It wouldn't be quite right to say I've just spent seven weeks in the Balkans. The last of them was in Slovakia , a very Central European country indeed, where we ate schnitzel and strudel and, from the Writers' Union House, watched the weather coming over the mountains for signs of snow. All the same, when the taxi dropped me off in Vienna and I rode the escalator into the Westbahnhof I knew I was suddenly much nearer home when I saw my first black face in almost two months.