29-V-2024.

On twonyseventh I, of course, did the photos. Not quite all day, but it took a while. Took a lunch break, then continued the photos, then a pause, then picked (any that weren't too blurry or at least showed enough) and uploaded to Dropbox. The day passed just like that, and in the evening I filled a bottle of quince for the guests and tutifruti 21.2 for us two - the quince somehow has too much taste, lingers in the nose for two days. Somehow the tutifruti lies better to me and then we took just a half shot of quince, before sleeping.

On tuesday Zdravko called, to go to Čankovo and see what do we do with that pump. He took me with his service van, a whole workshop in the back, because it didn't make much sense for me to take our van, and Joda was on duty - Stanley and Go were in Belgrade, dental work. Amazingly, there he met some guy from Seattle.

He ran into several issues with the replacement pump he brought as a placeholder until he fixes our old on. And there's one more news - our streetside fence wall fell. The village masons don't ever get it, what they do they don't know why they do, they do it the way they were taught and that's all. Their half brick fences may be firmly plastered, but the foundation is not too firm, just a brick wider than the wall, and then they didn't build over the middle of it, but to the outer edge. It won't tip over, not right away, it lasts some 40 to 50 years like that, which just expired. And a couple of cherry trees leaned on the wall too.

Someone took the opportunity to pick one cherry in the middle of the yard. Where will your soul [go], it wasn't properly ripe yet.

On twonyninth we roasted brandy, first thisannual*, we got 5,1 liters at 49%, excellent start. Go spoke some with Nina, congratulated her on [her] birthday, and then we heard Fayes from the other side, she came to be with children while she goes to the airport, Mark is to arrive. We were looking to find accomodations in Sokobanja, but the guy where we stayed previously didn't have any vacancies, and where they did nobody andswers the phone, in Splendid they are full until sunday, so then... we'll go play it by ear.

On thirtieth we set packing. She took care of the poultry and cats, as far as it was possible. We already have twelve and a half cats (Džimi and her five, Waffle, Rundek, and then Zelena, an epistolary member, with her four), we'll see how many will remain. When I got to check my email, a surprise - one from Bosa , she saw the shots and said she recognized all from the class without a prolbem, but most of the crowd, no way.

We took off at about the time we meant to, when we got hungry. Neša didn't feel like going at all, and it took a while to make him agree to go. We first ordered meat patties (not exactly burgers) from the brzožder in Stajićevo, and got there just when they were ready. It took a while for all six of us to say what we want each with, but okay, we'll get there, it's not that far. I drove almost to the payery at Vrčin (it got moved from Bubanj Potok long ago, but everyone still calls it that), and then Stanley took over. On the first smoke break we didn't stay too long, but even that was enough for one to hook onto us and try to sell us orginal ray ban horatios (our old house slang name for the shades, as per Horatio Caine of ξ Miami), of the famous Felloffatruck brand... On the next one he noticed that the engine oil was at minimum (and some drizzle started, right on cue, so on the third pump we bought two liters (rain stopped). He poured some 8 deci, and it ran fine henceforth (just like it did before, it just cooled better), and then at bare 500m before our exit, a congestion. We waited for more than an hour until the cops opened the spare lane and started letting us pass. It's better that we didn't quite see... a couple of plastic slippers, with a whole lane between them, then thirtysome meters further on black trousers, white shirt, and where the ribcage and upper body were supposed to be a blanket covered the obviously missing part. Someone tried to run over a highway in slippers...

It was what it was... we arrived at the place they stayed nine years ago, but the maam still didn't come to open the season. We parked at the hotel across the street, went in to ask whether they have [vacancies] and how much. While the recepcionistess looked at her screen and made phone calls, we stared around, and it's all echoes, bundles of children and... no rooms available. What now... well, I said, we go the classical method of eyeballing offhand - I crossed the street to ask the two old guys who stood there all the time, about any accomodations. While I crossed the street, some lady drew herself up, of mid forties I'd say, and said she's got some, and started reciting a whole list of places she has, which she obviously did fifty times before, she's got five locations for us, omitting the low end kind like two rooms sharing a bathroom and such, but only the kind she made us for. And it turned out swimmingly, two rooms of exactly the size, each with a bathroom and a terrace or two, one with a tiny kitchen, 55€ a day altogether. While everyone else that I got on the phone or web had it at 2500 dinars per person or up, which would cost us 550€, well this is just half of it. And the house network was excellent, and [the place] wasn't far at all, perhaps 200m beyond the other park. True, a bit uphill... I gave her a downpayment of what I had in my pockets, and then we two walked to the nearest serekeš, which was third of the distance than the one we used before. It's just that it's in such a hole that we never noticed it before.

We all being somewhat tired from the trip, we bought a load of drymeat - two kinds of cheese, sausage, čajna (a kind of peperoni but without peppers, thinner and a lot drier), some sort of toast bread (which turned out better than the standard white sponge), and then in the nearest shop we got eight cans of beer, zaječarsko, cold. And that's where the uphill fucked me, the last five meters were hard to walk. So we sat on that narrow rear terrace - somehow there's room enough for a little table and four chairs (plastic, bright yellow, perfect save for Lipton's ad, advertising is evil). I brought no spare garments at all, as anyway I wear what I buy in Lidl or in a sekendica in Sokobanja. Unfortunately, they didn't have any jacket for me, all of them being wide in body and short of sleeves, the same stupid cuts like the shirts of a dozen years ago, so I heroed it out in just short sleeved shirt while I could, and then I relented and put on one of Stanley's sweaters.

The sleeping layout was with us two in this room with the kitchen, and them two the other one, and the kids where they will. First it was Anita with them and Neša with us, but he kept his green tablet on, played or composed a new level, and kept grumbling and whining while at it, he'd most prefer to be at home... In the end Go took his bed and Stanley had the children. Our bathroom was in beautiful dark blue, really nicely put together. The lady said the other one was gray, I didn't even enter there.

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* „ovogodišnja“ is a word in serbian, means exactly „of this year [fem]“.

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Mentions: Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Bosiljka Šain (Bosa), Čankovo, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Joda, Mark Anderson, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), sekendica, serekeš, Stanley Berger, Zdravko Lakatoš, in serbian