09-XI-2014.
On seventh, amazingly, Borko came with Veca. The pictures were ready on the flash drive, so I handed them to her. We chose to sit on the terrace, as the weather was still quite mild, and three of us are smoking. Someone had a beer, but I see at least two takers for the brandy. Talked a lot, what with her daughter being freshly married.
Drove around (actually, Ender at the helm) in a kind of touristy way. Taken family pictures around the statue of Rocky in Njujork.
This Rocky has some history... At the time when it seemed that the klaanca, in whichever shape and ownership, will fuel the development of the municipality for the next few forevers, so they could claim they aren't purely agricultural, what with having so much industry (and benefits of being a tax haven, which comes with the underdeveloped municipality status), probably some local bigheads sat in the tavern and got into thinking how the village, aka municipality capital, would achieve some glory. We got everything, glory is missing.
And then a news appears* that in Mostar, where the local communities were on knife and blood terms with each other, even brought down the old bridge, finally agreed upon one person to whom they could raise a monument, such one that won't offend anybody, be meaningful to everybody, could even help unite them - to Bruce Lee. Of course, frog raised its leg**... and the elders of Njujork quickly agreed that theirs should be the Rocky. That will, as the Amers would say, put them on the map.
Didn't quite come true. They had their glory, which lasted about a week at most. The statue is... well, look at the picture, ain't bad at all. But... I mean... fuckit... a Rocky. And then you bring american tourist to see it :).
They did have another week of real glory, few years later. Less then 100m away from Rocky (where else, the whole social life of the place happens in the same 300m of main street) there was first mass shooting in Serbia. In june 2016 some guy unglued for who knows what, perhaps ex wife, came to the cafe with a M-72 [SFRY version of Kalašnjikov, made in Kragujevac] and riddled anyone to whom he came near. Six dead.
The actual reason for the trip is that Lena wants to re-register her little S-company elsewhere, because our city is downright hostile to small business. It could be the policy of Eči's wife, who's the chief taxman nowadays, whatever - it always turns there's something bad here. So we move our wallet to the nearest best bidder.
Actually we were looking for some cheap address in Lalinski nearby (which is half hungarian half refugee nowadays, used to be mostly hungarian - to differ from Njujork which is close to 100% bosnian). Just drove around and took drive-by pictures. Village is looking nice and lived-in, to differ from Čankovo which looks decrepit and half-abandoned.
Of course, visited Čankovo too, as it's just 10km away on a sideroad. Arpi warned us of that road (he's been working at some station they have in Lalinski on and off over the years, so he knows the area), it's rarely used by anyone but Naftagas's own trucks, and is maintained accordingly. The potholes were meter wide, in some cases. Not too many of them, not covering too much of an area - they are concentrated on the last 400m of the road before taking the turn - but where they are, it's best to just downshift into second gear and coast slowly.
At the garden, a surprise - plums blossoming the second time.
On thirteenth there's a strange screenshot - in fox's command window can clearly be seen that a conversion is running, for some scottish clinic, but the size of it fits a laptop, so probably Nina's, under a version of windowses that she didn't run, so must be remoting to a server, yup, there's an icon of LogMeIn, one of dozen tools for remoting. Still unclear why does the filename contain David's email address. And why her, I clearly remember I did that conversion, but then the last version I have in my archives is from early march...
----
* what do you mean, news can't be singular? What is it , then, when a courier comes with just one?
** the proverb begins with „frog saw a horse being shod...“
Mentions: Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Čankovo, David Berton, Ender Aquila (Ender), Endre Felbab (Eči), fox, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), klaanca, Lalinski Konak, Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Njujork, Vera Stojanović (Veca), in serbian