25-IX-2022.
In the morning, during first coffee on the terrace, we conclude we had enough of walking up and down the hills, and that we've seen everything we wanted. So we'd rather go down to Valjevo. As much as I didn't feel like driving yesterday, today was in exactly the mood, so we took the road over Kaona. Rode smoothly into Valjevo afer just a brief glance on the map.
It came to my mind to visit that agricultural high, where dad became agr. technician, which defined his carreer. It must have been something, if they kept meeting for each maturski for as long as they had enough guys for one tavern table. She even remembers the article in Politika, when they held the 60th. Having no clue of distances - the maps give you layout of streets, but block sizes are a different matter - we left Joda at the bus station (by sheer accident, noticed it when I locked the car), and then by method of approximative eyeballing we hit the street north until the eastward boulevard, pretty much where we'd go anyway, had we stayed in the car and stuck to geepyess.
The weather was somewhat muggy, and the street is, ouch, of vladika Nikolaj... C'mon, guys, this is the partisans' area, where did you pick this ultraright ideologue... Never mind, we walked on and found the school. It looks marvelous, at least on the outside, it's all one big park, with many old buildings, a whole field aka campus.
There, it even has this ancient tractor. She said it is no wonder that the guys were so tied to the school, it must have been like outer space to them, compared with their lives until it - they were all peasant kids, came from the mud into the big city (though Valjevo is actually one notch smaller than our town), and then somethhing like this appears. Made a bunch of shots, then walked towards centre. Behind the school Gorenje has some wide building, few thousand squares, but above the entrance it only says something „studio“, so they probably have sales there, didn't see whether it was just warehouse or some production too.
Then the railway station, rather new, but there's long dry grass in the cracks of the pavement in front - which means left over since august; we have rains for the last five weeks. Not only that, here this composition sits like that for who knows how long, if ivy grew over its roof (!). There we sat for a smoke break, in front of some novogradnja across the station, where they had a table with three benches. Then we saw there should be a Roda nearby, I should buy a charger for the phone and the little dashcam, if it's not too far off our path. It was right behind the corner, so we got in and she had the presence of mind to avoid getting past the inner entrance - they always rent lobby space to kiosk-like sales, at least one of which sells cell phones and, bingo, chargers for them. So we didn't have to go through cash registers, as Roda is notorious of always having at least one less open than needed. Once out, we ask for directions to downtown, and sure enough, nearest thraffic light is at the end of the main street, take a left and just walk. We keep looking but there's no eatery, and we've become hungry.
It's all cafes and posher boutiques, gadgets and fancery (srb. fenseraj). Even this shop's name is pure engrbian - it has an h and not a ch, as per serbian orthography, yet it doesn't say '...medija', it's '...media', the j being unwesternly. All by the one rule of engrbian grammar: strictly undecided, half serbian half english. And even the font and the whole look is stolen from Tehnomanija, which has at least kept the j (but looks as trendy how it does business).
We move closer to the centre, there are more newer buildings now, of the kind they inserted everywhere in sixties to eighties, wherever needed or not, still no restaurant. Slide into a sidestreet a bit, some of our generation or older sit at a cafe, under an awning on the sidewalk, and I ask them where to eat something čorba-like. The old guy said follow main street, take a left on 2nd light and there it will be, by the monument to Desanka Maksimović, you'll see.
Went as he said and it turns out we need to go behind the courthouse. Right around the corner we saw there was a cafe „At false witness“. Lawyers must be the regulars there. They kept their wits around here, the Valjevska podvala (prank, trickery) is alive and kicking.
Once at the monument we didn't have to search for the tavern - there it was, two meters from Desanka. We sat, ordered... Calf čorba, excellent, and something they called „šerpica“, though it comes in a two liter šerpa*, just as excellent. Bread dark, divine, still warm, crust crunches, it's been ages since I last dipped into the gravy. Light drizzle began We then had a coffee, asked the waiter for instructions to the bus station, took off and the rain was over. We found Joda nice and easy, though at times it looked we were lost, for what if, like it once was at home, Lasta's bus station was separate from the city's? But it wasn't.
While I was getting into the car, she noticed a car marked as „Alko taxi“. She told me later, and I checked - a cab union of such name does exist in Valjevo. The slogan is, probably, „you drink, we drive“. Second good one for the day, congrats to Valjevo, I'm almost forgiving the vladika.
Turned the tablet on, but took a left at the roundabout by the river, instead of right, so it recalculated and took us to the next bridge in this direction, then out of town over Petnica. At some point it says to take a left turn. Okay... but that's barely two meters wide and hasn't seen maintenance in ages, and curves a lot, but at least the blacktop is not bad and there's almost no traffic. At some point it says to turn right... well, the left road is just a field road, no pavement. If it counts that as a road... who knows what awaits ahead. Few kilometers later (probably five to seven, looked like twenty), it said „take a sharp right turn“. The sharp right was about 150° and steeply uphill, entering the road from Mionica. Says she, luckily this is Joda, there'd be trouble doing this with the saxo. Well you praised me for doing exactly this when I drove it. True that... so we got to the better road by sheer accident and software. At least I drove through some interesting landscape, not spruced up for tourists, and not any worse looking for that.
Plugged the phone and dashcam into the charger, took a nap. Later on the map I measured that we walked 5,25km through Valjevo.
We didn't feel like walking much more, so we just revisited the market, connoisseurs now, and bought more cheese, sudžuk and dried mushrooms. It was past 17 already, but exactly those we wanted to buy from were still there, counting on stragglers like us. Then we dined on jučetina (v. house dictionary) from the šerpica, though with what bread we had, some industrial junk, the waiter didn't pack it, but the dark one we ate all, and the white we haven't even tried, though it would be better than this bullshit.
When my phone charged (faster on this charger than when plugged into zmajček), called Aleksandar's wife, seeing she tried to call. Her phone rang but she didn't pick, twice. Later she called back, said she was on the hill, and didn't dare reply because she was in roaming. Probably she's in shade from her tower, and hooks into romanian instead - her daughter once got a hefty bill because she wasn't watching for that. And she just wanted to report that aunt Milica is in vršac** hospital, doing fine, coming down to yard for walks, fully awake.
Drank two or three shots and went to sleep.
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* pot, as a cooking utensil, is called lonac, if it's tall; if it's wider than tall, it's a šerpa; šerpica is when it's less than a liter. Flowerpot is not a pot, it's a saksija. Chamberpot is not a pot, it's a nokšir (which I retrofitted into english as knockshire).
** lowercase, because it's an adjective here
Mentions: Aleksandar Zarin, aunt Milica, čorba, engrbian, house dictionary, Joda, maturski parastos, novogradnja, saxo, zmajček, in serbian