The funeral of Todor. The whole staff of the IT department from the bank was there, and Radoja and I from the other Vaha. Weather was lousy, neither rain nor not, but depressively gray and there was a thin layer of mud wherever you step.
Having this nice job as a programmer in the bank he finally put together enough money to buy a yugo. He wasn't experienced enough to know how tricky is this thin layer of mud, so he went off the road near Belgrade, three days ago, probably been visiting his girlfriend. It's possible that his yugo was the strongest model, with 65 HP, which was too much for such a small car, I rarely saw them, as they were prone to easily fly off the road.
(unbelievable - just today, around the same day in 2010, I see that his mother and sister have posted an obituary/anniversary, and it turns out I got the day right)
Around that time it happened that Fefi and I drove to Žabalj, had an accountant guy there, who got us a few more customers in the place - the mill, a wholesale, some youth firm which made standing fans. The weather was bright cloudy, that much I remember. On the bridge we come across a flock of sheep, can't pass them, there's no such thing, they're a flood, they took the whole width of the bridge. And stopped at the first dilatation comb and dug in, not a step over the unknown and dangerous iron. There the shepherd appeared from the rear, grabbed the leader ram by the horns and dragged it all the way forward, so it crosses the comb first. Then those nearby sheep, who saw it pass over without missing a strand of wool, started crossing but only on the same spot. Luckily, those behind didn't see where the spot was, so after some forty of them they came in full width. So we sat in the yugo at the top of the bridge, surrounded by sheep. The bridge rocked dangerously, but then it can take two 20 ton trucks, this is no big deal.
Raw hypnosis, you see nothing around the car, just sheep, the bridge bannister and the river in distance. „We were lucky to not try to count them, who'd wake us up“.
Now that we had water, it was time to cover the meter with something and exhaust it so it doesn't break over the winter.
But Aleksa begged and begged to have a hose run to his place for a while, and promised he'd make sure to close the incoming valve and open the winter valve to empty the meter etc etc.
Of course, in late february next year, when I came to check, the glass on the meter had cracked and the water just started filling the pit. I got there just on time to prevent the flood, but then the meter was broke. I unscrewed it and took it to water mains office to get a replacement (cost at about 70DEM, big money at the time). He did close the valve, wrong one - downstream of the meter. Idiot.
Didn't even bother to try to get damages from him, as they weren't there anymore, house was left empty. Heard from neighbors they were in Austria.
25-XII-2010 - 25-VI-2026