This morning a guy from NuProm came with a story about a moba two days ago in one of the villages nearby. Two guys were operating a cement mixer, and at some point one of them had a pebble in his shoe. The shoe being somewhat loose, he held himself with one hand by the frame of the mixer, and tried to shake out the pebble. The other guy remembered that the cement mixer is actually a dangerous place, there's a cable lying on the ground and water is sloshing, and he also remembered that that's exactly how some other guy died a couple of weeks ago, so he immediately thought that this guy is being electrocuted. The first thing to do is to get him out of the current, so he took his spade and tried to pry his hand off the frame. He broke the guy's hand in two places.
During the day, I met other people and heard the identical story (same place, same time) from two other guys who can't possibly both know the first guy.
During the following years, the story got the status of an urban legend. At least a dozen places (some in Serbia, many in Bosnia, some even in Croatia) claimed it happened there. But that was much later - this week, the story was making rounds in the city, and anyone visiting had to hear it and pass it on.
About a week later we had some folks visiting - probably dad's, from work - and Nina wanted to tell the story herself. They all laughed at the punchline, but she wasn't sure it was funny, so she added "and then he slapped a creampie in his face". Creampie in the face is always funny, that much she knew.
Now whether it was this weekend, or the next, when we went to Zagreb to Interbiro fair. The fair of office tech and informatics aka IT, the biggest show of the trade (unless we count the spring tech fair in Belgrade, which somehow wasn't interesting to stour). I remember it was a fine october day, early morning sun this side of Tisa coming at the low fog from exactly the perfect angle, beautiful - except fuck that, I didn't carry a camera. We had Žića's driver and official lada, and the commercial director, Radoje, Lidija, me, the IT boss from textile and his counterpart from NuProm. So that's two cars, probably one of them took his own car, wouldn't fit one car. We dined some 40km before Zagreb, the driver knew exactly where to detour 2km to the side, excellent grub, slavonian version of paprikaš or gulaš, whichever. Then and there I understood how a business trip is planned. First one needs to know when and where is the destination. Then which possible routes exist and where on each would we be around lunchtime, and only then is the starting time decided, once the place to eat was picked. The drivers, specially those of commercial directors, know all the good places, and tell each other about them, and this knowledge may influence their status, and whom and what will they drive. It was possible to switch from driving a CEO in a mercedes to driving potato trucks because of a wrong tavern picked for lunch.
We scoured the fair by along and abroad. The novelty was the CGA cards with eight colors... which the NuProm guy commented with "why the fuck do they need a card with five colors?". Third time I asked "wait a minute... okay if you said four, or eight, or sixteen colors... but where did you find five?" "I'm color blind" "How did you pass the drivers' then?" "Red is always on top at the lights".
And then to Gubec hotel at Stubičke Toplice. The hotel is sprawled over the terrain, instead of upper floors it has corridors joining buildings, not going straight at all. Perhaps it's following the profile of the land, fuckit, never saw it in daylight*. While we were approaching it, there was suddenly a heavy fog, couldn't see two stripes on the road. The driver saved our heads, he somehow knew and slammed the brakes just when a steam locomotive, lit with just lanterns and one 20W bulb, emerged from the fog and crossed the road. There was still a safe 3m distance to it. As the textile guy said then "in this fog, the way you see nothing, I come to believe that the Lady did appear to them, just like this locomotive did".
We had dinner at the hotel, and then kept on drinking, mostly local wine or beer, hard to remember. The commercial was slighly hitting on Lidija, and she evaded him elegantly. She even sang "Zažmuri" (close [your] eyes) by Bajaga.
We split around midnight, rambling to our rooms in almost straight lines. Don't know who my rommate was - Radoje was with the commercial, Lidija was solo, and the rest of us had two rooms.
Took another tour of the fair the next day, to complete what we missed the first day. The commercial mocked Iskra Delta lengthwise and sidewise, sticking to the illusion that they somehow manufacture those Vaha boxes, and he insistend on his wish to see the conveyor belt where every few minute a new box is unloaded to a dolly and hauled to a huge warehouse. Everyone knew there was no such thing, they were just changing stickers on the boxes and installing slovenian translation of the OS, and providing their own terminals and keyboards (with juski). But he stuck to their pretense of "production" and played (them) along.
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* still can't see it today, in 2021, because its website is the standard presentational bullshit, with stock ad photos where you see the pool five times, typical room three times, stock photo of massage six times, whole building never, entrance never, gallery absent, all adjusted to look from a phone. Why the fuck did I invest in two big monitors, then?