Trieste is located in Italy, but it is the southernmost city in Northern Europe and has many peculiarities: the Bora, a freezing wind that literally sweeps pedestrians off the streets every April. Miramare Castle, built for Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg, was later inhabited solely by his wife Carlotta after his early death, which drove her to madness. There is the Risiera di San Sabba, an old rice warehouse that the Nazis used as a detention camp for Italian Jews and then operated as the only concentration camp on Italian soil. The beach and swimming in the sea, which are part of everyday city life here, unlike in Genoa, Naples, or Palermo. And finally, "Little Istria," the neighborhood where the author's grandmother has lived since her escape from Yugoslavia sixty years ago.