07-VII-1975.
(give or take a day)
So we decided to move to Borik. There being eight of us with only one car, we just let them take the car, and we'll take the bus. Dad drove the four of us up on the road, the Jadranska magistrala, and as expected, there was a bus stop. While we were waiting for a bus, they packed, drove out and passed us within minutes. We stood there for maybe another fifteen minutes, when a bus appeared. It seemed rather full, so I raised four fingers to notify the driver that we all travel (and not three of us seeing the fourth off).
To get a discount on a two way ticket, we had to fill the railway form K-15. Which was once some privilege to have, you had to get approval and a writ from your union to get one. Nowadays it's just a simple form to get the discount, and I hurried to fill ours. Lacking a second pencil, Arpi looked around to borrow one and found a guy, who didn't want to part with it but offered to fill the form. The guy probably never heard of surnames beyond his village, so he butchered not only that, but the name too. We would have mocked Arpi for this much more, had this new inscription been at least half easier to pronounce. Where did he find the reason to replace both ays, once with ae once with ia, is a matter of divine inspiration.
There was a volvo riding in front of the bus... and it stopped. Picked all four of us. Some engineer, steel constructions designer. Said he built the hall of sports in our town. Being on the road a lot, he got into the habit to take hitchhikers. Many of them being foreigners (Yugoslavia is a tourist destination), he even went on to learn english. Had a couple of affairs, he hinted. He fed us marelice from a paper bag. These are dalmatian small sour cherries, the marelica, dark red with juice oozing as soon as you touch them.
He dropped us off at the bus roundabout near Kašteli, as he had some work to do there. The bus didn't come for quite a while, so he picked us up again when he was finished, within the hour or two. He drove us all the way into the city in the end, and dropped us at the camp gates. Incredible man, and incredible ride.
There are too many pictures in the next article, so I put this one here. The concrete frame, from which Arpi and his mate jumped, everyone called monkey island, and we did climb there many times over the years. It was a future extension of the dock/deck, which was never finished. On some later pictures, fortysome years later, it has vanished, and the dock was never extended. But then, half of the camp has also vanished.
Mentions: Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Borik, in serbian