14-XII-2014.
Messaged Marinko that debelamačka has moved to Eva. He knows Smilja from when they were neighbors, it's orderly to let him know.
On suština it crossed my mind that I could cut out horizontal strips from my old photos, for the headline rndalica (v. house dictionary). Emailed Škrba a few times about that.
Sunday lunch, with dad and Lena and Nina and Ender and kids. Two kinds of čorba, one vegetarian. A roasted goose.
After lunch, took dad home, she stayed at home, and we hit the road to Lalinski, Lena was paying visit to her office. First visited a kiosk, to get the munchies and whatnot.
Ender was, of course, the driver, but I didn't shoot around, probably saxo's windows weren't clean enough. The weather served us well, despite the sun being so low at this time of year, there were no clouds at all.
The house in Lalinski is a wonder. On one hand everything is pressed clay, there may be some brick dressing on the front wing, the walls are straight and smooth there, and then on the other hand every now and then a details pops from the left field that veers to class and style. In the summar* kitchen the ceiling is sheathed in plastic, but it being already low while trying to hide the central beam which held it, they made it wavy, with bottoms at the walls and in the middle, crests halfway between. Vertiginously inclined.
A row of thujas (cedars) in front of the summar kitchen. The thujas are in fashion here, always were, but they require lots of water, which was no problem, the roof of it is bent that way, flows from the kitchen and the little streetside room. We negotiated with the old woman in that room. It seems a regular occurrence, that the elderly in villages tend to stay in that part, kitchen and small room, it being lower ceilinged and thus easier to heat than the tallceilinged main building. Includes our neighbor across, in Čankovo - while his wife was alive, we went there for coffee a few times, always in the small room, never saw the main house, as if it wasn't used at all.
The bathroom is a pearl unto itself, the merry seventies. The red plastic was en vogue then, what with the big orange-white 40cm ball lights, hanging by a winding cable, having a metal band around it, as a handle when you wanted to change its height. This is all in that style. Don't know where the old man found it, how did he find everything in that style. Had I found such a bathroom by some friend's, in a novogradnja, I wouldn't have been surprised at all. Here, in a village...
Between the big kitchen and the pigsties there's a pantry and in it a square pit , with a hidrofor (all rusty but old woman said it works). This is, and all rooms beyond, are pressed clay, walls are uneven, just whitewashed, and all the corners are rounded. And then in the pantry window, out of eight small glass panes, four are fluor etched, old style posh.
The old man was a passionate hunter. He adorned the branch stumps on the thujas with empty cartridges of double barrel's ammo. Here in the salon he used the blind wall (other walls have windows or doors) to put up the great photo wallpaper... and then glued small images of various game. Out of proportion, all of them, none fit, but there, you can see that the host was a hunter. Perhaps fellow hunters came here to drink, who knows.
This arch is another pearl, polished as if for an ethno tavern. Wallpapers around, the ceilings in all rooms covered in plastic sheething (just like how we did oma's hall ceiling in 1977). The walpaper in the back being lighter on the bottom is not flash bounced off the hardwood floors, it's where the kitchen cabinets were hung.
Behind the summar kitchen is a kotarka, and behind it some kind of garage, which seems like it's been a few decades since it last saw a car. There are traces of once use, it even has a curving road to it. Still, tough to get there, it takes opening two gates. For this is the classical banatian yard: front third flowers and house, middle third poultry, rear third vegetables. The garage must have been some shed in its previous incarnation, but the rear wall was then made, out of... lesonit, which, being just a fine particle board, now has imaginative curves, as if built by Dali.
All in all, interesting. Almost a museum. Dunno what of.
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* to mimic the 'letna' instead of 'letnja', as pronounced here
Mentions: Čankovo, čorba, debelaMačka, Ender Aquila (Ender), Eva, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Lalinski Konak, Marinko Protić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), novogradnja, oma, saxo, suština, in serbian