13-IV-2023.
To Novi for that concert. Raja was a cause of concern, because by 9:30 in the morning he was still awake, so baba sent him to bed.
Specially for this occasion I switched jackets - took the newest denim one I had, and left the one from Lidl, which I wore the whole winter, as I had my real winter jacket only 4-5 times. Worse, I put on socks and shoes instead of clogs, and screwed myself thus, my legs were like boiled legs*, I barely waited to take off those negative phenomena off my feet. Not good when cold, cooked even worse.
The navigation shouldn't be a problem, but it happened that I failed to notice where to turn left after the underpass to the Žeželj bridge, so I went on and took some left turns, roughly following that route, but through the narrow and confusing old streets, half on a hunch, half on my 3d sense, half on Nina's phone, and got to the štrand of Danube pretty much where I wanted, just a block closer to the goal. And found a place to park, which was the biggest problem - we'd need to keep the car there for 3-4 hours, and all the places around downtown are limited to 30 or 40 minutes, with maybe 3-4 repeats, 2 hours max. This is some montage garage, metal frames etc, allegedly belongs to the theatre, has about 50 slots, just right. Of course, the guy ahead of us didn't know that he needs to press the green button to get a slip, so the barrier stayed down. I sent Nina to instruct him, just like someone had to [instruct] me last year in Delta Siti. Because, fuckit, the tech is getting replaced these years, at home both parkings have cameras and tag recognition, so as soon as it reads your tags, it lifts. Here, it's still the button and the slip.
We made a full round of downtown walk. Lots of things have changed while the whole stayed basically the same. The katolička porta isn't too big, yet they managed to fit five taverns along one edge, and the free tables seem to be scarce.
Zmaj Jovina is practically same as the Kazandžijsko sokače in Niš, there's a walk in the middle and the rest of it is tables. Likewise, rather full. Dunavska (not dUnavska, that's anywhere else, this is Novi, here it's dunAvska, which I explained to Raja at length) is mostly as it was, only onle passage, aka ajnfor, is now named after Vlada Divljan, „Dalmacija“ is now called „Ribar“ (fisher), and some 2-3 housefronts have contracted the gray paint plague. Right behind the corner we found a brzožder (fastgrub, v. house dictionary). I took five [ćevapčići] in a somun, and for them pljeske. Mine was excellent; they didn't quite like it, because the guy, allegedly after his Novi Pazar recipe, didn't chop the onions too finely, and used green onion - which is fresh, true, but chewy, should have chopped it better. The guy also had burgers, not in a somun though, they come in a bun - the industrial bullshit I'd rather not even look at. Raja at least had solid fun throwing pieces of somun to pigeons.
Then we walked around the park. I heard at least three different groups of people speaking russian among themselves. The youth was milling around, sitting on the grass, even saw three girls playing cards. Lots of strollers too. The concert was in the youth centre, previously culture home, where I was only twice before - in 1973 when the amateur movie festival was running in it, and in 1978 when they let us in to get warm until our bus arrives. Of course, I completely misremembered the geography of the foyer, the big hall is to the right, not straight on.
When we found our seats, I felt like Yugoslavia - Russians to the left of me, Amers to the right...
Concert like any other, a show. The conductor had a lot of fun, of course it was all well rehearsed, including his „mistakes“. After every song he'd call out whoever had a solo to get up, sometimes four of them, and then often the whole thirty-some orchestra, at least some fifteen times. And the setup was impressive - seven violins, two cellos, two double basses (not one quad bass...), two horns, a keyboard, a harph, two trumpeteers (of which one was a sumo wrestling candidate), two flutes, a bassoon, one guy with a powered guitar (bass, I presume, didn't hear any guitat solos), a drummer, a tympanist, a general hitter guy with tambourines and whatnots, big hitter guy with big drum, gong and tubular bells (which I haven't heard at all)... And they claim to be a japanese band, which is doubtful. The conductor is one, okay, and the singer is - but she's an opera singer living in Europe for quite a while. The rest of the band... perhaps 2-3 Japaneses, the rest of them plain whites. Raja had lots of fun, said it was „pretty awesome“. The top of the show was a collective selfie with the audience - someone climbed on something in the back (the tympani?) and made a shot of the whole band with some fifty people who managed to climb to the stage.
On the way out I even heard some hungarian. The set of languages that I know how to is thus complete for the day.
The instructions on how to pay the parking was somewhat ambiguous - could mean pay on exit or pay then exit, the latter being in operation at the airport, where you need to carry the slip to the kiosk, pay and get a different slip that you insert into the machine at exit to lift the barrier. So I watched the guy who was exiting just now, and aha, he's paying at the exit, through the window, okay. I maneuvered somehow, approached the kiosk, and the old guy closed his window. Not only the glass, but also the wire mesh on top. I knocked, and he opened it only to say „it's over for today, it's open“. And yeah, the barrier was up. We stayed just the three minutes beyond his working hours, and thus it's free... We were at home within an hour.
I saw Das typed some, after his guy kept asking stuff about doc2pdf in Feds on the UA for the whole last week. Well, I told him what I had, which wasn't much, it's all in the comments in the code.
The next day (friday, 14th) we meant to go to the garden, but it rained... Cleared after lunch. She wanted to take Linda and Sanda to a playground, but they wanted one specific, with the big swing and a slide and sand... well they all have that. And it has a shop. Aha, that's in Lesnina, so „deda, get on the bike“. And so we did. They didn't play much there, we had just two cigarette breaks, but then they went into that chinese shop and stayed there for some time, while I stayed outside to keep an eye on the bikes. I spotted Dragana on her terrace, while waiting so, waved at her and we talked like that, me on the pavement. Then the girls came out of the shop, with brand new neon green pokemons, and had to brag to Dragana. It wasn't strange to them to see her in a different place. She treated us too, got new rakija shots, as the search for the last of the old batch turned nothing. Nice shots.
