By Tomislav Z. Longinović

Winters are short and misty in the shadow of Old Venice, on the eastern shore of that northernmost reach of the Mediterranean, as starlings emerge from their wooded shelters to usurp the summer empire of seagulls. The skies grow brown upon the arrival of their undulating clouds, tracing the path to the islands across the way from the city of Rovigno. That is the city I have come to love from the earliest of my days, as my father bought a tiny place on a second floor of an ancient building that served as a quarantine for those returning to Venice from their distant merchant routes on the Silk Way. It is currently known as Rovinj, a puzzle to sound out for the visitors from afar, both names begotten from the Latin Ruvinium, as its historical origin leads to Mons Rubineus, a rock upon which its inhabitants settled in ancient times. 

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