july 1978.
This year we performed another triper for the vacation. We all went to Borik, I mean all of us, three tents and all the gear. We packed a lot of it in a big box and sent it to ourselves by train, several days in advance. Then when we arrived, we just unloaded enough so mom and others would have a place to sit, then went to the station to pick the package. We put that on the freshly vacated rear seat of the škodilak, brought it to the camp and put up our tents.
Symmetrically, we've packed some stuff and sent it home via railway, then went back to the camp to pack the rest. Perhaps we did it in two parts, perhaps they slept in the car and we had our small one.
We had three tents altogether - my folks had the big one which they bought from someone (last year?), and two small ones - mine and Arpi's. His tentmate this summer was Živa. He stayed a bit shorter and then took his tent, while this guy managed by sleeping in someone's hammock.
This was shot before climbing up Velebit. The last good place to have a coffee - after that there's no stopping. I think I already installed that manual switch to turn on the coolant fan, as Škoda always had this thing to put sensors in wrong places, so it wouldn't turn it on each time it was needed.
This year we somehow understood (or our folks did last year) that the hotel beach is less crowded. Not only there's an order of magnitude more space per capita (camp's capacity was nominally 3400 people, it often had 7000 or more), it's also that the campers don't get it that nobody at all is controling who's using which beach, and that they can freely stroll to the hotel beach. The dock there is twice as long and twice as wide, and it has two ladders to climb out of the water... everything's bigger, and there's lots of room to spread one's towel and just sunbathe at ease. We jumped into the water from it a lot, and made a dozen shots of that. It's a bit windy - this is the outcropping which shields the camp's beach, which is its own bay. Lighting up is hence a problem, which we solved by a philatelist's lens, which I found in Novi in the grass two years ago. It was scratched somewhat, and lost its sheath, but worked perfectly as a lighter.
The only downside of this dock was that sometimes waves were big enough to do... this.
This year's slides weren't developed until later in the year, when we learned the color process. The positive-negative first, then this inversion one. Not all of them turned out so well, but there, many did.
The layout of the tents had star topology. In the middle was my folks' tent, where we cooked and played cards (the later in front of it, except when raining). On either side, we two and Arpi. A bit to the side, Milka and Lajna. Somewhere by them, this guy T from Murska Sobota, who'd tow a camper with his truck, then stay in it with his wife a couple of days, then go to work - he was a solo trucker, a privatnik. Then when he catches a few days off, he'd come back with the truck. The truck's there on several shots.
The second incredible couple for this vacation is Arpi and Lajna. Which lasted, what, 5-6 days - but there, it happened.
This photo is one of a dozen posers we shot when we were in the mood for them. We, Lajna.
How did these two get together, devil alone may know. The most incredible couple which I couldn't have invented myself. Živa and The Lady, miracle unseen. And no matter how did it work without a common language, they had a swell time.
Something was fucked up with our gas bottle. Whether it was still the same old from 1968, or we bought a new one from some polish folks, I wouldn't know, but something clearly didn't fit. Now having two metal worker guys among us, both from Naftagas - made the problem vanish. This is Živa filing off the rim of the fitting, and Arpi holding the bottle for him.
Note the "Politika" newspaper on the table. Dad would consider a vacation spoiled if he couldn't read a fresh one every day (but then this already happened, in 1965, 1966...). And he insisted, at the kiosk in the camp, that it be not stuck invisible somewhere in the rear, but proudly displayed in front. The front row shouldn't be reserved solely for the likes of Bild, Spiegel, Corriere et al.
Along came Veca with her S.... fuck me if I know whether they were married already or was that later? She should be just halfway through her college now. And her mom didn't seem to care* that her daughter is on vacation alone with her boyfriend. Anyway, he's the smudge at the right third of the photo.
The guy in suit is the director of the camp. His son, Nisla, was nowhere, didn't see him at all this year. Whether he was somewhere, studying (and so whole summer, right), or did he get a job which paid better than mucking around with young chicks at dad's job, who'd know. The old man did say something, I forgot. He did drop by a few times, liked to talk with his countrymen. How did a guy from Srem become a camp director in Zadar is beyond me. Mysterious are the ways of self-management.
Judging by the flowers on the table, and the bottle of brandy (so not rakija but the artificial stuff), must have been mom's birthday. Seeing how there are slides of the event as well, must be that I shot the last of those that day, and this is the next spool, monochrome.
----
* note how in all the rock lyrics of the era, nobody cares whether anyone really cares; the thing that mattered was to seem to care.
Mentions: 15-I-1988., Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Borik, Geraldine van Grijven (The Lady), Melanija Merćep (Lajna), Milka Merćep, Novi Sad, rakija, Slanislav Dunjić (Nisla), škodilak, triper kombinacija, Vera Stojanović (Veca), Zadar, Živa Ravajlović, in serbian
10-VIII-2022 - 31-X-2025