Cultural attaché at the French Institute in Ljubljana / French

Is the fact that I have been living in Slovenia for over twelve years and that I am married to a Slovenian woman with whom I have a child sufficient to consider Slovenia my homeland? Definitely not. In particular, because I do not have Slovenian citizenship and if I were to sing the Slovenian National Anthem I would need to improve a stanza or two... However, every autumn I drink apple juice made from apples that I watch grow and that I pick when they are ripe; every winter I sweat together with my neighbours removing the snow around the house, and every summer even though I prefer the Mediterranean Sea of my youth I regularly bathe in the Adriatic Sea in Izola. During the twelve years of my stay in Slovenia I have been to more weddings, births and funerals here than in France during the twenty-five years of my previous life there. I had to hold back tears when I listened to the sad Carinthian poems at the funeral of a man I used to play chess with and who liked my daughter as much as his own children. 

I even became a Slovenian "stric" before I became a French "oncle". Why have I stayed in Slovenia? I would lie if I said because I wanted to. Life has brought me here and the circumstances were such to make me stay. This is the country of my wife and of my daughter –  which also makes it partly mine. As regards the rest, the part of me which is not from here and has stayed in France, I have the impression that the more time has passed the stronger this part has been connected to literature.