21-VII-1971.: and the rest of those days.
The vacation in Borik. First off, Tejka convinced me to give up on Sneca, she simply won't have a guy until who knows when, not interested, better look around.
On the other hand, good company. Two brothers from Denmark, actually polish, the older one is a medical student, probably a freshman; the other is perhaps has a year on me, said his name was Jasper but then it turned out to be Wiesław. While they occasionally made a point of putting me down for apparent age - there between sixteen and nineteen, one year is huge, three are a decade - they were generally great guys to be with. The english being the current common language worked to my advantage, within a day I was in the center. Not the center itself, but rather the man in between, the dežurni interpreter. The brothers play guitars both, they'd just bring them out to the dock and play, improvise, mostly blues. No singing, though. Only this morning they came together with that german guy, Thaeus, so we heard a lot of three-guitar acoustic stuff. Sounds so well, surrounded by the sea. Then there was some Dalibor from Belgrade, whom Tejka was chasing, and she was chasing Bapsi (Barbara, also called Pepsi and Coca Cola) whom pretty much everyone had a try at. Some guy from Novi Sad (later turned out to be a legend - he and his buddy would make sure the bottles were thrown into the sea when finally empty, which they also helped, then would get up really early, pick the bottles from the yet undisturbed shallows, and get the bottle fee from the supermarket, then live on that money all day; much later I saw him in a rather posh area of Novi, walking a calf sized dog), then some gang from Pančevo - five or six of them in a two-seater tent, sleeping in shifts. "The cake differs from sandwich in that there is enough pekmez on the bread to recognize which color it was". To wake the previous shift, they'd sing "The international" ("stand up, ye despised of this world..."). There was Hoopsie from Austria, a ginger with the special dialect of german that all the other german-speaking folks detested and told him to shut up every now and then. There was Dagmar, aka Darmarka (dar-mar meaning helter-skelter in serbian), whose face I don't remember at all, just the name.
On this picture, left edge Milivoje, granma, dad, uncle Staja, mom, Milivoje's wife; from behind, on the stool, Veca; leaning on fića, Tejka. That's the usual coffee ritual, and I'd say it was a rainy day, we all look a bit overdressed.
It was around this time when uncle Staja fired his memorable „I'd haircut the lot and run them across the border“, to which I thanked him immediately, mustering all the irony I could into the pronunciation. He started backtracking right away, too late.
Next day I came dangerously close to making it with Pepsi, but then one of the guys from Belgrade, a hunk who could lift me even now, noticed and took over ("ask her whether she brought anti-little-Vladimir pills"), with my translation. Just as well.
On 23rd Tejka left - well, they were here a couple of weeks before we came. In the evening I tried something with that dummy Erika from Austria, but again, same as last night. Aaaargh. Too many guys, and there's one who balances between six girls. He gets pedaled from all six in the end, but meanwhile they count as taken.
Wrote a postcard to Melanija, though mostly nothing, uninspired. Almost forgot how she looked, it's been nine weeks now.
On 29th. one of the Belgraders made a farewell evening, mocking the krejzimen (yup, crazymen, that's how we now officially call the camp guards), shifting the scene from restaurant to hotels to the beach to the dock to who knows where not. The guy was a complete one man show, he sang, danced, told dozens of jokes.
Next day woke up at six, to go to downtown with dad and uncle Staja to get fish. Took the quartz camera and shot the ride, market, and then the whole skuša-on-grill ceremony. Still the same tiny barbecue that we got in Sarajevo two years ago. Shot a whole spool of color 2x8, which runs close to three minutes, and it turned out amazingly well.
In the afternoon, sat with Pepsi and the two Danes/Poles, chatting quite long. She lost her double crown - presently she's only the craziest around, but the throne to the palest skin went now to some german guy. She said she would get tan, I said she would get pink and peel. Met her again in the evening, and she was already rather pink. A true redskin. I said she's lucky this is not a nudist camp (and there were a dozen of those along the coast), she'd be all red then. As we walked down my "street" (of tents), the two appeared too. Of course, I got so entangled in the conversation that I forgot to dine. Still, managed to make the 19:45 agreed time with only ten minutes in the arrears - granma made me the milk soup (it seems my habit of downing half a liter of milk a day wasn't abandoned yet), i.e. cooked the noodles in milk, which goes fast but requires stirring all the time. The thermostat at home was rough, and the flame on the little camp stove had only the valve. Of course, they said they were waiting fo all of thirty minutes, which they dismissed as nothing - but they did wait. And we went to the disco.
The place is fantastic. I've been there twice already. The fat deejay may not fancy my kind of music all the way, but is otherwise good. The sound is excellent, the lights are synchronized to the sound (the bass is accented in yellow and red, the higher tones in blue and green, in some parts it runs all on red with just bursts of yellow). It was Pepsi's last day and yeah, those hunks were gone now and my chance lay in these last few days - too little, too late, but we were close for that much. I almost fell in love (and yes, another blonde). She was so sad that she won't be seeing us after tomorrow (well, I never met her again - had the address, though), she went to the bathroom to cry every fifteen minutes. Said she spends eleven months a year with rather strict parents, and now it's two weeks of freedom... and it ends. I suggested a petty revenge, return a bit later tonight. Ah, no, that'd be even worse. What I can do is to send her a picture of the whole gang. She promised to pin the picture inside the cupboard where she keeps her notebooks, so she'd have us all in sight whenever she wanted.
No kiss in the end, her boyfriend would be jealous. Ahem, right, okay. Heard that one many times later.
(just googled her out today - 18-XII-2020. - and she's alive and well, same name, same place, a politician, not looking too bad, at least didn't get fat, even looks thinner than on this picture)
Mentions: 18-XII-2020., Borik, dežurni, fića, Melanija Tisarević, Milivoje Stojanović, Novi Sad, pekmez, Slavica Tejin (Tejka), Snežana Stojanović (Sneca), uncle Staja, Vera Stojanović (Veca), in serbian