10-VIII-2011.
The reinstall of everything on zmajček didn't end. Some leftovers were done by 1:30, and when I woke up I went on, ploughing through m$'s petty politics and traps. The Samsung terabyte disk had to be unplugged - it was reporting too many errors and taking up so much processor time that zmajček was close to unusable. Ended up having a zmycheck4 now, which will be short lived.
But first I had to visit dad to see if he found any better picture for the obituary. Eventually we settled for the last good picture we had, where she's holding Raja. The guy at the ads booth didn't recognize the chip on my card and tried to swipe it instead, concluded that it doesn't work and took my cash, which left me with 200 dinars. Next, in the scribery of the city hall, Lena helped me with getting Lena's birth certificate and proof of citizenship. Not that I needed much help, but really didn't want to wait in line, and rather talked with her instead, about the general stupidity of changes in administration. It's all going for the worse. And they charge you for various things - 200 dinars for these two papers - but don't take cash on the spot, because they invented these fiscal cash registers, so I had to go find a bank where to pay for it. At OTP they sent me elsewhere, because they'd have to charge me 150 dinars (!) for the service; post office had a slow long queue, Friteza (i.e. deep fry cooker - nickname for Banca Intesa) was full, so I went behind the vodotoranj to UBB where they had just two people, no queue and AC on.
In the late afternoon, we went to Klincaid to roast our first rakija and deliver three of our four kittens to Zeki (we kept one, Lena insisted we do, named it Donald). Bought a table lamp, safety switch and an ordinary switch along the way. One of the kittens was all over the car, another also escaped the box but stayed under my jacket which was over the box, and the third remained in the box, but jumped out of it when we got there, and ran very very fast across the street and into a neighbor's yard. Never saw it again.
The pigsty is the typical example of old man's architecture. Kids build better dog houses than this. The only miracle is that it stood in the first place. The upper end of these, ahem, beams is nailed to the kotarka, which is then gradually bent to this side, but then there's an iron pole on the other side, chained to the front beam, to counter this. The "eave" to this was made of solid oak planks, nailed seriously to a couple of slats. The lower slat just leaned on the low wall; the upper slat was held by one nail and a piece of wire to the outer beam.
We keep finding razor blades and old hag's stockings everywhere. No explanation. Perhaps the old guy was indecisive, should he slit his veins or strangle himself, so kept both items at hand wherever he may reach a decision.
The still didn't have a proper draft, dunno why, it churned ugly smoke, though not for long. There was probably some nasty piece of plastic in what I stoked it initially. There will be more of it later, but not like this. Any pieces of plastic would be burned piecemeal, not too much at a time. But we did get some rakija. I have no idea what or how much - it didn't occur to me to start writing it down until 2015. Have partial data for 2014.
On 13th here comes Zeki again, in the morning this time, without a walking stick. Had coffee with us in the front house, where it's cooler. The conversation went to the subject of rakija, and he suddenly fires this: „...the problem is that we don't have the culture of rakija“. What, how? „Well do you drink a shot every morning? You don't. There, you see, we don't have the culture“. The phrase „we don't have the culture“ was used repeatedly in the following years, mostly as an excuse to drink a shot, or as a remark when we do something we don't usually do.
That day the moon was full, and we made rakija until dark. Of course we made jokes about making moonshine under moonshine. Doesn't matter that it's legal here, it's still moonshine, in them yooess it's still forbidden, aka prohibited. We had the good light now, and got better organized with cooling water - notice the barrels to the right of tabarka - so I had a chance to make more photos, and they turned out well.
Mentions: Donald, house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Jovan Dimijan (Zeki), Klincaid, Lena Čontić, Majkrosoft (m$), rakija, Ryu (Raja), vodotoranj, zmajček, in serbian
25-IX-2020 - 5-VII-2026