Croatia
A country I have never visited - but which used to be part of Yugoslavia before it descended into a murderous civil war.
Slobodan Milosevic was the driving force behind the terrible campaign ethnic cleansing - both in Kosovo and elsewhere - before he was finally stopped in his tracks by armed intervention from NATO.
The NATO strikes were conducted largely from the air - as was the case in Libya more recently.
But the turning point was Tony Blair's ability to persuade the American president at the time - Bill Clinton - to send in ground troops if the Serbian inspired killing did not stop.
The threat of ground troops finally did the trick - and the old Republic of Yugoslavia became several new independent countries - one of which is Croatia.
I'm told that Croatia is a lovely country - and I know its western border runs down the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea - all the way to the sun-kissed town of Dubrovnik.
The country has a population of around 5 million - slightly less than Scotland's - and its capital - Zagreb - is only a few hundred kilometres east of Venice - if that helps to place things in your mind's eye.
I have only ever met one Croation - Drasen Beslic - who attended a training workshop with me in Bulgaria several years ago - attended by delegates from all over central and eastern Europe.
I acted as one of the trainers/facilitators - and the workshop was all about building social enterprises and partnership working - which took place in a partly finished hotel in the hills above Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.
Anyway it was an amazing few days - though not lucrative in a financial sense - since the trainers and tutors all gave their time for free.
But what an incredible group of people from a whole host of different countries: Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine - and Drasen from Croatia - of course.
What impressed me was their energy and enthusiasm - their determination to make a difference and build a better future for themselves.
So if by any chance your reading this, Drasen - I hope you succeeded - and that our little training workshop in Bulgaria helped send you on your way.
