21-II-2020.

At Borče's this time, tasting the cherry, except we didn't. The fifth frendz parti.

First, she told me to go alone this time. She just had enough of Dragana's clapper about all the people she knows (specially last saturday - she also had a nephew's kid's birthday on friday), parties she's been to, places she traveled and whatnot. And they are both children of better positioned guys in the system of SFRY - her dad was some executive at NuProm, his dad was a province level trade union politician, they both inherited nice apartments and probably never had to dig a ditch, raise a few hundred bricks or skip a vacation, while we built the whole house by our four hands, on our own time and dime. Come to think of it, since 1979 we were on a real vacation... about three times (1988, 1993, 2001... though the last one was just one week). To me it's still interesting to hear them, it's a history in which I didn't take a part, yet of times where I did, even in familiar places but mostly on the other side of some fence. So it's like foreign country, which history is, even that of your schoolmates. But she's losing patience with such talk.

I walked, in my own pace, which is actually quite fast. Took a few pictures, mostly of new storefronts, to catch the way my old stomping grounds are changing into a mix of residential and commercial district. The bager is now completely covered with buildings, though most of them are just steel frame on concrete slabs, no proper walls to speak of. A furniture salon, two or three auto centars, a indoor sports pressurized tent, a carwash on the railway side, and a bordel aka "solemn hall" where the ITO supermarket used to be, plus the new gray box with no insignia yet on the city side.

I walked up (4th floor, no lift) and had to stop and take a breath the same place as last time, three steps before the end. Wait a minute, there's one more floor. So... well, I really should fix the bicycles and start my spring workout asap, this is getting ridiculous, I'm so out of shape. Then there's no Borče on the last floor... luckily, some young woman opens a door and sends me - one floor down. Turns out this is not a fifth floor, it's an attic. So it doesn't count, or else they'd have to install an elevator. Nice trick they pulled back in 1980, when this was built.

At least this time I wasn't the last to arrive. Dragana came in an elegant outfit (though I never thought knit stuff can be elegant in that way, but she pulled it) and then got surprised not seeing her, just like he got. "She decided she may let me out on my own... don't know whether to take that as a compliment or not" worked perfectly as an excuse.

We didn't drink the cherry, because he pulled out a special bottle of apricot, from at least 30 years ago. She broke the wax seal, and I tried to pull out the cork as gently as possible, but the it was rotten and just broke about 8mm above the bottom. Tried to pull the rest using a regular corkscrew, but it just drilled a hole through it. And then we just pushed the rest in and he poured through a tea strainer. Then through just nothing - the pieces weren't that small, so he'd see them and take them out (happened just once).

By the time he brought own his own baklava (properly done to have just the taste, which means the syrup in which he soaked it had about five times less sugar than usual), we finally got to see his grandchildren - one aged 16 and the other aged 0,75... Daughter divorced the father of the first child and then went on to have another with the new guy. The baby is just cute, something to three-dee scan and model dolls after. And then he pronounced the new husband's surname... wait a minute, he's Miljka's son? Yes. Well well, it all stays in the class, eh? Who'd a thunk.

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Mentions: bager, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), NuProm, Smiljka Grajin (Miljka), in serbian

16-III-2020 - 25-III-2026