(December 2011) Remember Slovenia? It used to be part of what we now call “the former Yugoslavia.” Unlike Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, Slovenia did not lay itself waste, after partition, with ethnic warfare. Perhaps that is why we hear so little about it; peaceful, prosperous and progressive, it is a sort of Slavic Sweden. It lies just south of Austria and east of northern Italy and is about the size of New Jersey. Its landscape is largely Alpine, with a snippet of seacoast on the Adriatic. It is home to 2 million people and to a species of blind subterranean salamander that can go 10 years without eating. According to the CIA, which keeps track of such things, Slovenia “has become a model of economic success and stability for the region. With the highest per capita [gross domestic product] in Central Europe, Slovenia has excellent infrastructure, a well-educated work force and a strategic location between the Balkans and Western Europe.”
And it has Pipistrel.
