02-X-2023.
On sunday we got up relatively early, had coffee on the terrace. It got cloudy, and the clouds blurred the surrounding mountain peaks. I noticed that Joda has a colorful company, so I couldn't resist. The only parking [lot] in town on which all the cars are in color. It's interesting how nobody, me included, parks under that chimney, which still didn't fall yet. Though the other two chimneys don't look much better.
Around nine thirty down for a walk again. It got a bit chilly, and my new shirt from sekendica had short sleeves, so the elbows feel chilly under the jacket. Went to yet another one, and I even found two shirts, in interesting colors. I love to buy clothes in sekendica in a banja, they still didn't receive the command to make all the clothes gray. She also bought some jacket, black. Not everything is available in color.
Had some integralled pogačice for breakfast, more of a stick with grains, and some sort of mountain yogurt of 2dl, still improved to 0,18 liters. Its taste was a tad funny, though I don't believe that the cows graze exactly the same grasses which may cause such a taste each and every day. Besides, the dairy firm is called „milk house“, in english, which is suspect in itself, at least for me.
The kid on the square is mistreating his accordeon again, but now he's accompanied with his older brother, who at least knows how to play. A bit away two girlies play, much better than he, on two buttoners*. Further down some old guy, with proper šajkača and opanci, plays a frula [shepherd's block flute], quite badly. Not that he errs in pitch or rhythm, what he plays is a real kolo, it's that he so often blows, in random moments, too much air and produces an octave higher pitch in all the wrong places, and oh, bro, in a dozen bars he mixed up three kolo tunes. It would be all forgivable had they picked instruments which I never played, then okay, but in both these cases I know a few things.
In a bookstore she found a set of eight episodes of some manga, a solid serbian translation. The japanese comics can be really cruel, and this one is exactly of that persuasion, but Raja already knows the story, played the game two years ago, and Violet liked to watch „Kubo“ back in 2016.
For lunch we decided not to fuck around with a visit to Pećina - we aren't for alpinism, and I'm also not in the mood to unpark the car and drive a mountain road, and then who knows whether they're open, the season is over, it's october now, many joints in town have already closed. There's not an abundance of places where to eat on the main street, not for a cooked meal, it's all cafes, picvarnica [pizza joint as described by my grandmother] and barbecue (which isn't bad, last time we got a plate sized pljeskavica in „Zelengora“), so we went for the sidestreets. Found „Splendid“, which is in english, but I rather think that it's that the owner's grandmother used to stay in Dubrovnik in the hotel of the same name. The house looks old school but neatly maintained, everything clean, orderly and colorful. There are teevee screens on the terrace edges, but we routinely sit so to face away from them and, thankfully, their sound is off. The local radio is on, not bad at all and not too much advertising, at least not now at off season. We see they have a workers' menu, which they call „complete lunch“. Asked the waiter what's in it, said a čorba and a cooked meal, which can be a gulaš, beans, mućkalica and we didn't hear the fourth choice, because we both took the mućkalica. And it was all quite good. Fuck you, Balasevic.
On top of it he brought a cake, it says there that the complete includes a dessert. Killed us with food, but we survived to the room and then sank into two hours of catnap. The terrace door ajar, just the fresh air, a bliss. Around 16:10, when we got up, the sun also appeared, so I knit four shots in those 70 seconds, though the last one already shows the shadows blurring.
The next walk, which we planned to stretch to last us until dinner, took us to the lower part of the park, where there were many empty benches, because the people just aren't able to appreciate these fountains which operate on dry water. Above our heads a flock of crows flew. We saw them last evening, from the terrace, but now I managed to get a shot against the sky - had I shot them then, they wouldn't be seen, just like the tit I shot standing on a pebble in the shallows of Moravica wasn't visible, because it was surrounded with three square[ meter]s of pebbles - pied background, similar colors, invisibile. But these crows, or the black squirrel in the park, now that's visible.
