It's long been a frustration of mine that I know so little of my family history on my father's side; this was a man who was taciturn under the best of circumstances, and on most occasions was harder to pry open than a mollusc. For the longest time I thought his side of the family hailed from Austria, as they spoke German and on the rare occasions he commented on his "home" he always referred to Austria.

I later learnt that the background was rather more storied. He had actually been born in Yugoslavia, and that the family lived on the border between Yugoslavia and Austria, which explained their speaking German. As this was all happening during Communism and Tito's rule, the family crossed the border into Austria and from there emigrated to America. This also explained why he and his first wife had a child out of wedlock--due to their different ethnic backgrounds, they weren't allowed to marry in Yugoslavia.
For a long time, this was as much as I knew. My father, of course, never spoke about any of this (one of the only comments I recall him ever making with regards to his early life was mentioning how one spring they managed to find time to whitewash the trunks of the fruit trees on the farm, and that come fall the branches were breaking from the weight of the fruit), and after a while I just saw the not knowing as normal. Whereas once I'd been terribly curious about it all, I reached the point where it was just accepted that I knew nothing about one side of my family. I knew that my grandfather was Austrian, my grandmother Yugoslav, my great-aunt had lost her husband in WWII and spent a short time in a concentration camp, and that was it.

When my father died, I remember feeling frustrated that I'd never learnt more about his background and where he came from. The feeling passed, though, in part because of the further souring and eventual termination of my relationship with his children from his first marriage, which made me want to distance myself entirely from that side of the family, and because life just goes on. The only other living memory was my great-aunt, now in her upper eighties, with a memory concomitant to such advanced years.
It wasn't until I arrived in this part of the world, and began realising that a life away from America was within my grasp, that I started gaining interest in my background. I'd recently been discovering a renewed interest in Iceland, and along with it a desire to get to know my family there and to see what it would be like to live someplace where my mother's family had lived since time out of mind. Realising that I could be a train ride away from where my father's family had lived got me thinking more and more about it.
There was still a dearth of factual information, however. The stories I half-remembered from my childhood, filled in with guesses and assumptions, placed them in Slovenija. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense; rural, bordering Austria, with some Hungarian influence (which explained "Steffi bacsi and Leni neni" ... "bacsi" and "neni" being Hungarian terms of affection for older family members). I got so absorbed with this idea that I took a trip to Slovenija, in part because I hoped to research birth records and find out as much as I could about the family, where they lived, why they left. I spent a week travelling there, becoming more and more enamoured with the idea of pursuing citizenship and spending at least some time living there.
Yet there were some things which never quite added up. The town my grandmother was supposed to have been born in was located in what is now Croatia, and before I left for Romania my great-aunt gave me the addresses of some family members still living in Osijek. My misgivings were confirmed when, in yet another conversation with my great-aunt, my mother probed further and discovered that the family actually hailed from Slavonija. Slavonija, the region of Croatia ... not Slovenija, the country.

Disappointing, for several reasons. I fell in love with Slovenija when I was there, in small part because I believed my family had come from there, but mostly because it's an amazing place. Slovenija is also relievingly free of the muddy ethnic issues of the Croatia of the early 90's. And--most significantly for someone who's interested in EU citizenship--a cursory search indicates that not only is it unlikely that I'd be able to claim Croatian citizenship under my set of circumstances, Croatia (unlike Slovenija) also doesn't recognise dual citizenship, which would make it an either/or proposition between Croatia and Iceland. And really, there's no contest there.
So it's been something of a sad day. I suppose if I were to wax philosophical I'd say that it wasn't meant to be, though there is a part of me that itches to add this to the list of the ways my father failed or disappointed me in my life. As much as I might like to, though, I suppose I can't hold his location of birth against him.