Inflation, as measured by the rate of dinar against german mark, was 300% in four days. And it's accelerating. The story on the street is that it's a fresh batch from the mint, printed to buy the wheat from the peasants. Except the peasants aren't selling - they either keep to themselves or barter for flour (we were just adjusting the app at LebarProm to improve tracking of those barters), or they just store the wheat but keep ownership, so they can sell it later. They can't get the cash anyway, only money in the bank - which then they can't take, unless it's 10000 a day, if there's cash in the bank at the time, plus the unknown hours of wait to get it, with distinct possibility that they may run out of cash when you're next.
As we transformed DBA last fall from a society-owned enterprise (turned state-owned by government fiat, with state not interfering, just claiming ownership) into a joint owned company, we were supposed to buy out our freedom or whatever. Which was silly in our case, what social capital was invested in us, we returned through taxes in a year or two, but who cares, pay it and you can take it. So we paid (from company's coffers, not our pocket) some amounts to the Agency for privatization and finished that by june. Whatever the amount they imagined was a pittance within a month or two, the inflation flattened it out. As the guy who plastered our house last year said, he quit the produce kiosk on the green market because he didn't have enough imagination. Because no matter how mad a margin he'd add to the prices, and still sold everything he had for the day, that money couldn't buy the next day's supply. The reality always won, being the crazier.
Around that time I got the idea to take Go to work for a day. We had to go to Srem for something, a largish enterprise scrounged some currency to purchase the hardware and the apps, lots of work there, and they were also near the UNPROFOR protected zone of East Slavonia, where fuel could be found easier, so let the child see the world a bit. We stuffed ourselves into a yugo - us, Sale, dunno who was the fourth, Fefi or Števa. Crossing the Danube over the bridge at Bačka Palanka (still standing then, was blown up later), then around (not quite through) Ilok. The bank is rather steep on the right side, even has a valley. A house with an upstairs has a 1,5m hole in the gable. They made war here recently.
On the road, tetrahedral or other pyramidal obstacles, zigzag between. A russian soldier stops us. Thin blonde kid, below 50kg with bed, hand casually hung over a kalašnjikov. Speaks a mix of russian and serbian with russian accent. Do you have any weapons? We don't. Do you have a gun? We don't. Do you have an automatic? We don't. Do you have a bomb? We don't. Do you have an airplane? We don't. Do you have a submarine? We don't. Gave him a cigarette and drove away. There we did what work was to be done, then went downtown to the marketplace, where the Čamovi guy has a kiosk of sorts, a largish job with an upper floor. The guy was the local handler who provides currency for our customer, they have some deal. Later I found, from some newspaper, that the guy was a local mafioso. He gave Sale an envelope stuffed with german marks, and off we went. Again the same Russian, all the same, he knows the text by heart, and so do we. Perhaps he added a helicopter to his checklist.
To Novi then. We sit in a yard of a cafe (which I absolutely couldn't find again), in some shade, order drinks. The beer steins and coke glasses are sweating, it's really hot, and it'll get worse when we get into the yugo again. Some twenty minutes later, here comes Serž on a Harley-Davidson, a hot chick on the back seat. They dismount, he takes the envelope, no won't sit, it's too hot to sit, much better when the breeze cools your back. And they ride away. Don't know how much was in the envelope, few thousand for sure.
Go memorized the scene, and later I started seeing Harley's posters on her walls. There was more, later.
17-VI-2021 - 16-VII-2026