21-VIII-2023.
So Fayes and Rein are coming tonight, and the kids are excited. Jitters in their pants, as we'd say.
For once we have guests from abroad and I'm not the organizer nor the host, just the driver. They found some fancy accommodation in Čurda, of all places. Nina and I went there in the afternoon, with all three girls in the Joda, to check out the room and get the keys. I finally gave up on those clogs I bought on 23-IX-2018., they fell apart. So for this tour I got out my sandals, that I bought in Subotica on 03-VII-2015.. They were all dusty and in cobwebs, but otherwise fine.
When we got there, somehow summoned the guy to open up and show us around. Nice and comfy and lifeless... no trees anywhere, this is the modern building style, no shade, no color, the yard is bare, there's just lawn in the back, and the swimming pool. Inside is likewise posh, clean, colorless and all new. Okay, not me who'll sleep here. During the twenty minutes we were there, I noticed my own lopsided walk, as if my right heel is somehow lower. What the... raised the foot, and saw most of the heel missing, the underside of the insole clearly visible. Well maybe it unglued somewhere, possibly in the car? I'll look for it.
By the time we got home, the soles were equally missing on both sides. Material fatigue, which I just explained to Violet over lunch (does this Maggi bottle have a stopper? Yes... here, on the bottom of the karafindl, it fell off). So yet another pair of footwear to discard. While unloading chickenfeed from Joda (had to drop to detelina and buy some, and by the kiosks to recharge her prepaid cellphone), I noticed the fixed-sole clogs I wore before these, washed them and that's what I'm wearing for the airport.
The airport is mostly redone, had a first hand account from Flying polyp, a welder, on burundi. So the parking will be interesting.
And it was. For one, at the recommendation of Nina's geepyess, we drove past Bežanijsko cemetery and through Surčin. That village, Batajnica and probably Borča and other outskirt villages are the lair of small businesses, nobody lives there, the streets are strewn with workshops, garages, warehouses, hotels, chinese department stores, restaurants, fastmunches, whatever you imagine they have it. I barely noticed the exit to the airport. And we got to some huge parking lot, full of cars but no people, guess we'd need some half an hour of walk to go from there, if we could find a path, so I drove on and got right there. Of course, I missed the parking entrance so I drove another round, and parked really close. We arrived at the gate at 23:16, exactly the minute their plane, 20 minutes too early, was landing. And then waited 50 minutes, as their luggage got lost. They had a hectic day, from waking up on a cruise ship, where they sightsaw the Baltic and the Denmark-Sweden straits, disembarked in Rotterdam, passed their luggage to Amsterdam while themselves taking a tour of Rotterdam, then taking some other transportation to the airport. So filling the lost luggage claim form took that long. They'll get it on wednesday. The dutch cheeses that Fayes bought for us in Amsterdam (airport, though they had a tour of the factory) are excellent, at least the one we tried so far. I love cheese and fondly remember it.
The signs on the airport advertise „first three hours of parking for free“ and there's no small print on them, but I did expect some twist... and I was right. I inserted the chit, and it didn't lift the barrier for me, just lit a tiny screen saying „800 dinars, insert cash or lean a card“. Fuckit, few years ago it was 90 dinars per hour, but yes, ever since the french Vancie got the concession to do the passenger services, it's gone into 15:00*.
Fayes looks even tinier than I remember her, gone all minuscule. Rein is the same, perhaps more wrinkled. He immediately pegged Joda for a Frenchie.
We got them to their rooms, arriving in Čurda just 15 minutes behind the estimate, not rather bad. We were supposed to bring the kids over right away, but everybody was too sleepy, including me. When we got home, all the kids were sleeping, except Linda, who was just about to collapse her eyes, and I wasn't far from that either, despite my evening catnap. So we all hit the hay, and woke at various times in the morning, then they packed, got into Joda and I took them straight to Čurda. Left them there to have three days and nights of family time, and went home to distill some apple brandy. Silence...
So we spent the day at ease. Distilled one batch of apple brandy in the morning, went for a bit to Čankovo in the afternoon. There we replaced the gasket on the water pump, and finally had a good drink of our cold water. Found out that I lost the skill of walking in fixed clogs, after five years of wearing the flexies. So I'll switch to my Kompako light shoes for the rest of the week, when I really need to walk in public place. For the rest of it, barefoot. And I like it.
More ease and good poor man's entertainment in the evening. On wednesday it was my birthday, which meant that Bajlo called before lunch to mock me a little, and Dragana sent a „today we have a lovely day“ message. Tried to call her in the afternoon, just to check on her sister's situation, but it was her nap time. Later we got in the van, and went to Čurda to pick them all up. Then Dragana called just as we were disembarking on kaštel's parking [lot]. No news, great news, excellent.
And then we went for a short stroll around the park, awfully humid in there, the grass held a huge amount of water and the forest shielded against what little wind was there. My shirt stuck to my belly and stayed so almost to the end.
Then we had dinner - my treat, exactly here, because we knew the grub would be first class and no band would play. And the waitress was excellent, everything as one'd want, plus a perfect banat accent exactly as much as needed, all good. Should have tipped her more.
Unexpectedly, they both loved the fish čorba. Rein first poured only one ladle, then went for three more. And they loved the bread, dipped it in their plates (which is not done here, but who cares). The main course were roasted-in butkice, which are first boiled for 12 hours and then roasted for 40 minutes. It's worth the effort. The skin was exactly crisp as on a roast piglet, and the meet and tendons inside were soft, just right. All great.