And we sat at the same guy where we had the kokta yesterday, a 0,5 zaječarac [beer] each. We heard the story of the hotel across, which rings empty for many a year now, bought by some guy who then didn't know what to do with it, it would take some investment... Now it's neither renewed nor sold, a fuckup... And some night guard, fancy named sekjuriti, came in and out at least three times, locking it up or leaving unlocked, at random. We already put together a story that the hotel is actually operating, discretely, as a fuckodrome, rooms per hour, and the chick in black, who is pacing in front of it and keeps making phone calls all the time, must be out of her mind for being fired out by three guys in a row, perhaps eventually this fourth one will show up... And „then they'll come to arrest us for how can we explain how do we know all hose things“.
I exercised the technique of shooting over my shoulder or around the corner, from hand and without viewfinder, with wide lens and whatever it catches. I do this a long time now, just not often, only when inspired. This time it came to me rather often, and I kept shooting to the right - yes, I am a rightpaw and the eos70 is for righthanders, but why not try over my left shoulder, just like what Ivićka made me on that shot... and I got this. Later I wondered what blurred the left third of the frame... ah, yes, hair, still got this much.
The next shot is the light reflected of the tiny table, through the beer stein**, good colors, but I already have twenty such shots. Looks nice, but it repeats. Doesn't matter that I had no beers for a year, I have such shots from previous years.
Dining on that lamb in the room again, but now we also have kajmak and cheese, and the remainder of the morning's pogačice.
Trying to hook into someone's network, there's a dozen in the building and only our renter has none, and they all require a password. Tried a couple of simple guesses, no go. It's good that I don't shut the cimet down, it's always only asleep and I only wake it up when I need it, so solitaire stayed open, so I played that while sipping my coffee, while she read them mangas and, look at that, we felt sleepy right after ten. And we went to sleep.
And we got up around four. What now... a coffee. Had a half mug or more, then returned to bed. Woke up again around seven, finished the coffee. She made another bojleruša (v. house dictionary), we sat on the terrace, sun was back, no clouds, a beauty. She then noticed something on the wall, by the upper hinge of the terrace door... look at that, it's a real bat. I did think I saw them flying around here last evening. And look how it's not black at all, except at the edges. And not hanging upside down [wrong, which we found out when we took a better look at the picture]. The stereotypes just went to see history and ask about the dustbin and what's in it.
While we dank this next coffee, I tried grazing the local networks and managed to hit two open ones, which require no password. Used the chance to cache the navigation data into the tablet, and on cimet to take a better look at the map, where exactly to pass around Smederevo.
We weren't warm to the idea of climbing up the stairs one more time, the dozen or fifteen times was enough already, so we packed everything into the backpack and a tote, so we could carry everything into Joda at once. There was just the matter of the key. Dialed Ana, and she said just relax, leave the key on the table, no problem at all. So we hauled all our stuff down and left it in Joda, and went for the last walk. Found that bakery again and ate one honest burek with the same yogurt again... And the narodnjaci didn't get any better since yesterday, one stupider than the other. It's a four line stanza, where the first and third have the identical tune, and the fourth is made to be stretched muyezzin ululation style, and then it repeats. The same four lines. Fifteen times or how many, didn't count. A song, if the word may be wasted on this, with less than twenty seconds of content.
More walk, because we want to buy a cake to take home to the kids, and it's still eight thirty. The shopkeeper is there, but doesn't dare let us in. We don't insist, knowing what dirty techniques the inspectors resort to, trick them into overstepping the published working hours by five minutes, or selling some small thing after the fiscal register was logged out and shut down, and then slap a fine. There, down by the street, the Chinese's shop got temporarily closed by the taxman, because he, the notice says, didn't report the daily sales regularly. And, of course, I needed to pee, and even if we didn't already leave the key, I wouldn't go up to third floor for just that. We rather followed the sign to the public toilet, and look at the miracle, it works, is open, not just open, everything is in working order. The only weird thing is that it has a čučavac in there, but the newer type, so I took the shot and the picture is now with its article. She lacked the technique, had trouble getting up from the crouch, had to push herself against the partition's frame. We got out of habit. I can't even remember when I last crouched for that, 1981 perhaps?
