15-VIII-2012.

The vacation, finally. Got up in the morning, packed the few things (including the nanovo, with cyrillic Feds installed, a 5.2 at the time, the 5.3 probably still not ready for the big demo), got my girls into the saxo and we drove off southeast. Didn't want to go via Vršac, as the plan was to visit aunt Milica and her village is more to the west, so we picked a more scenic route via Alibunar. Found the house alright, but she expected us the next day. Well that's what we get when we announce the visit through dad, he's half deaf. She made us some potato and sausage, the classic fast lunch. Then she wanted to go to Vršac, on the hill, to show us around a bit. Well, why not, and then too bad we already ate, we could have eat up there with a view. At least had some refreshments, with a view, and a tour of Vila, sorry, Villa Breg, the fucking big hotel where the current husband of croatian singer Severina (famous by the quote "I feel this will be a good night" from her leaked porn video) made her a suite (she remarried later).

We moved on after returning her home. While approaching Požarevac, we decided to have a dinner somewhere by the road, and then there was some funny set of circumstances. I passed a bicycle, then saw that I'm approaching a restaurant, so gave the turn signal and, while checking that the biker was well behind, slowed down and looked for the best exit into their driveway. Two huge trucks were passing me at that time, and through all that noise I heard the bicycle bell. What the fuck, where a bike now, check the mirror, still quite far... ah, yeah, that's my phone. Just a few days ago I decided I officially hate nokla's ringtone so I made a recording of her bicycle bell, converted it to mp3, normalized and started using that as ringtone. For messages, the first two bars of Zeppelin's "communication breakdown", because in Morse code it spells M. While I was learning it in the army, I actually heard these two bars whenever someone ticked M. Anyway, it was one of the oldwave gang, prob'ly calling from Škrba's phone, asking when are we coming. Tomorrow, pal, tomorrow.

By the time we got to Požarevac it was already dark and navigation became a bit of a problem, with most of the downtown becoming a pedestrian mess. We tried to find a place to sleep on Srebrno jezero (Silver lake), but the only vacancy was in some gray box polished aluminium hotel at about 7000 rsd per night, so I just drove those 30km back and found a place in downtown Požarevac, a whole suite for 3000. Because it's the old hotel, probably built in the sixties, partially renovated and remodeled. Had some trouble parking, because on the way in I didn't see the entrance into the hotel's lot, so parked behind the corner... which was inside the evening pedestrian zone. Then had no way to move back to the hotel's lot without either driving 100m backwards, or just going around the block, through the zone. Did the latter, and of course the cops told me to move over. I came out of the car with a ready plea "hey bro help me out, how do I ever get out of here", which worked, they pretty much told me to do what I already wanted to do.

The whole maneuver didn't last too long, but by the time we got into the suite (called "apartman" here... some false friends involved... which I duly entered among those on sGradlj.com later) my bladder was near bursting. Just dropped the backpack with the laptop on the nearest bed, and hit the bathroom. Shit, there's no toilet seat here... ah, they made the suite by just putting two regular rooms together, so this is not one and a half bathroom, this is some special setup. So I peed into the bidet, porcelain is porcelain.

We went for a walk. Got some icecream from a street stand, walked it out, and finally found a cafe where to have a beer on the sidewalk. It's all different from what I expected, these guys in the cafe were just plain accoustic, but played some very jazzy or bluesy versions of stuff I know, on guitar and accordeon. The beer felt good, I guess Staropramen, unless they had Nikšićko crno. At the next table three fat Gypsies, I'd say in their mid thirties but one never knows, and didn't look at them too well as they were behind my back, were smoking a hookah with some cherry-flavored tobacco. They spoke german... which we, of course, understand, and they considered it their private language and spoke it quite loud, being traditionally used to open spaces. Nothing big, no conspiracy, they were getting ready for the road and were planning the trip.

Don't think we had a second beer. We were just plain tired and went to our suite.

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Mentions: aunt Milica, Feds, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), nanovo, nokla, oldwave, saxo, sGradlj.com, in serbian