The Italian city of Trieste has always had its own particular history. From its Austro-Hungarian and Slovenian influences, to its proximity to the Croatian border, its people have enjoyed a special status. At the end of the 19th Century, Trieste had more Slovenian inhabitants than Slovenia's capital of Ljubljana and at the start of the 20th, great luminaries and intellectuals like James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmund Freud, Zofka Kveder, Dragotin Kette, Ivan Cankar, Scipio Slataper, and Umberto Saba frequented the bustling cosmopolitan city.

To me, it has always been a city with a foot deeply planted in its Italian roots yet the other striding towards its Eastern European culture. A bridge city overlooking a port, filled with people of different ethnicities and speaking several languages and dialects. A utopia for the perfect world, a place where everyone truly, and mostly could get along. And have gotten along.

We have so much to learn from the city of Trieste these days.