31-V-2024.
Second day in Sokobanja. It was a bit colder, so we had the morning coffee at the front terrace, facing east. The view around is incredible - a mix of spanking new buildings in fashionable shades of gray, and beaten up and neglected old houses, what have been made fifty or seventy years ago. The next house is a true monument to Grumf, it's patch on patch, and this anteroom window is the crown of it all, being made from upper parts of some old bus's windows. Under the eave two long branches were hung from the beams, the kind that would be used as a spit if they were straight enough, and the newyearly led lights were wound around them. The house being on a slope, it would take some stairs from the door down to the ground, then an uphill path to the gate, so instead they made a concrete catwalk and a wood storage underneath it, and this was done in the sixties, judging by the poor mark of the concrete, which breaks and crumbles at the edges, the first rebar being fully visible now. Below the gate there are two motorbikes, parked with front wheel uphill, or else who knows how would they ever get them out. The jupol bucket of paint everywhere, we counted seven without looking behind anything, and there's no trace of brush or roller anywhere on the house for at least forty years. Behind the anteroom is a downwards staircase, with the steps not wider than 15cm but then 25cm tall... And I could add three times this much text if I'd bother to detail the other five shots.
Around nine we were already on the main sokak, eating burek. Neša took extra effort to handle the knife and fork, and even if he didn't manage to cut the thickest parts of the lower crust, by the outer edge, he did cut everything else just right. Not too expertly, but all the same, not a single piece went flying away, which is a success by itself. Don't laugh until you try.
By the souvenir shop at the east end of the main park they still have this huge billboard with local ads... and this pearl of engrbian... says „grcki“ instead of „grčki“, but then translated into cyrillic, where it can't be read as theoretically intended, cyrillic is 100% phonetic... I stood for two minutes, waiting for the whole deck to play out and repeat this. Couldn't believe my eyes - someone did it in haircut latinic, the graphics guy ground it into greek-like cyrillic, and nobody noticed? Is this a new pinnacle of illiteracy, or not giving a fuck (serbian: dickhurt)?
(It is neither - as a few days later Tanjaisaplank corrected me on burundi, this is to mock the Greeks, who are unable to pronounce a č, so they say c)
Skipped lunch that day, the burek just held. Them four went to Terme (thermae) for a bath, even Neša agreed to come what with swimpants on, but said he won't get into the water because he „developed an aquaphobia“. Then after a couple of hours there he did get into the water, and later they couldn't force him out of it. Go kept sending shots into the communal meeting on Telegram, so we stayed abreast of the events, and also set up the time and place where to meet, and we did meet at exactly the tavern where we meant to dine. We drank draught „Bavaria“ (at 350 dinars a glass, while it's substantially a domestic beer, but it can't even accidentally be named „Bavarija“, the j seems to be somehow offensive, can't even have a beer without engrbian nowadays). And kids also ate well, and when the band appeared we thought the shit is commencing now, but they were neither too loud nor in-your-face, and the initial repertory was finely picked, and no matter how much decoration they added, I still recognized the underlying melodies. Then they went inside, not far from us, so we still heard them well - there they switched to more of Balašević and Zvonko Bogdan, because that's how they made the company at the table they surrounde. We sat there for three good hours, and then went for a good night's sleep. The first day passed nicely.
On second day Neša was much more obstinate, skulking and game spoiling. We went for a walk, but by the time we got to the bridge he was so anticontrarian*, that he returned those 200m from the bridge, with baba, and we four proceeded to town. Anita spent a good hour and a half on the playground by the main park, climbed on everything they had, got well tired. Then the matter of lunch came up. „Merak avlija“ is now called something else, who knows what's in there now, let's rather go to „Splendid“ again, they were good last fall. But there it turned out that a whole ekskurzija came in before us, lots of kids, at least fifty of them, the waiter said reservation only, we're full until 15:00. Okay... the next choice was „Boni“, below the park, where they ate when they were last here. When we ordered, we spotted a piglet on a spit, fresh out of the oven... but that was all sold in advance, and what we ordered was quite good as it were. We drank a Moretti, some italian beer, didn't amaze me, gimme a break, Italians and beer. Anita drank kokta, which is available in some places and in some not, we were lucky here.
On the way back I bought from the Chineses a real chinese fan for Neša. He used one last week, it was a bit muggy and I remembered to take it from the drawer. But that didn't improve his mood much, he remained grumpy all day. Which is why in the afternoon he and Stanley stayed in the room and we four went to the so-called Lake, which is a wider spot in the little river, where one can bathe, if brave enough, the water is quite cold even in summer. The suspension bridge, which was put up three years ago, is still not in place. At least Anita wet her fingers a bit, baba talked her into throwing pebbles into the water, so he soiled her fingers, and had to wash them... and then ten times so. We sat for a dinner in the „Under the walnut“ where they once had that yellow cat (v. 27-IX-2021.), again just a čorba and a gulaš to take out.
