29-VII-2005.
In the morning Lena and I walked up our old street, she wanted to buy a toothbrush, and I wanted to exchange a few dollars. Turned out we did both in the same shop - the perfumery sub-leased one corner of the shop to an exchange office. Next time I exchanged them at Vera, she had another exchange nearby, just 50m away. The exchanges are private now and there's one on each corner.
Something in the perfumery looked familiar... looked closer at the monitor on the desk, and there's a retail app, in a Dos window, written in fox 2.6. Not one of our generators, it's the default factory one, recognized its color scheme. Someone did manage to make that piece of shit do something useful.
Spotted a new bakery, all shiny and latest black/white design, right across from the once furniture salon, so took the chance to explain to my daughter what a lepinja is, [it's sour dough bun, about 18cm in diameter, 5cm thick in the middle, round] how good it is and why I can't stand the american so-called bread. We went in, I got one, pinched a piece of it and... aw fuckit, what is this, which dick is this, this is a kifla dough [kifla, from german Kipfel, a crescent ie croissant] shaped as lepinja. Same blownup spongy shit, starch and chemistry, just like the bread is now.
My girls slept at oma's, I at my folks'. We'll keep it that way for the duration of this vacation, though Lena would sleep here from time to time. No complaints from me about the arrangement, because no matter how many times mom said she loved my wife, as many times there were statements or gestures to prove the opposite. In her place I would react more fiercely.
In the morning I had the time to look around the yard, make shots. The apricots grew nicely and bore lots of fruit. Dad started propping the branches, or the weight of fruit would break them.
Her yellow bike is in the garage, flat tire. Dad rides his 1992 flea market one, smuggled from Ukraine. At the time guys would hire a whole bus, remove fourty-some seats and fill the space with bicycles to sell here, smuggling wholesale. The bike is bad, but simple, almost a twin of what dad rode in late fifties. Even the front brake is not wired, it's operated by a lever which pushes a rubber pad on the front tyre. The screw which adjusts the height of the pad has destroyed the thread in its ring, which was made of some soft shit metal. But it ran, and dad got used to it.
The trabant was far worse than I left it. Piksi threw the spoon already, so I guess dad went back to Saša for maintenance, or he found someone normal, whatever, half of the stuff was in bad shape. From these shots I see: the plastic sheathing on the steering wheel fell off, it was only cracked in two places when I last drove it; the gaskets around the windows fell out of their grooves and won't stay when pushed back into them, needs some industrial glue; the radio that I installed was still there but not working; the outer mirror's frame was gone; the green marker tube (v. 16-IV-1998.) still doubles as the turn signal lever, successfully.
In the afternoon went to see our house, on foot. I simply didn't feel like driving the contraption. Everything was still in place, except the stuff that was stolen before Johan's door was secured with bolts - the lock that it has is a joke, I have opened it with a piece of wire, twice, when I had to. Missing are wine glasses, one piece of fine ceramics (our wedding gift from kum, other two pieces are still around) and the big speaker boxes of 26-XI-1977..
The kitchen stands as it always did, and our old Končar fridge from 1980, and the old stove we got from tanti, even the little neon light above the sink still works. Our old mirko is still there, we just took it to the anteroom, for dad's vineyard friend's son to pick, along with the stove and fridge, to fix and sell.
The terrace got enough shade now - from the house until around 14:00 and then after 16:00 from the birch, which we planted on 29-II-1992. along with the other birch and the apricots, of which there were two left by now.
In the corner by the chimney there's our old sunshade and the natkasna* (or was it the „water shelf“, on which the bucket with potable water from the well would stand... um no, that's still in the garage). We broke out the door, replaced the filling with a wire mesh, while we kept the rabbit in it. There were two such natkasla, the other one is also still around, and the third piece of the set was the standing mirror, all part of granma's dowry. Soon to celebrate a century of age...
The terrace, being in the shade, grew lichens and then tiny ferns. We'll have to scour it ourselves, can't rely on dad for that, he's got 75 years and a vineyard on his back, that would be too much for him.
This autopatch I only noticed as possible to put together now (2023) as I wrote this.
----
* from german Nachtkassen, night stand, or night box
Mentions: 26-XI-1977., 29-II-1992., 16-IV-1998., fox, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), kum, mirko, oma, tanti, trabant, Vera Basta, in serbian