27-VIII-2016.
In the morning, more work on making Windows 7 work as a virtual box inside Ubuntu.
In the afternoon, went to Klincaid and made another batch of plum brandy. Used my new depth measuring stick (made out of a chopstick, using the nonius to make notches precise to half a millimeter) though it's wrong - I calculated it for a vessel of 332mm in diameter, but it's actually 322, I misremembered the measure, so it's off by 6%. Still, we got a really nice amount. There's no way we'll drink all of this in our lifetime (or if we do, we won't be around for long).
Meanwhile, majstor Mile has finished the foundation for the future wall or whatever we'll do with it. The poles supporting the ceiling and the roof are still holding.
In the evening, finally went to Dani piva ("Days of beer" - the local festival). The downtown, around the stages on the newly shaven main square, was criscrossed with movable fences and infested with cerberi guarding them. As if there's a chance that the crowd would storm the stage... this is not the Beatles playing, it's the 2nd and 3rd league of serbian showbiz. But someone took the money and thinks that showing off with fences and uniforms is required to justify the cost.
I carried the little Lumia video camera we bought a year ago, and I made quite a video out of the walk. Last year I even bought some Magic app for editing (and they then spammed me happily ever after for a couple of years) and refreshed my editing skills... nice, I could do this, but it's somehow tedious, can't do more than a couple of hours' work at a time. Complicated with sound too, need to take care not to chop it when I cut the scene... mnyah. Not worth the bother. And, additionally, the app has its own cataloguing system, i.e. a smoke-and-mirror scheme of folders, so I never knew what's where, where is my end cut, which are the temp files... Even now I can't find the edited version of this, only the raw files.
We walked from home all the way to the garden of the city hall (where they had the standup comedians... we heard the announcer and she was exactly half way between "not funny" and "so far from funny that it's unintentionally funny", i.e. a real masturpiss. We ended in Biblioteka ("The library") near gimnazija, where we also sat few years ago. The tables were in the middle of the second part of Gimnazijska which isn't normally pedestrian, but now was.
Finally met someone I knew - the technician from the theatre who helped me set up the projection of those archive photos for the matricular anniversary two years ago. Other than that, we saw perhaps 2-3 thousand people, and he was the only one known, at least to me. The people we used to know seem to be hiding somewhere.
The music was fine, all ex-Yu rock'n'roll, with a couple of pop exceptions that I didn't have on my big playlist at home (presently at 29000 files) or have erased them long ago. The tab was 640 dinars (160 rsd one dark Budvár aka original czech Budweiser), I rounded it up to 800 but then added another 100 because of the music. Also 200 for the rose - haven't seen a girl selling flowers around tables for, well, ages. And this one had some theatrical experience, amateur perhaps, played her role perfectly, irresistible. My lady was very pleased.
Around the end of the 2nd beer the neighbor's music came too loud with some awful techno-turbo-folk-bullshit, so we decided to leave. Forgot to pee one more time, so she said let's try the pivnica. The brewery doesn't work for at least a decade now (someone, probably Kostić or whoever) bought it to close it so he wouldn't have much competition but might use some of the hardware. Its beerhouse, however, still works and actually went down the river bank, where they have two levels of tables on the dike. These were all taken, so we went up inside (almost at bridge level or slightly above), where all the tables were free. Had another beer (nikšićko, dark) and the house specialty, pig's knees with horseradish. The horseradish was the commercial variety, which contains 29% of the stuff and it's also aired so it loses the bite. Kind of apple pie without apples.
Walked home without any problems, nice summer night's walk.
Mentions: gimnazija, Klincaid, majstor Mile, pivnica, in serbian
3-IX-2016 - 25-III-2026