Love on the edge of civilisation

Stop for a moment ‘at the edge of civilisation‘. It was thus named by the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer in his novel ‘Die Wasserfälle von Slunj’ (‘The Waterfalls of Slunj’) in 1963. The fictitious married couple whom the author placed in Slunj runs to the edge of the civilisation disappointed by the alienated life lived in Vienna at the end of the 19^th century. They came to Slunj for their honeymoon and admired the beauty of the Rastoke waterfalls. Doderer is a superb storyteller and a great critic of his time, with five nominations for the Nobel Prize that he did not win. He put Slunj and Rastoke, at the time of the construction of the novel are recognisable as a part of a former military frontier in defence against the Ottomans, into an exotic area on the edge of civilisation despite the distance to Vienna being only 450 kilometres. Therefore, before you go any further, allow us to establish that the world is getting smaller, while the beauty of the Rastoke waterfalls does not become less at all. It only grows.