Another smoke break by the dry water fountain, and then it was finally nine o'clock, so we took that cake and three separate cakes, took it all to the car and went off - 9:18. And right there we had the next break, more roadwork in the street leaving west to Aleksinac. Oh, Sokobanjans, why both ends at the same time? Waited that out, and somewhere around Kraljevo (not the city, just a village with same name, before Aleksinac) the navigation told me to take a sharp left to a sideroad. Are you nuts, I know this road. The navigation got confused there, and once in Aleksinac I thought we took the wrong way, we should be going down and this is steep up, so I turned left and... ended up in the gypsy mahala. Took some driving around to find the exit to the highway, the wrong one, southays, goes 5km in parallel to the highway in wrong direction, so we had to go that far to the south exit. Had I coninued uphill there, I would have reached the north one, over Aleksinački Rudnici. But then when would I roam the city downtown if we didn't have this confusion. And then hit the highway all the way to Smederevo. I declared cigarettes to be antihypnotisants, whenever I get a feeling the drive mesmerized me, light another. Not too many, perhaps at about half an hour intervals. And I left the highway at the right exit, and then there's one plate missing at the roadsign, exactly the one I need, which would show whether Pančevo and Kovin are to the left or righ. So I went by dead reckoning again, over a desperately bad road, fallen apart from the hundreds of trucks roaring that way, hasn't been fixed for decades. Heaps of scrap iron everwhere, crumpled car shells.
I got into a gas station to try out the tablet again. Apart from having painted the background black, it actually does work... aha, so back on the road. At a screwed up spot, where the road to Kovin diverts to the right and crosses the railroad, they're just painting the road lines, at a time of worst rush hour. But we waited it out, got to the road to the bridge, not any better than what we had so far after the highway, but at least with less traffic. As soon as we crossed the bridge, the road got excellent. Kovin surprised me, it's really a large place, they even have some brutalist mastodon with interesting architecture, smacks of mid seventies. Then entered Pančevo through a loooooong street, never ending. Can't get to town proper, it looks like an access road which turned into a street. Just by the place where a butcher, miller and baker have lined their shops next to each other, roadwork, they're repaving a longish stretch of it, waited some fifteen minutes to pass.
Then we somehow got past that, had a bit of a confusion at some larger intersection, but I drove around the block and got back on the route, the navigator was a bit late with the display, and then drove the first time through the string of villages - Jabuka, Glogonj, Sefkerin, Opovo. Interesting and at times unexpected, Opovo is surprisingly big, something like Plandište, who'd a thunk. And I was at Jabuka once before, that's where we had that exercise on 07-XI-1984., but that doesn't count, didn't even know where we were then, and didn't see the village at all, spent the time on the farm near it.
Stopped at brzožder (fastmunch, see house dictionary) to eat, and called Nina to check whether we'd take two pljeska more - yes, we should. Waited a bit longer, because there were some regular customers, turkish truckers, so the girl just assumed all four are takeout. I was a bit zombified by driving anyway, let's go home and eat there.
And then I took a solid two hour nap. It's not that I can't drive for five hours straight at this age, it's that I have to sleep it off afterwards. In the evening I did just the first half of the photos, up to saturday evening. The rest I did on tuesday morning, and then did the rest of the backlog - write in spreadsheets what I did with cards, select the monthly batch of photos to upload for the family chat (aka četni sastanak, rota meeting), then pick the best shots since mid july for the „egzibicija“ folder, to refresh fes, to check burundi to see what happened meanwhile, to call Jeptel and complain about the speed... it never ends.
In the afternoon went to Lidl with Linda and Sanda, didn't do that in a while, then in front of Roda to let them use the playground a bit. We forgot to buy a few items, like soy sauce, which we just ran out meanwhile, Violet drips it into a small plate and licks it, we just didn't think to check the stock levels of everything.
Only in the evening we sat and took it slowly... I first watched the „Lone wolf“ movie, interesting in many ways (not the 1969 piece by R.L. Đukić, but some australian thing from 2021) and quite good; she sat in the bedroom and watched something else, enjoying the speed. And then we sat and did away with the rest of the apricot, which turned out unexpectedly good.
