24-IX-2022.
Freezing outside, icing on the grass and on the cars' windshields and roofs. We weren't cold in the room, the lady stokes it solidly and the duvets are serious, heavy, despite looking thin. We now have milk too, so we drink normal coffee, although outside. The stove has two plates, but the dials have no markings, so you don't know where it's a 1 and where a 9. Dial it to half and whenever it's finished, it will be done. You may bear kittens while you wait, so we later switched to the water from the (central!) hot water from tap, for a nessie it doesn't have to boil. The first one in the morning, though, has to steam. Of course, outside, on the terrace.
The first walk, to the market again. The sun strikes at a really good angle. People are sitting outside, perhaps not yet, it's early, we started at eight thirty. Each house, and they are mostly vikendica, or resort houses owned by various old enterprises, or apartments for sale or rent, each has a terrace or balconly or at least something under a roof, with a mandatory table with benches, even without a roof. Just as long as one can sit outside, our folks can't imagine a vacation without sitting outside. And this is a winter resort, here Vila Vila has a skijašnica, which is a downstairs room where the guests keep their ski gear, and has those outside tables.
On the markets we spot advertising for a few restaurants, one vanished from the list right away, because it's called Strong (in english), adio ragazzi. The other one had a nice blunder in the menu, said „junjeći gulaš“. Now june is about halfway between a calf and a grownup, and the proper adjective is „juneći“, but whoever wrote the menu got swayed by perceived similarity with svinjski (of swine, i.e. pork) and jagnjeći (lamb, i.e. (j)agnus). Well, we were going for something liquid, čorbasto (čorba-like), having had enough of barbecue. Parked this for later. Dropped by the kiosk at former Vule's tavern, to get a pogačice (wrong name, it's a pašteta (pastry) , it's square) with čvarci, same industrial job as at home, and just as good and big, so we asked the girl to cut it in halves, it's too much for one person, as if we were the retired poor. Then she buys young goat cheese* and the girl changes her attitude. Another lady comes to buy something and begins to extoll the good minerals in the water at a nearby spring, excellent water. Well, I said, it's probably the same water as in the taps, they surely won't bring bad water from afar to pump into pipes, when they have this on the spot. And, besides, we're from Zrenjanin, any water is good for us.
Long walk up the road to Valjevo entrance, well not quite, only to the nearest hilltop, again passing that hotel with spaček still there. Stopped when we had enough, sat on a bench, had a smoke. On the bench there's a dozen of older issues of NIN and some other magazines. I leaf through one and I notice how they begin to resemble their once self, at least by the kind of story they push, trying to be what they used to be, place to find the in-depth background of events. Leafing further I find Vučić's picture, with palms tent-like, the way the Merkel hag used to hold them, and I quit the magazine and the idea of reading altogether.
Slowly back to center. Along the way I caught this view, such as I couldn't possibly do at home. Main street on the bottom, the very center of the place, then thick forest above and a ski slope on top.
When we reached center, the little train was just going for its next round. Why walk everywhere, this will surely go to some viewpoint. And it did. The train is a tractor masquerading as a locomotive, with two trailers of ten seats each. It has a pneumatic line so the trailers brake when the tractor does, but they don't have intertial brakes, so when he downshifts and thus loses some speed, they go on, and then next second when he steps on it in the lower gear, there's a sharp jerk. By the time we went past that bench, I already trained myself to keep my spine away from the backrest when that happens, because it kicked hard each time.
And we passed that contraption which looks like a pine cone and is called Diamond Hill (in english), if it's a hotel at all, perhaps these are apartment for sale, but it has a cafe and a kids' playroom, then also the other landmark, a biplane that someone brought and now builds a swimming pool and then who knows what more. When we reached the King's Table viewpoint, where once king Dušan (before he was a czar aka emperor) tabled. Tabling then meant having a throne in thatt place - even the word throne, presto, in serbian has a sto (table) in it. IOW, there's no table, never was, it's just a place from which he then ruled. In a brief chat with the driver, while others mostly selfied around, I hear that the dire experience of Zlatibor and Kopaonik came here as well, everyone's building and selling dearly, it's an unseen laundering of money, invest less than a million euros and then sell the 1200 or 2000 square meters at 2000€, now lowered to 1700 but still a huge pile. They don't care that Divčibare is in trouble with water, power, sewers, roads, just about everything, they don't give a rat's fuck, they hook into what's already there, sell and vanish. The buyers will be by the fan when it hits.