On our way back we bought eight cans of beer - four of Staropramen and Bahvariah each, which we then slowly sipped on the terrace, while Neša hit the gulaš. Stanley kept convincing him to not be so much antisocial and to move a bit out of his shell. He tries to convey it as reasonably and plain as he can, and speaks loud and clear, which is all fine and is neither aggressive nor insulting in any way, but it's obvious that the kid is just waiting for it to storm over. When it did, I sat next to him in the kitchen, where my mac was, to play a few levels of bejewelled2, and along the way, quietly and briefly, told him something to the sense that „what you give is what you get back... if you spoil everyone's good time, yours will be spoilt too... but then it works both ways, if you make the others' day, there'll bee something for you as well“. Don't know which one worked, but he was all different the next day.
On sunday (2nd of june) we were lazing it out in the rooms until lunch, because Anita was somewhat snotty and still hasn't learned how to blow her nose. It annoyed her a lot, she squealed (which was mostly an act, so as loud as a real one). My maam went with her and Go to get something for lunch, i.e. to order a ready roast from a butcher. She said they have quite a busy shop there, even this early, with a whole month until the season's start, she saw some thirty orders queued up when she went to pick hers. Luckily they made for an early start, so it was done in thirty minutes. It was some pork neck chops and some barbecue sausage. She also bought one tomato, green pepper and a cucumber and made a salad of that, and half a kilo of baker's potatoes, which ended up as Anita's favourite.
Then a siesta. I can do as much as a whole week without one, but here I don't miss any afternoons. That air. By dusk we went for dinner at „Župan“, which is quite near by, it's just a bit to the side of the main thoroughfar, so we didn't pay much attention to it before. Turned out great - čorba and the mućkalica later (with some rice added, not quite jasmine but close, very interesting). Neša was in great mood, cooperative and not grumbling at all, but Anita did, her little nose wouldn't budge, so she and Stanley returned to the room after čorba, and we four stayed. Interestingly, just when we sat, the music changed, the narodnjaci somehow vanished and even some rock music appeared (let's not overstate it, „Hotel California“ and Bisera aren't any stiff drinks, but there [it was]). As soon as we paid, some other guests appeared and the music was, in the distance of next two songs, switched back to where it was before. Took six beers along (had two left over from last night), and thus spent the last evening.
In the morning we neatly packed and moved out. Neša was somewhat insistent that I drive, I guess so he'd be able to talk with Stanley on the way, but they both fell asleep along the way. I drove so, mostly in rain, all the way from home, without any hitch, except I didn't grok what the sentence „the highway between Autokomanda and Surčin is now an ordinary street“ meant, apart from the fact that it so releases hectares of previously forbidden building lots along its edges. Well, it now means that all the road signs for the highway actually point to the beltway over ostružnica* bridge, and for Autokomanda it simply says „Beograd“. They have such a sign for Zrenjanin too, nearby, which is actually a trucks transit route, where nobody normal would go, so I reached Novi Beograd from the west, having made probably some 12km extra, via a new bit of highway which connects into Vojvođanska street, and from there there was nothing new, know the way. This still counted as a gaffe on my side and was mentioned aloud at least three times, including in the evening when we spoke with Nina. This is the third week in a row since it became better that I make no suggestions, as it will be received badly, to speak nothing, even to do nothing, because the critic for inaction is less than for how wrongly I do things. It will pass, as it always does, just that it's taking a bit longer this time. Of course, before sleeping, when we remembered the 2023 apple, it was all forgotten, then resumed in the morning.
At Nina's everything's going fine, Mark fixed something on her car, and a few things around the house. We didn't see him because he was in her workroom for the afternoon, working from there. The kids are okay, we saw all of them, Raja is getting taller and taller, seems to have grown by about a handbreadth since they left. The next day she reported that she got that job at the sewers', starting on 26th of june.
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* „antiprotivan“, as in Banko Ćopić's „Eighth offensive“
** adjective, lowercase. The bridge is near Ostružnica.
Mentions: 27-IX-2021., Sokobanja, Alan Ford, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Bejewelled2, burek, burundi, čorba, ekskurzija, engrbian, Gorana Sredljević (Go), kokta, Mark Anderson, narodnjaci, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Ryu (Raja), Stanley Berger, in serbian