A former correspondent who left her heart on the Una in the war days of 1991, and vowed to come back and do something useful to help pick up the pieces. I have been luring curious, mind-open, sensitive visitors to the banks of the most beautiful river in the world, the emerald Una, since 2001.

The Una valley has been the frontier of the east-west encounter and conflict for more than 3000 years. When I came here for the first time, it was literally under the bombs, in the summer of 1991. At the time I was a young correspondent for an Italian chain of daily newspapers. The beauty of the region stole my heart, in the heat of the tragedy, and I made a vow that I will be back, "when all this is over", to help pick up the pieces and do something useful. Writing was not enough, I felt so powerless to stop the tragedy that was unfolding under my eyes. And come back I did, nine years later. Three more years and I moved to Bihać, Bosnia. I have been here ever since, toiling along in very difficult years for a struggling country. "I am not a tour operator, I am a journalist who is taking the readers into the story".