05-VII-1968.: Praha
That morning in Prague, the grass was all dewy. We were surrounded by mostly foreign tourists - I remember one thin British girl with x legs. Looked cute, though.
We went downtown and bought some plastic glasses (now this sounds like "wooden iron", doesn't it?), plates and maybe flatware, which have then stayed for a long time in the family. And a mixer, with all sorts of add-ons - a coffee grinder, meat grinder, and a blender. They were all below any regular capacity, by today's measurements, and made with as much plastic as the then technology allowed, which wasn't good enough; I think the bit that connects the axle with the add-ons wore out really fast, and there were only two spares in the kit. But the mixer remained in use for at least a decade. There was also a rechargeable torchlight, which then wasn't much use, it would discharge quickly and didn't give much light even when fully charged, but we kept it around for a number of years. It did serve some, in cases when we had to put up the tent in utter darkness, or go to pee in the middle of a night.
The building in the bacground, with letters on windows, is the department store where we bought most of these. Looked pretty much the same as the RKB back home or in Belgrade, just much more crowded - I guess it was mostly locals, didn't hear too many languages.
I didn't manage to make a shot of any Tatra, too bad, it was the weirdest design I saw so far - headlights grouped in the middle, engine in the back, rear window in two parts, left and right, always black and big. I got only this, which is a Volga and a Čajka. This being the strict downtown (those in the know will probably recognize the buildings), these must have been some official vehicles. The vehicles were more interesting to me than architecture, which will be there in a hundred years as well, while the cars will change.
Don't remember that I've seen much of Prague. We weren't real tourists yet, still acquiring gear. Dad had a story, told many times, how Janči tried to address a waiter in german, so we weren't served at all and had to eat what we found in supermarket. I don't remember the scene itself, only that we sat somewhere and then don't remember eating.
Off to Poland.
Mentions: Janči Gnajs, in serbian
2-X-2011 - 12-VII-2026