There was more rain in the evening. Tried the new glass. We did ourselves again, a bit less than last time, felt somehow sleepy. Then I had a recursive dream that one of the girls (Go?) has a little firm named similarly, almost the same, as something I have already noted here in Byo, and keeps it inactive, while waiting to think of a neat trick how to use the similarity for a bit of guerilla marketing, and also to think of what would the firm be about. Ran at least ten iterations of that, until I convinced myself that the thing doesn't exist, and that I shouldn't create an article for it here, shouldn't mess up the text. This obviously came after I retrofitted Bečkerek and Fabrika station into it during this week, so my head was full of diving through the story.
And then the pressure in my bowels got me up inhumanely early, before seven. Of course, by ten I was asleep again, and it did feel like I'll have yet another weekend flu. The wind got to me through that jacket, denim isn't for me anymore, the one from Lidl is much tighter. And during that nap I dreamed up the word „firoprazim“, which, in my dream, I decided to salvage for the wakeup, this one won't get lost like so many others. So I kept repeating it all the way to unconsciousness... er, to consciousness, where I came to Byo and wrote it down so it's not lost. Small victory... Now I wish I remember what was it supposed to mean. Sounds, now in waking state, like a medication.
The weekend flu came out more serious than I predicted, so we delayed everything - the 97th frendz parti at Dragana's will be on tuesday, the 18th. I easily run out of breath. To differ from what I had in early march of 2019, this is lighter, I don't get the feeling I may really run out of air, there's always enough, it's just that I have to do that so often. Just in case, we'll buy the wine in the afternoon and take a cab to her.
It all turned out great, me losing breath while climbing up didn't last long, and I was okay the whole evening. Though, they had to mock me some, so I got a pair of socks as a gift, because she chided me on saturday for going without, and seriously considering that as the cause of my condition... Well, I'll never don these. First, they're too small - size is 35 to 42, I'm wearing 44; second, they're black. She will take them.
Dragana didn't want to kiss, as I was, yeah, under the flu. Well okay, if you believe that, what can I do. At least we had a knock [see 22-III-2023. for translation], had eggs. The grub... we overdid it with first the entree, which was all great and abundant, and then she killed us with a roast and baked-in cauliflower. And then there was cake and, boom, some of Borče's baklava.
Nobody did anything to shit up the evening, there was no holding the floor, no interruptions, even Borče didn't fall into the classroom mode, a miracle all in all. I had trouble breathing on the way out, downstairs, as if my whole front was heavy and pressing on my ribs, had to take a breather break before calling a cab. This is when he noticed how few words I use for that, literally „good evening... in front of Lesnina... važi, prijatno“, where „važi“ is a whole contract in itself, it means all of „is in effect“, „is agreed upon“, „is valid“, „is okay“. „Prijatno“ can mean good appetite or „have a good one“, or „have a nice day“. Six words in serbian, including pleasantry. Yeah, right, I said, it's not that I'm walking into a shop and want to have a warm human contact, a chat and get to know the people. These are operators, their goal is to cram a maximal number of calls into the 24 hours that a day has, so my approach is short clear and nothing excess. And this is where our approaches differ - after those six months as operator in the army, and thirty years online, of which at least first ten on slow modems, I had to learn to make it short. His speech serves no such need, it's cultivated to fill 45 minute slots.
Had hard time falling asleep. Not that I wasn't sleepy, but it was hard to breathe, as if some heavy sack hung over my ribs, full of whatever I drank or ate... but when I woke up, I breathed much easier, I even (at 11, though) lit one and it didn't bother me, my lung capacity came back, and this pretend flu went into its next stage, thick šlajm (not exactly slime, mucus), which is okay, that's a beast we know and know how to tame.
By friday (21st) various phases and actions toward healing up have passed - went to Klincaid twice, and I ran the mower, in short intervals and then made them gradually longer; it alo happened that we drank in the evening; on friday I already had my lungs restored to pretty much original size, and the flu moved to the next phase, thick šlajm. Despite being the same germanic word, šlajm is not just slime, it's lung mucus. It's ripe now and wakes me up to cough it out, horse strength, and it won't ease up, I have to keep coughing until I've cleared out enough. Other ails have passed.
Our tobacco dealer works again, all like before, price too. Met on wednesday evening. Now even his grandson comes... sort of a „bring your kid to work“ thingy.
And T. S. from IV6.73 called (she and husband, both from the class, own a print shop - see 17-IV-2018.). They decided to do a 50 year parastos, despite the general feeling after the last one (41st, they couldn't agree on 40th) was a disaster and they don't want to see each other again. Meanwhile only one of them died, of sorrow after his mother. The guy just wouldn't leave the cemetery since she died. Never got married, don't know what was he doing all his life... I met him only once after high school, at police HQ when I was registering a car. He was half the man, not chubby at all anymore, all rejuvenated, brand new. There, a life went to nothing.
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* „like a boiled leg“ - not good at all, looking bad, unpresentable
Mentions: 17-IV-2018., 22-III-2023., Bečkerek, Byo (Byo), ćevapčići, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Fabrika station, Feds, frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, IV6.73, Klincaid, Lesnina, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), maturski parastos (parastos), Mohandas Raj (Das), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Novi Sad, pljeska, rakija, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), UbiquAgora (UA), in serbian
27-IV-2023 - 7-IV-2026