27-VII-2005.
(in this article I have replaced all superfluous occurrences of „one“ with arbitrary number in brackets)
Took off yesterday. Ate something for lunch, including what tomatoes I picked from the patio. Had a luxurious bath, even turned on the nozzles. Then called a cab and went to ORF. The only shots made were of the squirrel which kept me company during the last cigarette break. The weather is awful, only 33° but the humidity is about the regular 90%. The clouds above Atlanta were still crazy, with weird towers and gaps, and I think the local flight was circling it for at least 20 minutes before landing. I had to specifically ask the lady to stamp my I-98 or whatever, to make sure I can show it when I apply for visa extension to come back. For some bureaucratic reason we were only getting visa approvals but not the actual visas - those can be only issued by consular service in an embassy abroad. So we'll have to take time to visit the american embassy in Belgrade to get the actual visas. They already did theirs, and I'll do mine in 2-3 days.
The CDG airport is a nightmare mess. There's no internal transportation - Atlanta has its own subway doing circles like the [seventeen] in Duke Nukem, even Detroit has one (even though it goes perhaps 500m), I'll later see Orlando having one (above the ground, though, it's probably too wet below), but no, on CDG it's like this: you disembark, and take the staircase down to the outside, where you wait for a bus. The bus takes you few hundred meters where you enter the building, where you take the stairs up, walk to the other side of the building, few hundred meters, then walk down to get another bus, which then gets you to yet another part of the building where you again walk zigzag and across until you finally get to where your gate is. Along the way there are checkpoints, improvised partitions (the building will never be finished, I guess), the light is just above minimal - your way is lit, but anything left or right is in shade. At least from the bus I see some very different cars, the Frenches are far more imaginative, level above what sells in the US. I clearly feel it's a different continent.
The food on JAT's airplane is just a snack, but it's delicious - proper young cheese, kajmak, ham (no water added), even the bun isn't a spongy bleached job, and the olive tastes right (probably import from Greece). And the coffee is strong and fragrant. Home.
I'm landing on Surčin around 14:30. Haven't been home almost six years. The temperature is the same as at ORF, but it's much coooler, because it's dry heat, sweating makes sense all of a sudden. I'm having a smoke in the shade of a bus, and it's nice. The cab drivers ask 20$ to downtown, which is probably the right price but I don't care, I'm already at home and I travel light. Just one light bag for the camera, cigarettes and paperwork, and my little two-wheeler from, IIRC, Big Lots, which I took to Taos and New York so many times, now with me here.
The bus drives through Novi Beograd, as it has to make a stop somewhere. I notice a building with weird, almost steampunk red iron girdles on its façade. Beautiful. There's still some of the daring architecture being made. And they aren't shy with color, this is flag red. In the US they don't put such red on fire trucks, even those are a bit subdued.
On the bus station I get a ticket to home, and at some point I forget my bag in the middle of the concourse. I remembered it within five seconds, and of course it was still there. I had a similar case on the way back, when I forgot my complete paperwork on the desk at CDG, and likewise came back two minutes later and found everything where I left it. And somehow this wasn't any beginning of memory failure - over the following years I had no such episodes. I guess it was the crowd, noise, fatigue and lack of sleep that did it.
On the bus the driver played one turbo folk cassette, of about 35 minutes, in a loop. I was horrified that I'd contract an earworm. The ride is 90 minutes - of which about 20 is just to get out of town, as the bus has to navigate around the fortress to the Pančevački bridge - so I heard the stuff about halfway to the third loop. But no, it seems I finally grew immune to it. As soon as I got out of the bus I forgot everything.
Dad was waiting for me at the station - I think I had some dinars, prob'ly exchanged some 50$ at the airport - not too much, the airports are notorious for bad rates - or perhaps used the serekeš, there are at least four different brands by the exit - and I maybe called from the station while waiting for the bus. He's gotten visibly older meanwhile. Came with a bike, so we put my bag on it. Not that I was carrying much, though.
I didn't make any shots on the way, as the memory card in the Minolta was of limited capacity and I didn't have a way to transfer the shots to a different device. This was partially resolved later, when Škrba burned a CD with what I made so far, about 300 shots, so I could format the card and start anew.
The only worthwhile shot for the day (out of three I made) was with dad's diploma he got for his prokupac wine in 2001 at an exhibition in Temerin. That's after Vanji made him take a part in it, after starting a vineyard of his own.
The very next day I went to Belgrade to extend the visa. I drew myself in the embassy area well ahead of time, then walked up a sidestreet to some small bank to pay whatever they asked for. Right there found a cafe with a couple of tables out under a shady tree. Coffee, mineral, slow and nice. Feeling like I've done this a thousand times.
