For the yule night Ford and I walked to the corner. There's a couple of empty lots, so the neighborhood gathered there, turning something on a spit, lamb or piglet, taking swigs of brandy. That was interesting to him. We did freeze a bit, but the booze gets you warm.
For the christmas, a dinner at my folks. We somehow fit around that table, mom laid out really a bunch of stuff, even a proper česnica*, we stuffed ourselves properly. Then we went back, and within half an hour he asked whether there's a place around here where we could eat something. Well there's a proper tavern nearby, the Bečkerek, two blocks away, by the Fabrika station. Let's go.
There's no sidewalk, and the cobblestones create lakes, since they were jumbled during the 1996 election, when they dug the sewers and didn't put the stones back properly. We somehow found our way over the improvised sidewalk - random bricks for stepping stones, where they had them - and got there. And had dinner all over again. Fuckit, how much can this guy eat. On our way back another fog came, I didn't even see where I stepped. It froze meanwhile, so no mud.
Along the way, in chat, I mentioned something that was an obvious allusion to some title by Dostojevski... and saw that it flew straight above his head. I explained what I meant, and he said „well we learned none of that, I'm a machine engineer“. Wow, that's even worse than the directional education we had since 1979... Two or three days later, he mentioned in an email that he took days off to „celebrate our 20ty aniversary“. Really? Twentyty? The illiterate fool**.
Mild chaos at Zero, Greg was late coming from Dakota because of the snow, and in Ford's village there's half a meter of it. Who'd say that even in that south it can happen. Greg reports that they got a statement from the INS that they got the request for my visa, expecting an answer soon.
This morning Ford wrote more emails, all from my machine, the only one which can get connected, packed. While packing, he found the photos that Greg made while here, and gave them to me. The quality is incredible. I packed two liters of dad's brandy, and we stuffed all of it into the fregata (Nina came along to keep me company) and left for Surčin. About halfway we hit a fog bank again, but it cleared by the time we passed the Terazije ridge, ie. downtown (which is up...). Had sunshine all the way to the airport. Later we heard that the hungarian railways were on strike since new year, should finish that today.
We had lots of time left, so we visited the aviation museum. Interesting exhibition, they even have the old Rogožarski's biplane - don't know whether it's the original or a faithful replica, doesn't matter.
So he left, and Nina and I went to Novi Beograd, to drop the cask of dad's wine for uncle Staja. He's in Zajač, though, but Anica and Danica are there. Found the building, found the entrance, found the door, rang, rang, rang for three minutes, nobody opens. And we were announced. Eventually left the cask with the neighbor, to give them when they come out.
For the next day I intended to start taking down the sound from gramophone records. Branko made us a five-wire cable from my computer to Go's Sony, out of some ten-wire terminal cable, about 10m of it, with two bananas on my end and a DIN fiver jack on her. It beats, simply rings. Because it's somehow easier to play seedees from my machine (even though it's already the sixth drive in it, thanks to the good guys from CompuWiz, it wasn't the drives but rather the lousy bulgarian disks), because that contraption of hers has a carousel for three seedees, which never worked right.
Then it turned out, when I tried, that even though electrically it's all good, connection excellent, signal complete (even found a proper turntable cable socket on the Sony), my machine wasn't up to the task. It takes more computing power and more memory to compress into mp3. Fuckit.
On tenth, Boća asks whether I'm still here or already across. Well... „I'm still here. Waiting any day now for them to tell me they sent what is needed to the embassy here so to go and get the stamp in my passport. Oldwaverlies, I'd bag to not spread the news over sezam - we're all just virtual personae here anyway - so probably at the time of transition I'll have just two-three days of pause. Which I intend to use to make the change unnoticeable on SF stories, until I post the first impressions about the aborigines in Škrba's theme (eye_of_the_world [oko_sveta, which actually means 'around the world', but 'oko' also means an eye]). Expect good laugh.“
The two ordered mp3 CDs with dowmestic moosic I already sent to be waiting for me (aside, one guy there wants to learn serbian, having graduated russian and not having found job with it - makes do as a programmer), but mr. pirate didn't have much choice in my genres, so I'll have to rip them vinyls.
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* the traditional krismas cake, like a baklava but with more honey and nuts and much drier
** it will take me more time to understand how he's no exception at all
10-IV-2023 - 27-VI-2024