I spent last winter in Trieste, Italy–the city where I lived for part of my childhood and where I attended grade school. Trieste is located on the Adriatic Sea, a little over 100 miles east of Venice, on the border with Slovenia. It has a population of approximately 240,000 inhabitants in the city proper and a total of 410,000, including the metropolitan area.

Almost 30 percent of the population is comprised of senior citizens: nearly 8 percent of its residents are foreign born–mostly Slovene and Eastern Europeans who speak their language along with Italian, and the Triestine dialect, which is derived from the Venetian dialect.