december 1976.
We're on a double course here. Being the programming direction (and the two guys only on the teaching one) we shouldn't have the pedagogy and methodics, but we do. It's some general Algebra III (aka 301, in american terms) that they have and we don't, theory of groups I'd say. We have numeric methods of linear algebra, which Ljuba and I immediately abbreviated into numela (likewise, theory of differential equations was tedijed, differential geometry difterija).
And the pedagogy guy, oh my. He spoke with such a heavy hungarian accent you can rarely hear even in Čurda; perhaps he was from somewhere closer to that border up north. And not just the accent, he would invent words (which is simple in serbian, there are dozens of purposeful suffixes, but he'd often pick the wrong one). Later we heard, from the folks who were attending the same course in hungarian, that his hungarian is just as bad. Nowadays any moron can get a PhD.
The psychology course we had (luckily, just one semester) was actually simpler than what I had in gimnazija. The curriculum was more or less the same, just widened and peppered with classy expert language. The lecturer was some cute-ish chick with two surnames, some of which sounded dalmatian, but her accent was somehow all belgrader. That's all I remember from that course.
Ljuba and I have moved to Petrovaradin. Not the easiest and most accessible place, and it's on a slope, so it's either dropping off the bus two stops earlier and taking the long street up, or at the nearest and climbing up some thirty steps of uneven quality - not proper concrete, but rather some brick, so it's partially muddy and some bricks have moved. We always took the latter approach. The middle of the staircase was mostly okay, but it was muddy and some bricks were loose at both ends.
The walk on the other end wasn't much, from downtown to the university. At least we had a bathroom again, though the landlord was turning the water heater off whenever he could. We quickly developed a trick - listen to him turn it off when he's leaving the bathroom (the switch is always in the hall, so to be in the dry space), open our door at the same time as he closes his, flip the switch while he still rattles the handle and doesn't hear the škljoc [schklyotz - sound of switch or key turning]. Everybody happy - he's done his part of saving on the power bill, we have hot water.
For the move, I took a bus to his place, where we again took his dad's car (a Zastava 101, aka Stojadin), loaded the naftarica (oil heater) and then went to pick our stuff, return the keys, unload at the new location, get the new keys. The guy, just like anyone with a house on the slope, has a cellar dug into the hill. This is a wine area.
He actually has two rooms, and told us to find two more guys to fill that. A couple of weeks later we found just Borče, but then he didn't find a fourth guy.
He did cook gravče na tavče ("little bean on little pan"), a famous macedonian recipe. He cooked it on his naftarica (heating oil heater) even though I had the rešo already. It took more than fourty years until I ate the next one from him. On that rešo we'd sometimes heat something up, but mostly we cooked wine... which is the favorite winter recipe here - just wine and water, about 60:40, couple of spoons of sugar, a pinch of cloves and some ground pepper. Except Ljuba would exaggerate with the last component. He'd pour and pour and I had to watch and tell him to stop, then he'd try to distract me with something and then sneak in more ground pepper. That way it never cooled :). I was washing the pot, and it had a black silt on the bottom, as if from coffee.
We roasted sausages in Fortran. Simply stick a sausage on a fork, wrap it in one A4 sheet of printout (I'd say A3, 132-column line printer), light the paper. Repeat two more times.
The trick to have hot water when we need it was patience. Our door was facing the bathroom; the landlord's was in the right wing. We'd turn on the heater and wait. Then he'd come by, notice it was on, and would turn it off. While he was closing his door, quickly turn it on again so he doesn't hear. He's content that he's saving power, and we're content that we can have a bath.
We started learning Fortran on one side, and the theory of algorithms and automata on the other. For the latter, we practiced thinking in algorithms by building them for simple tasks. The best example was the algorithm to make (turkish) coffee. We got it detailed and near perfect.
The main read of these months was Herman Hesse (I read it, at his recommendation), I remember reading at the time, and the next autumn too, don't remember in which order, the Glass bead game and Sidarta (gratuitous aitches to be distributed by the reader). The latter impressed me as a brief guide through the indian philosophies for westerners, learning the vocabulary through a story, and it wasn't all so strange and new, me having done my play with I Ching before that, so such excursions weren't nno miracle nor breakthrough.
The Game was much closer to reality. I actually have the book, in english, paperback, who knows from where. It's what we actually had in the exams, this composition of seemingly scattered material into a common story, where between the beginning and the end there exists a common, deeply logical thread. This was a part of the folklore on our faks, to have the written part of the exam consist of proving three things, all given as true, and the first could and should be taken as a tool to prove the second and then likewise the third, regardless of the order in which this was done. Because they are actually related and yet cover more than half of the material in the course.
Next year it was Steppenwolf, which impressed me as a masterfully written thing, with quite a number of original ideas, but I wasn't touched with it, I was already going through my own rebellion against petty bourgeois (fuck the Frenches and their spells, write eoi to read ua) mentality, by different paths and far less drama.
This winter I stopped wearing the šinjel and had an vojska-style windbreaker, quite possibly a trial model of what army was acquiring at the time. Wasn't too warm, but wasn't too heavy either, and served me quite well.
We still commuted by train, actually šinobus, on weekends, except we'd hitchhike home when weather would permit. We'd usually decide on thursday evenings whether the rest of cash at hand goes towards tomorrow's bus or today's going out. The beer would usually prevail, unless there was a storm scheduled on friday. On saturdays we'd go somewhere, and on sundays she'd come to me - the little railway station is near the bus station - and we'd have fun and coffee (see picture) and then go catch the 16:20 train, which would arrive there in the evening (it took two and a half hours).
And then everyone went their own way... well, not always. The last bus to Petrovaradin went at 2:00. Sometimes we'd walk to her place straight from the station (about 2km, I'd say, nothing big), and I would carry both our bags, for balance. I'd then catch some of those late buses. Sometimes we'd take a bus downown, buzz around for a while, duffel bags in hand, and then disperse in our respective directions.
BTW, the best winter coat I ever saw - she's sewn it herself.
Mentions: 31-VIII-2018., Bajaga i Čorba, Čurda, gimnazija, Ljubivoje Tomić (Ljuba), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), rešo, šinobus, šinjel, vojska, in serbian
21-VIII-2019 - 29-VII-2026