In 1956, on the Brioni Islands, Tito (Yugoslavia), Nasser (Egypt) and Nehru (India) signed the Brioni Declaration that was the founding document of the Non Aligned Movement.

This movement in few decades grew into the largest political international organisation in the mankind history, after the United Nations. Brioni were the meeting place for the World politicians in the second half of the 20th century.

Today in Istria you can feel the rich heritage of the different epochs. Many people lived in Istria and left for the future generations something that characterized their time.

There are lot of efforts today to bring back Istrian splendour of the past times and people from all over the World come to numerous festivals and events. Over the years also Smrikva Bowl has become one of those. Istria is a place where people can learn about each other’s cultures and customs.

In our Smrikva Bowl guest book, one girl, Sara Sostar, named Smrikva Bowl as a “Festival” trying to describe how much she enjoyed the event. I would like to use this term as well and I hope that for every Smrikva Bowl player and each Smrikve guest it will remain somewhere in their hearts as a nice memory of this beautiful land and the hope is that they will come back again.

Several years ago we started to nominate every Smrikva Bowl player the Smrikva Bowl Ambassador. In 2005 we started also a tradition of planting an Olive tree that is today a part of the Ambassador’s nomination ceremony.

The selected Olive tree needs to be older than the oldest man living on the Earth today and during the ceremony every Ambassador puts a tiny piece of land close to the root of the Olive tree and says his or her name. In this way the tree gets the name and a piece of soul of each Ambassador.

The Olive tree is a symbol of peace, while the age of the tree is a symbol of intergenerational responsibility. Every person is born without knowing anything about life on this Earth and it is responsibility of every generation to understand and to learn to preserve all that each of us is born with.

There is an olive tree on the Brioni islands that is almost 1700 years old. It was planted at the beginning of the IVth century. With its age it testifies to passage of a long period of time and to a lot of different people that walked in this area in the last centuries.

Many rulers have changed but the tree remains the same. Intergenerational responsibility is needed to enjoy the beauty of life, the sunsets and the seasons of the Earth.

I hope you could imagine the taste of Smrikve wine and the warmth of our fireplace and hope you will visit some places mentioned in the book and enjoy some of many events that take place throughout the year in Istria.