, by communist bloc standards, they had had astonishing freedoms. Once the severe repression of the 1950s and '60s had eased, they could travel (providing they had the money), had sufficient food in some variety, had some degree of religious freedom. Sure, dissidents were severely frowned upon and freedom of expression was limited, but when petitions were taken up against nuclear energy or the death penalty or against Article 133 which limited free speech, they were actually published.
Dr Mencinger even disputes the exploitation allegation, arguing that Belgrade dealt quite decently with Slovenia, giving it a significant degree of freedom and providing a market for 60 per cent of the latter's exports.
Because of this freedom, the country had in a small way been experimenting with market reform for many years, so that when it broke away finally and lost 60 per cent of its foreign markets overnight, there was no national despair. Furthermore, Tito's economic model of social ownership as opposed to the communist state-ownership mo del - a kind of "pinky communism", in Dr Mencinger's words - had left a legacy of devolved decision-making and higher living standards.
Tito's model had another beneficial legacy. When privatisation was set in train, social ownership meant that citizens over 18 got a small bonanza, £2,000£3,000, to spend or reinvest, when "their" companies were sold.
An old Western gripe - in fact, its only real gripe - relates to the pace of development, but Slovenia has shown that it will not bow the knee.
In the early 1990s, Dr Mencinger, as minister responsible for privatisation, resigned after too many quarrels with Americans looking for "shock therapy".
"My view was that you cannot invent `owners' overnight and I would say privatisation has been a big disaster in eastern Europe. The only thing these people seemed to be considering was distribution when there was nothing to be distributed. I could never understand why they could not distinguish between Mongolia and Slovenia."
Slovenia resisted the advice of the IMF, of the World Bank and the other foreign institutions which claimed that Slovenia just didn't like foreign capital. Dr Mencinger believes his view has been vindicated. Gradualism has worked. Maybe worked too well. "Maybe they haven't been shocked enough," he says wryly.
Nowadays, the national average wage is nearly double Croatia's, the next highest in the region, and three times that of the Czech Republic (though still, whisper it, half Austria's). Unemployment is at 8 per cent. GDP per capita is a fifth higher than the Czech Republic, the next highest in the region.
Slovenians go about their business with a quiet, solid confidence. They have a secure national identity, language and culture and know how to enjoy themselves. They will do whatever is required of them to make it into the EU but will not tug the forelock.
Of course, there are concerns and disappointments. Truckers, nurses, sales assistants have been agitating. As in the rest of the region, many people have a second job. Employers are offering contracts rather than full-time jobs with benefits. Crime and drug abuse have risen as in every other country, if not to the same degree.
"I'm a socialist in this new era although I used to be called a `rightist'," says Dr Mencinger, "and it seems that no one cares for labour or for people now. I am really afraid for the future, afraid about this notion of the `one-third society' where one-third is useful and two-thirds completely useless."
Both he and Lojze Peterle refer to the fact that old communist faces still reign, that no one has tried to bring them to account, not even to say "sorry".
The bottom line is, however, that most Slovenians given a choice would make exactly the same choices again. In that, they may well be unique.