Wednesday, 4th. In the afternoon the two guys from Jeptel came, measured the speed, proved what I said, no other choice but to raise the guy in the central, to type the necessary command at the server.
Only then we went to the garden at Čankovo. Found it burgled again, this time the missing items were the old plastic plates, left over probably from our camping years, and a bag with few packs of instant soup, aged at least seven years. She picked more tobacco, I bagged the molehill soil into the wheelbarrow, then into a sack, will need that for the flowerpots - she replanted the big habanero pepper from the row into a bucket, to take upstairs for the winter. It's got some fifty peppers growing, all still green, would be a shame if they perished from frost. And if they ripen as they did last winter, there's bliss. So, will need soil.
On the way back I ordered two medium (pljeskavice, burger-like, at Bob brzožder) and, right at the edge of town, we noticed that the Svetofor is open. It's a russian chain of Costco-like shops, so it's all huge packs, the furniture consists of pallets, the design consists of a forklift. More like the see plus plus (i.e. cash n carry, but we called it see++) was in Hungary, no tiles no ads no fancy lights, just the goods, but a bunch of cheap stuff and stuff that others don't have. Found a proper mortadela, Nedeljković's alp salami and few other things, kvas... don't know what we got in the rush, as we didn't get all that we got. That is, at the register it turned out that some items were still not entered in the lookup table. The register was spanking new, the belt was sheer spotless virgin black rubber. They'll open on friday, this is just a dry run. So they don't take cards either, the readers haven't arrived yet, cash only, which she didn't bring and I had bare 2700 dinars in my pocket. So they had to cancel a few items until the bill fit into the amount. The girls are practicing, their instructor was there, she had exactly the Niš area accent that we heard few days ago. So they had the chance to try everything - miscoded items („see it has a zero in the beginning, should be a two“), cancelling, manual entry from alphabetic item search with manual entry of weight, which happened with the herring hake (a fish which we like a lot, the bone layout is quite simple, even Violet knows how to eat it). Price ridiculous, fish large, good.
Went to Bob then, but they also don't take plastic, well then, I can't pay for this. Would you have trouble selling this to someone else? No trouble at all. Okay then, see you some other time. Because the alternatives were to get in the car and find a serekeš, which is either going to charge me much more than my bank, or is at least 4km away - I know the locations of all four - or to have her pay for it and then come back some day and pay her back, which is 10km then and something to keep in mind until dispensed with. Didn't like either, so... the kids were disappointed. To compensate, I went once more to Lidl and bought soye sauc (there's a pun in the serbian version of this) and to buy the surimi fish sticks. Spotted Grne there again, waved a ciao.
Meanwhile, the guy at Jeptel did his thing, and we have the full 460 Mb/s. Finally, eh.
The kvas I got in that Svetofor is the third different taste under the same name. The first one, sold by some then enterprise here in the late sixties had a tang similar to boza (fermented corn meal), wasn't carbonated and tingled the mouth. Interesting, wish I could find it again. Then the one I found a few years ago wasn't kvas-like at all, it was malt, i.e. alcoholless beer, just like tut-gut used to be, exactly the taste. This now is also interesting, not alike the other two at all. Only after the second glass I found what it reminds me of - the taste of the burnt crust on a fresh loaf of bread, the kind that sticks to the tongue a little. And I like that, the only remark is that it's a bit thin.
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* the type of accordeon which doesn't have a piano layout of keys, but buttons in several slanted rows of black and white ones, which seems confusing (I never even tried to play one), but after some practice it's actually easier, and the fingers can span larger intervals with less bending.
** why don't they have kriegel in english, like we say krigla, but use stein, and pronounce it styne instead of shtyne? Though it's actually krug in german...
Mentions: 07-XI-1984., burek, burundi, cimet, Čankovo, čorba, čučavac, eos70, fes, Grne, house dictionary, Joda, kajmak, kokta, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), narodnjaci, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pogačice, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sekendica, serekeš, solitaire, Violet, yogurt, in serbian