20-VI-2001.

Warm enough, so we started using the swimming pool, as the price of it was already included in the rent. It was really nearby, right behind the building opposite us.

In that building opposite, there was a couple which we named after Blaža, because the guy was pretty much his doppelgänger. We noticed them for two things - first, the guy had a huge motorbike, and it create just enough noise to attract attention. Second, for some reason they didn't want to be seen carrying groceries from the car to the door in Walmart's plastic bags, so they'd repack them into the totes right there, with the car's trunk wide open and those bags in plain sight. Weird and, I'd say, defeating the purpose, unless the purpose was to keep those bags in the car and lose them somewhere else.

The pool was good. Not too big, just right. No shade, though, they had less than ten parasols altogether, as this place was cheaply built. In more expensive places they keep the forest - and almost all the new building lots begin as forest in Virginia - and cut only those trees which would be too close to the walls. The cheap way is to raze the forest completely, build at ease, then plant some decorative trees, which may look nice but never grow too big and cast no shade.

There were a few interesting people at the pool. First, the attendant lady, who was old but fit, thin, or rather dried out, and with a severe face with aquiline nose, something to fit an indian tribal chief from comic books. A natural blonde, with a curly hair severely tightened up into a ponytail.

Then there was a family of Sikhs**, who came regularly and the guy somehow never wet his head, keeping his hair neatly wrapped in whatever they call their model of turban.

And a couple which we saw only twice. He was a black guy, tall and thin, best option a basketball centre. She was a tiny Chinese. Their girl was around six years old, and wierdly beautiful with slanted eyes and curly copperbrown hair, perfectly put together in one person.

We went there a lot. Being this far south - this is pretty much the lattitude of Cyprus - and not catching some tan would be a waste. Sometimes we all went, often just Lena and I.

Went downtown A-burg on 24th, by an alternative route, not following the 29 but rather going south first, then taking some sort of mountain road, then entering downtown from east, through some quieter streets. So much quieter that they've turned it into a sort of semi-pedestrian zone, with narrowing the pavement in places, almost an obstacle course, so that there's no way anyone can drive faster than 25 mph. Still, the route looked far better and was still faster.

Parked in the garage on main street (where you either pay or show a stamped bill from any of the main street shops, they are cofinancing the garage, to bring them more customers). Made a few nice shots. A few things we found funny - one, how this is the „historic downtown“, which would mean, in serbian, that this was once downtown, but the actual downtown is now somewhere else. Actually no, in american terms it mens that it's older than 150 years. As Vuk Drašković once said, „half the village fences in Serbia are older than whole of USA“. The other is how they don't care how it looks around the corner - they never try to hide their wiring, there's oodles of cables and no care about the façade in any of the sidestreets. The downtown is only the main street, nobody cares about the rest. I've even seen a gable built as a full square, same height as the regular triangle, plus some, with patterns and curlicues, frontside only. It must be reinforced somehow, it's so thin I wonder how it still stands. Or maybe it fell already, several times, and insurance paid to rebuild it.

This also means they don't make their electric poles out of concrete or iron - they still have lots of thick trunks, so wood it is. Which means that anyone with a stapler and a printer can freely post an ad on it. Too lazy to count, but I'd eyeball the number of staples at about shoulder height on one of those to a hundred or two. Paper absent, it seems to have been torn away long ago.

On our way back we swung by a video club, to get some movies to watch. Yet another proof of american cultural blindness: how hey categorize movies. Back to the future is a comedy; Batman is adventure; Island of dr Moreau is SF, and The Swindle is, guess what, foreign. So the rest of the world can stand on its eyelashes* but it can't produce a comedy, drama, SF, adventure or mystery - the best they can do is to make a foreign movie.

And the titles listed are the ones we took.

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* an old expression at home, „even if you stand on your eyelashes“ is then followed with „but you still can't“ and then whatever impossible thing this applied to.

** as with any other non-anglophone name involving kh, one never knows what was the intended reading of it. In cases when I know for sure that it was supposed to be read as an aitch, I'll respell it as hh, to dispell the bad spell. In this case, I'll leave it as kh, because I'm not sure. See under 07-IX-2024..

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Mentions: 07-IX-2024., Annenburg (A-burg), Blagoje Vrbović (Blaža), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), in serbian

4-VI-2023 - 25-III-2026