The kids got somewhat tired, until their fries and ćevapčići arrived. Sometimes you cant talk them into eating, sometimes they can't have enough. Depends on their liking. At least Raja and Violet can munch an adult's dose of ćevapčići. Linda and Sanda had their fill of fries, that's their main course. Violet also tried Nina's calamari, didn't quite like it, but wasn't disgusted either.
We could have stayed longer except for the kids, so we just packed up and drove back to Čurda. The twins had a nap, and then went back to their main toy, the swimming pool.
For twonnyforth we first planned a trip to Fruška Gora, but then there's the problem of not knowing places on it, we rarely go there, and we don't know what would kids like there, there's nothing but fresh air and a view here and there. So we went for Petrovaradin, i.e. the tress (as the aborigines call the fortress), and that turned out right. Even driving the van through the old downtown wasn't much of a problem, it's the same congestion as it was 45 years ago, didn't get worse. Parking, though, would be a fucking big problem. On the fortress itself we took a turn to the nearest parking, didn't like it, drove around and only then Nina's geepyess caught up with us and led as to the perfect spot inside the fortress, so close that even Rein, with his clanky knees, didn't have a problem.
There was an extended selfying session and other shooting, because the landscape stretches southeast-north-west, really something to see. Fayes has mastered the selfie bludgeon, Nina brought her Nikon (the one in color! - dark red) there'll be lots of shots. For lunch we got the best possible table, farthest out under the awning, facing the same wide panorama and cooled by the huge swath of Danube flowing around the fortress, so at least I didn't get all sweaty this time - Rein did, the Philippino, used to it. Linda and Sanda asked for pancakes, so I intercepted the waiter as I was going down to pee, „what do you have pancakes with?“ „we don't have pancakes“ „and I was just explaining how one can make pancakes even in an empty kitchen... I dare not tell them the bad news, you do it“. There my dear grilled him likewise „what kind of restaurant is this?“ „the best!“ „how can you not even have pancakes then?“. Well, the guy did his best, and the girls got some nice cake and two kinds of juice. Linda managed to have four glasses around her, and spilled a bit only from one. And there were fries, and cool tea... This was Fayes's treat, on her credit card (deep in red since long ago), plus 20€ cash tip. We did pass her the 200€ that Go sent to their friend Kenny who maintains the lawn at her house, so at least for this year she won't have to mail a check. Made it simple.
We had a plan to visit the shopping mall at Bagljaš on the way back, but the kids were tired, so we drove them straight to Čurda again. They went for a brief nap, and then hit the pool again, for a couple of hours until someone had a party there. With live band playing until 0:30, they didn't sleep until then. Three days with a pool at hand did pay off - Sanda learned to float on her back, and Linda once fell in at the deeper end, and just rebound off the pool's floor, emerged and grabbed the edge, no panic. Wish the other two mastered any of that.
On friday we drew ourselves in Joda right on time, and they were pretty much already packed. Just had to reshuffle a few things, to fit the two liters we brought (one apple, one apricot). It got complicated when we called a cab, as they are heavily regulated and won't accept more than four persons per vehicle, no matter that the girls are around 16kg each. So we got them into Joda and the rest of them went by cab. I took the scenic route, the yellow brick road at šećerana, showed them our old house (speaking of which, Zina's father called later to see if we may be selling), so they eventually got to see our house, at least on the outside. „Like Philippines and unlike the US, fruit trees on the street“.
And we got to the airport with no trouble at all, and I parked almost at the same spot, because there's always lots of vacancy, enough people have learned how steep the rates are so they avoid the parking [lot] as much as possible. So we said our goodbyes - there's no sitting together in the restaurant while waiting for the roll call, the restaurants are now on the other side of the barrier, so then it was ciao ciao and then it took us quite a while to get out of the parking [lot], because on the left ramp there was some Russian who had no cash no card, and some likewise unequipped gastarbajter on the right. Quite a congestion occurred. The fucken Frenches, what confusion they caused. The parking where the first three hours are for free, that's the one almost a kilometer away, and there's a shuttle bus to it, and it's named the same as the airport. The parking[ lot]s at the building are named P1, P2, P3, and there different rules apply. But none of that is advertised anywhere, the confusion is intentional, so you get a vehicle incarcerated at the ramp, because nobody told the driver that it has to be paid at exit. The poor Russian ran twice to the concourse and back, the fat Bulgarian moved her rump back and forth, the other gastarbajter behind the Russian and in front of me finally gave up trying to switch lanes... took some twenty minutes. By the time I lit the second cigarette, it cleared and we drove home. I was lucky to be third in line - there were at least twenty of them behind me.
Then we heard they didn't have that much luck with their trip. They landed in Munich okay, but their flight to Luxembourg was canceled because of a storm in Munich (!), so they waited a lot and got diverted to Berlin (!). Their daughter and her family live on a military's military base, spitting distance from Luxembourg.
Their luggage made it to Munich, and decided to stay there. They visited their daughter, son-in-law and the grandchildren, and returned to Virginia Beach, and still didn't get it.
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* „tri pičke materine“ - three mother's cunts, which is often abbreviated as 3 p.m., but then I do hate that am-pm scheme, so I translated it so. Speaking of which, Fayes set her alarm clock to 5 pm instead of am... got up at 6:20 woken up by the noise outside their cabin, and booted straight into panic mode.
Mentions: 03-VII-2015., 23-IX-2018., 11-III-2024., burundi, butkice, Čankovo, čorba, Čurda, ćevapčići, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), gastarbajter, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Joda, karafindl, kaštel, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), šećerana, Violet, Zina, in serbian