Lesnina
(Place, tavern, firm, Yugoslavia)
My old street ends up with a kind of a plaza, named New Žitni Trg (which nobody ever knew, and the Old Žitni is now just Žitni, nobody remembers there were two of them), a square with a bit of a park on it; you can now only go left or right. That's where the street washing trucks had a refill station, well deep into the seventies, and the rest of it was a park (and most of it still is).
Between mid-sixties, when this novogradnja was put up, and late eighties when the new community center was built over it, there was about 40m of road straight through the park, when you'd finally lose the chance to go straight, as this is where the apartments begin, and the building you'd hit is an eight-entracnes, five story job (should merit an elevator, but doesn't have one, as the first floor belongs to the shops in the ground floor... Mostly, though. One apartment, where Dragana lives, was added later. I know the building was already up in late sixties, perhaps 1966 [but there were other buildings in this novogradnja, finished a couple of years before that] (when Tejka enrolled in VIII2), and Dragana moved in in 1972. There's also its twin, door to door, facing the rear side, and symmetrically a few others on the other end of the building, which MXM put together and used as offices for a while).
Among others, Pop, Duca, Lidija also lived in the building; in the neighboring ones Dimče, Linka, V., D.M., and slightly (for a short while and on the further end of it) even Marina.
Lesnina is a slovenian enterprise, which held a furniture salon in the whole right quarter of the ground floor, and had its big yellow circle and name taking the space over the 2nd and 3rd floor. Outline of the logo is still visible on the facade, even though it's now more years since it was removed than the years it stood. So of course the whole building was called that, and the apartment blocks were never called the official D-1 and D-2 (the letter being the initial of the square), but anyone from these two blocks were said to live "on Lesnina".
The furniture is long gone (after the breakup of the country and two other furniture merchants occupying the space for a while). Don't really know what's in there at the moment. The rest of the building has two pharmacies (one state, one private), a pay-your-utilities office (faster and cheaper than post office, which once was in the same space), and a shop by Metalac (one of the few domestic manufacturers left, and they're rather good - there we finally found frying pans which last more than two years). There's more but they open and close faster than I can track, as I'm not walking that way too often anymore. And, ah, in 2019 I discovered that Bangro has some office there, still under the same old logo. There's also a takeaway food kitchen.
And the Aleksandreau isn't there anymore, now it's the Chineses with their regular assortment of everything. They lasted only until 2023 and were then replaced with Lilly, even though there are already two pharmacies in the building.
In the middle of the complex a peasant's house remained, what with a horsecart, stable, stacks of hay, at least until 1970. Then it was gone, I have a shot of Slavka walking by the empty lot. There they built a post office. That was the final accomodation for it - it used to be by the gate of šećerana in a tiny office, then in a larger, two storey office by the 5th entrance of the building, and now moved into this new building, what with some civil defense centre in the basement. It also housed the local telephone switchboard, of which we thought as a technical miracle, partly electronic, by Iskra of Kranj. Only 20 years later we cursed it, called it Prle-Tihi* switchboard, from the famous quip on sezam, „and there we rooted for Prle and Tihi to stop the Germans from blowing up the switchboard - and we could have had a brand new one in 1945!“. It not only lacked tone dialing, it also had quite a low connection quality.
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* two main characters in „The written off“, a TV series about the underground resistance in occupied Belgrade during WWII.
Mentions: 22-VI-1962., february 1963., 08-VI-1967., 23-IV-1968., 31-XII-1968., 25-I-1969., 22-IV-1969., 25-X-1969., 12-IV-1970., 08-VIII-1970., 23-VIII-1970., 13-IX-1970., 19-IX-1970., and the rest of the month, 01-XII-1970., until 17th, 15-I-1971., 07-III-1971., 17-VIII-1971., 05-X-1971., 02-XI-1971., 16-I-1972., february 1972., Photos, 14-II-1972., 07-V-1972., 27-V-1972., 16-X-1972., 01-XII-1972., 06-I-1973., 20-VI-1973., 01-VII-1973., Hat club rides again, 01-XI-1973., 15-XI-1973., 06-II-1974., august 1974., Vacation enforcement, 21-V-1977., More photos, 24-VIII-1978., 04-V-1980., may 1985., 11-X-1986., 04-X-1988., 04-X-1995., 31-XII-1998., 03-I-1999., 03-IX-1999., 20-X-2003., 08-VIII-2005., 29-I-2009., 04-II-2009., 29-IX-2011., Švenkmajer, 24-VII-2014., 04-XII-2015., 07-I-2016., 01-VIII-2017., 09-IX-2017., 16-IX-2017., 12-I-2018., 12-III-2018., 21-VI-2018., 31-VIII-2018., Bajaga i Čorba, 09-V-2019., 25-V-2019., 06-VIII-2019., 22-VIII-2019., and the next two days, 21-IX-2019., 21-X-2019., 26-XII-2019., 17-I-2020., First frendz parti, 22-I-2020., 24-I-2020., 07-III-2020., 19-III-2020., 21-VII-2020., 19-VIII-2020., 06-X-2020., 01-III-2021., 03-III-2021., 20-IV-2021., 20-VII-2021., 09-VIII-2021., 23-VIII-2021., 01-IX-2021., 14-III-2022., 25-III-2022., 13-IV-2022., 05-V-2022., 11-V-2022., 10-IX-2022., 07-X-2022., 11-I-2023., 16-I-2023., 19-II-2023., 13-IV-2023., 08-VIII-2023., 10-XI-2023., 01-XII-2023., 11-III-2024., 26-V-2024., 22-XI-2024., 12-XII-2024., 05-I-2025., 27-I-2025., 19-XII-2025., 21-III-2026., 25. maj, Bangro, Borivoj Raboški (Bora), bostan, Dimitrije Josin (Dimče), Domaćin, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Dušica Tošin (Duca), fluorography, Gik, Ksenija, KTV, Lidija Spaček, Marina Čikezin, Marko Popović (Pop), Mira Dengin (Linka), MXM, novogradnja, Prleski, promes, sezam, Slavica Tejin (Tejka), Slavka Vinković, Šanta, šećerana, VIII2, in serbian
7-II-2023 - 17-VII-2026