Mr. Cirami has journeyed to Serbia twice since 2009, but he has been vacationing in the Balkans since 2001, attracted by the radical change transforming the ethnically mixed region.

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Though Slav Macedonians have a long-running feud with Greece over their use of the name Macedonia, they now find themselves aligned with Greeks (and Serbs) in their fear of Albanian nationalism, whose emergence as a new factor in the Balkans has gathered pace since the failure of Serbia's murderous drive to crush the Kosovars.

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In two years it will be a century since the Turks were finally ejected from the Balkans after more than 500 years.

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Since then, successive waves of Muslims have left the Balkans and resettled in Turkey.

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So, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have former communist countries in the Caucasus and the western Balkans.

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