On the nearest peak there's an allegedly radar station, well screw the radars, that's UHF platers, same as where I spent the first half of 1982, even the layout of the tower and the concrete dig for the big 2m microwave plater (i.e. dish, but we always called them plates). Everything the same as in Šibenik, even the layout of the tower, the only difference being that that one was allegedly a meteorological station, not allegedly radar.
Of course, I shot a few panoramixes. The driver knew all the mountain peaks on the horizon, though there was some humidity in the air and some couldn't be seen clearly, so Rudnik and Ovčar and Kablar he pointed out, these are close, and of Avala we saw only an outline. When it clears, he claims to be able to see the TV tower on it.
We left the stuff we bought in the room, and off to market to lunch. I asked the waitress „junjeći or juneći“, she said „juneći“. „I asked because here in the menu it says juneći, but outside it's junjeći, and too late to fix, I already made a shot“. One valjevsko draft, not bad but kept us burping until dinner. The gulaš was excellent, we even took the leftovers (nowadays every restaurant packs them for you). At the next table a guy with three chicks, one with a slightly ridged nose but actually quite cute, one chubby but of merry face, and one Chinese, of whose speech I just caught enough words to hear how perfectly she pronounced our bumpy consonants, including the hard r. Who knows how long she was here. And the asian long spine is prominent, she's the shortest standing, tallest sitting.
Another coffee on the terrace, then walk again. We were stubborn enough this time, and walked up to that cafe which we gave up yesterday. Along the way she spotted a crane in the creek, photo was a moderate success. Then we drop by the spring, which the lady told us about this morning. First off, it's not a spring but a test rig, it's output is visibly fluctuating as the pump works, and it isn't as cold as one expects from a mountain spring. Nothing special, and not as plentiful either.
We reach the peak where the „Vijogor“ cafe is supposed to be. I liked the name, because they kept the j in it. Nowadays there's an engrbian trend to remove the j as not western enough. But the cafe is not up there, there's a staircase 20m down, and then it's stuck in the ground floor of a three story building, no terrace... well ciao goodbye. Walk back up, pull out the binoculars, sit on the bench and have a smoke. I think there's Kopaonik on the horizon here, if anyone can recognize it, be my guest.
Behind Vila Vila (or Vila the villa?) I spot a familiar movements in the pines out in the left field. A squirrel! The whole second time in my life (where else?) I saw one here. Black.
We dined on the gulaš leftovers, cold junjeći, there was just enough of it. Again drank just three small shots. The air cleared enough, it was a bright sunny day, so the construction at that viewpoint from two paragraphs above was clearly visible, what with the lit up crane.
I made this shot, again, the same as those of last night, focused by hand, leaning the eos70 on the terrace wall. There were more shots like this; on this one I best love the tones and everything.
My phone finally emptied. I tried to charge it from the yooessbee outlet in the back of the box under the teevee, and it got detected but wasn't charging. Tried to charge it in Joda, but it charges only while engine runs, lest something left plugged in discharges the battery. Well, I don't quite need it - for photography there's the eos70, which just rolled the cajger (Zeiger, display in german) the fourth time (this shot is nr. 40225 which means 40221 because it skips numbers with four zeros), for navigation there's the tablet...
Actually I almost brought the charger, but it's hers, and she keeps it in the kitchen, next to the sandwich maker, on which she often roasts the burgers, and the fat drops burst out often enough to grease it thoroughly. I just touched it and saw how greasy it was, and while I wiped my fingers I forgot to ask where's the other one.
The other thing I forgot was to cut my fingernails. But I got used to long ones by now. They usually bother me a lot, not this time.
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* young cheese of goat milk, not any cheese of young goat
Mentions: čorba, čvarci, engrbian, eos70, Joda, pašteta, pogačice, spaček, in serbian