03-XII-1998.
More correspondence with Greg:
I'm at work today trying desperately to catch up on my work from last May so I can go to Yugoslavia and get even more behind. :-) I'll send you some thoughts / ideas throughout the day as they occur to me. I don't know about the Trabbie's luggage compartment, but I plan to arrive
with 3 bags:
Item approx size
clothes hanging bag 30" (high) x 30" (wide) x 12" (deep)
rolling computer bag 24" (high) x 15" (wide) x 12" (deep)
Briefcase 6" (high) x 19" (wide) x 14" (deep)
I'm borrowing the fregata (frigate=fiat regatta) from the office, and you can sneak an extra person into its luggage compartment along with your bags. No problem. We'll have to carry it for... depending on the parking place, ten feet or so (you wait till I pick the car and I drive to the door). I've picked up my wife as she returned from China, you may imagine how many bags. I drove a Yugo at the time, and it all went into its luggage compartment.
Photo or whatever, while you're still in the office. How do I recognize you?
So he sent an extra email with the photo (looks a bit like Woody Allen) and then I got the fregata and drove off to the Surčin airport. Recognized him alright, got his bags on a trolley and well, drove to Zrenjanin. He did make a valiant effort to pronounce the name of the place when we saw the first roadsign to it (which was on this side of the Pančevački bridge, before they made all the proper ramps and the whole approach to the bridge from Banat side was a gamble), rolling his R and overdoing it - triple R was overboard, but it was proper.
Later in the evening
If you're still there, it's almost midnight here, we've eaten some of gibanica which is a better equivalent of burek (I've put these words so Greg can have reference when he gets back), and Greg is typing at his laptop, and said you've probably out for dinner - but in case you read this before 7pm (your time), phone us. He seems to think it may be worth the while. I'm repeating the number
Here's one of the samples of atmosphere at Zero that he brought.
And a couple he shot the following days around the house. There were a few dozen more, I think he shot two spools of color negative. Good lab, wish I had one like that to do my stuff.
This is Faik's house, such as it was at the time. I think his last child was born around 1996 (actually only the last five were his; two older girls were from his wife's previous marriage).
The road veers to our side, because the next neighbor to the left, the American (the old guy did live in the US once) built a pigsty on the border and refused to put it down when we put the cobblestones nine years ago. Many years later, when we get real blacktop, the route will stay. We practically own all of it, to the other edge. Much worth it was.
We dropped by Avai, and Greg made a few shots there. That negative has the only shots of Cica ever, in her best edition (his comment was: „she is obviously very proud that she has tits“). Well, I don't believe I'll have a secretary once on the other side. She wasn't my secretary anyway, but at least I had a beauty to greet me in the morning and make the room smell of good coffee.
This is me, Joja and Pali. Now looking at this shot, we had a really nice space there. As much light as one can wish, ambient just right with those roof windows, good chairs (of course, not leather but a quality fake) and we were high enough above to be insulated from the noise of the overpass traffic. Really cool. The only thing missing was enough money for normal life.
This is a shot of our big room, such as it was at the time. I see my machine is open again... well, such is the life of software entrepreneurs, there's a permanent draft through that box, every few weeks some part is unscrewed because it's sold. Often I have until tomorrow to move my everything to a new disk, because the old one was sold.
Greg caught a moment to chat with Lena a little, of course aided by our translation, as she didn't know a single word of english. And bit by bit, he comes to ask whether she likes american music, she says yes, well what's her favorite, and she fires „Tom Waits!“ instantly. He slowly collected his jaw from the floor, being left textless.
Among those bulgarian disks we collected in the last two years, of which there weren't really too many, two were by Tom Waits. And she remembered him. What's unclear to me is how did he think that kids here would discern american, british and others who sing in english, it all sounds pretty much the same. I also didn't know off the bat which are which, I even thought for several years more that the Moody Blues were Amers.
While we were waiting for Greg to appear, Popa went missing for three days. Not the first time, it happened before that he'd take off into damage for a few days, once even longer than a week. We met him, accidentally, almost 2km from home, returning on bicycles from my folks, and called him. He recognized our voices and was very happy to see us, ran like crazy, ears flapping as if he'd be airborne.
This time I built him a house of siporeks blocks, by the garage entrance. It's almost winter and it's windy. And he did come and sleep in that house, for just one night, during which he died. I hope he spent that last weekend having fun.
Mentions: Avai, burek, Faik Rizvani, fregata, gibanica, Greg Reubenthal, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Pali Bodor, Popa, siporeks, Slavica Urdulj (Cica), Voja (Joja), Zero Distance (Zero), in serbian