Dad got me out of bed at nine - which is too early for me in times of summer vacation. But they have a problem at work, they have a dozen veterinary students from Iraq visiting (plus a professor), and nobody speaks neither arab nor english... so could I come to translate.
I had a day, and I saved the day.
This was my road test. What english I learned from Sofija a few years ago was now paying off. And it was lots of fun, too.
Around this time dad started taking me to smuggling rounds to Temišvar (Timişoara). It being a task for a whole day, driving the fića, we had to eat something there. We went to the Cina (chinnah) restaurant, which we thought meant China (it's actually „a meal“), and eyeballingly ordered some čorba. Neither of us spoke any romanian, but them having so many serbian words on loan, we thought that we managed. Possibly the waiter spoke some serbian as well, wasn't uncommon. We got some cooked (not sour) cabbage with some bits of meat and, behold the surprise, pickled cucumbers cooked together with it. Can't say we left hungry, which we did not, nor that we had a good meal, likewise. Never went to that restaurant again... or any romanian restaurant. Who knows what else may they eat.
So the next time, when we somehow concluded that selling vegeta and nylon stockings on the [green] market in Temišvar won't bring any joy, we moved further to Arad and really did much better there, decided to eat something there, on foot. Mići (mici), i.e. romanian ćevapčići. We knew the trick already - if normal dose of them at home is ten, here it's one, it's about 30mm in diameter and somewhere around 150 in length. To differ from our recipe, which is just meat, salt and pepper, theirs contained garlic as well, which I didn't really like. I was young and sensed the tastes strongly, and for garlic I developed a distaste because Đuđa often reeked of it (and also, but not so often, Danka Sejina), which I sensed from meter and a half. But okay, it was edible, meat is meat. The other difference was that with ours you'd get chopped onions for salad and nothing else ever, while here, they had mustard. Not that I never ate it, just didn't have the habit. We did have one tiny plastic cup of it, about 1dl, by Kolinska, but it wasn't this strong and I didn't use it in these amounts.
I got a rash over my palms, so dad concluded that it must be that I was allergic to mustard (or was it my own conclusion this time), following the same logic as back in september 1964. and april 1961., so I was avoiding mustard for several years. Which was equally based on nothing just like those first two times. I later noticed I get such a rash whenever I'm walking a lot, with hands dangling, on a muggy weather. If I'm carrying anything in [my] hand - a tote handle, or, worse and quicker, of a plastic bag, there it goes. And it goes away sa soon as I give them a good cool wash. Unrelated to the grub, can hit me on empty stomach.
27-VI-2020 - 14-VII-2026