Didn't wait too long. The pocket player I had to leave with the cerberi, no electronics allowed inside. Had to fill another form inside. The clerk took a long look at my papers, seeing he'll be issuing me a visa to no longer than six weeks. Checked twice my employer's name, but won't get me there, I knew the full name of UniJewel, word for word, recited it verbatim both times. Asked me „what will you do when your visa expires?“ „That's not my problem, rather my employer's. I'm sure they'll keep on working on my green card. They'll manage.“. Didn't lie a single bit here - I'm sure they'll keep working on it just like they did so far, i.e. did one pro forma move in eighteen months. They'll manage, for sure, with me or without me. All cool and stage fearless.
And so okay, after some 15 minutes at the window, the guy tells me to come at 15:30 to pick up the passport and visa. Because fuel being on reserve is not a malfunction, it's all in good working order.
And then walk. How to waste six hours... I intentionally did not bring a shooter, to avoid problems with the cerberi. There's no way I'd believe they wouldn't inspect the contents of the card. Also, I'd waste too many shots on whatever catches my eye in Belgrade, and the space on the card was limited. So then walk. Nice day, summer morning and noon, pretty women walking through downtown (Džoni Štulić). How more beautiful our girls are, and know how to walk, and manage to get dressed with what they have, the effort is obvious. Now those [elevens] I see over there look sloppy, selfneglected and not fuckappealing at all. By the Staklenac* I took a sandwich, nothing much but partly soaked in cheap oil, then warmed up, pure junk, just as well for the tourist's experience, integral part of it. Got thirsty, so on my way along Knez Mihajlova to Kalemegdan I noticed a nice cafe in a passage, first [fortyseven] on the left. Turned out that my girls picked the same spot two days ago.
Bought NIN, sat there to read it, ordered a nikšićko dark (small, didn't have the regular). To sniff the atmosphere. Because this was the Slobistan six years ago, it's the democrats in power now, and while it's true that everything looks more lively, I don't know whether that came from the wet july and everything greening around, or is the atmosphere really different. NIN looks, at least by style, as I left it, so it's inconclusive. When I ordered the third beer, I asked for the toilet. Basement, to the right.
Now this toilet was completely a sign of different times. All in burgundy and ink blue tiles, dark and snug, the likes of which you can't find abroad. And the pearl on top of the cake - the faucet's handle was removed, there's always a mild flow of water, straight and without spatter, just enough to wash [do I need to say whose?] hands. And the water doesn't fall into the sink, there's a mirror on top of it, and it flows in thin layer over it. Surreal effect, the beers hit me right then and there, even as these were just two small [sixtywos].
When the girl brought the third [sevenhundred], I told her to send my congratulations to the owner, he picked the best architect, that toilet refreshed my day, there's still hope for this culture. There he is, two tables over. She walked to him, talked briefly, and he came to my table and then we talked at length. I explained my background, a gastarbajter on vacation after six years, first time since the power changed, just two days here so far, nothing cleared in my mind yet, still can't detect the substance of the change. „It's all the same, it's just he who's not here“, he quoted the current hit by Tijana Dapčević (though she doesn't really mean Sloba in it, but rather Tito). Asked him how's the neigbor's cow, said „cow... has some chance now, it depends...“. Fourth beer was on the house, we drank that, and then I remembered I should call Danica and Anica, maybe even visit them. I had their phone number written somewhere, and dad even announced that I'll be in town. Saw that I'm not going anywhere, the weather took a sudden turn to bright cloudy, hot and muggy, and those four little beers - less than three regulars, actually, shouldn't do me so but it did - so at least I tried to call them. The phone booths don't take coins anymore, bought a minimal card somewhere, dialed, dialed again, heard it ringing, but no, nobody picks up. As expected, adios.
So I concentrated on walking, and though the embassy was less than a kilometer away, down Kneza Miloša, the distance was enough to get me back to look and walk normally. At the embassy I picked my passport, done in five minutes, went down the shortest way to the busodrome, got on a bus. Wow look at this, a private operator and the bus has the AC and the driver doesn't enforce the turbo folk, what he played was almost rock. Finally, after almost forty years.
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* nickname of the building by The Square, among the first [fiftynines] with endoskeleton and all metallic glass outside, and not a simple box at that; staklenac is a glass marble (however stupid that sounds in english); the other two kinds are gvozdenac (of iron, actually steel ball from a bearing) and plastenac (of plastic)
Mentions: 30-I-2016., Anica Tešić, Danica Tešić, gastarbajter, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), kajmak, Prodise, serekeš, UniJewel, Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), in serbian