I went to Croatia in search of home, the place where my heart belonged. It was a quest to find out who I was, where I’d come from and identify with who I was on a deeper level.Six months later I bought a property, abandoned at the start of the 1991 war, and embarked upon a different life with my husband in what we hoped was utopia.In the beginning, life among the olives groves and grapevines as we renovated our stone house, was idyllic. We enjoyed the exotic local food and wine. We made good friends and met quirky local characters. But before long locals start to question why we were there and resentment against us set in. Corruption and bribery were commonplace and when I fought back I found myself trapped in a nationalist bureaucratic system from which there was no escape. Whenever we tried to renew the paperwork necessary to legalise our stay, the rules were altered at the whim of belligerent communist-like officials, whose acceptance of Croatia’s split from Yugoslavia more than twenty years ago, was doubtful. Should we stay, or should we go?