Went for a vacation in Bralići, with four other families. We rented a tent from the AMSJ (like AAA), a black job without a floor, with wooden spikes. We slept the first night on a field near the lake at Partizanske Vode. Had a mattress bought along the way in Belgrade, but for this night the guys found hay and filled our tent. Magnificent sleep.
We later bought a better tent, stove and inflatable mattresses and a few other things from some Polish family. This is when I first met Veca and Sneca, because our dads were old pals from work, and of course they were one of those four families. Four women of the gang had the same name, so when one of the guys would call his wife, four would respond... until about the second day. Then they stopped responding altogether, unless there was something specific added to the name. Which didn't quite fit dad's habits, but it will take maybe twenty years to realize what's wrong and to start nagging him about it.
The camp was minimal. Improvised, didn't even have a proper toilet - it was just a wooden cabin over a hole in the ground. There was running water, one tap at the end of a hose, perched against a hand-laid stone fence, no cement. There was some shade... for a cat, perhaps. The camp was private, someone just owned the piece of land at the right spot, barely 100m from the sea, so he just provided for minimal amenities (i.e. toilet was probably an awful čučavac, but we were used to those, bad toilets were the rule). We had our tents circled and someone had a huge swat of a white parachute, so we had a dome stretched from tent to tent. The silk packs well.
In the evening we'd go to the nearby restaurant on the beach, just to buzz around and have fun, whatever we could find. There was an interesting game - a wooden peg, about 25cm long by 5cm across, was hung from a long slat tied to a terrace roof. Another identical peg was perched on a concrete slab about 70cm to the left of the first. You'd have to push the first peg so it would go along its path, hanging on a twine, and hit the other peg from behind. Know your pendulum. It was tricky.
One of the cars in the caravan was a Citroen Ami, the funniest car in known universe, if you manage to forget the spaček. Its roof ended somewhere above the middle of its trunk lid, so the rear window was tilted backwards. But its suspension was miraculous, it had gas springs, and special Michelin tires, which always looked a bit too limp, but it could negotiate any curve with ease. And still its engine was smaller than that of a fića. The insides were full of original tricks, like the gear shift in the middle of the dashboard, when every other car I knew had it on the floor or on the steering column. The seats were extremely comfortable, the doors opened and closed softly - generally, it had the touch and feel of a much bigger car. The point of it, which I learned decades later, was that it was designed to reuse as many parts from other cars as possible, to make it cheaper by economy of scale. That roof actually came from ID-19, which we all called ajkula (shark). I think that's when I acquired a taste for french cars.
Quote of the week: „Sky full of stars and here and there a random moon or two“.
Next to us were a couple of polish families so we bought one of their tents when they were leaving. Bright yellow, two layered, spaceous. We mostly spoke russian with them. They didn't mind, they were abroad. (i.e. at home, nobody in the eastern bloc would confess to speak russian, and used it very reluctantly)
One of them asked „how can you work when it's hot like this?“. The answer in unison was „who works?“.
On the way back we stayed one night in Kotor - in the new tent - and one in Dubrovnik. We didn't travel as a caravan, as some decided to stay longer, some to take a tour of the coast. I think we also slept once somewhere along the way, the fića couldn't go any faster, just the Bosnia part of the trip would take ten hours. Perhaps around Mostar.
26-V-2007 - 15-I-2026