Sandi Gorišek is a mechanical engineer by training and profession, working on projects that often take him out of the country. By chance he was working in America just as Melania Trump was entering public consciousness there, and soon grew tired of being asked the same questions again and again.

While others may have just waved off all inquiries, Mr Gorišek, who fizzes with energy and ideas, decided to do something more. So he wrote and published a short book on the woman who was born Melanija Knavs – in Novo mesto, not Sevnica – and the world she grew up in. Having purchased and read a copy I got in touch with the author and arranged to meet him for a drink, record our conversation and type it up to share with you, lightly edited for concision and clarity.

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting at Ziferblat that was part of the training for Migrantour, a project that aims to give migrants in Slovenia the skills and knowledge needed to become tour guides in Ljubljana.

It was there I first met Jana Milovanović, an anthropologist by training who left academia to follow her various interests outside the halls and classrooms of a university setting, working directly with migrants and other marginal groups, a topic that’s only become more interesting, and urgent, in the last few years, with the opening of the Balkan Route to Europe. As such I caught up with Jana a few days later for a coffee and tried to learn more about her life and work in this context.