The date is more or less inaccurate. At this time, nobody was still going home, even though we got reinforcements from below, the guys from the october class - Morkec and Bogi, plus the third cook from elsewhere (and I think the Sqiptar cook we had was sent somewhere, as he was not too good and was probably suspect of something). This new cook was actually a pro, having finished the vocational school for it.
With Morkec onboard, I soon revived the idea of having a photo club. There was actually some money collected (from internal beer sales, mostly) that had to be used for something, so we two went downtown and bought a minimal lab. One UPA-5, the same soviet compact enlarger-in-a-box (some assembly required, i.e. you take it out of the suitcase box and the box is the pedestal then), redlight, plates, tongs, paper, chemicals. I already had my Praktica since december, so we were all ready.
The north bunker by the gate was the ideal location for the lab, and we got it, actually the upstairs. The loopholes were already closed, so there was only the hatch to cover. The accoustics was weird, as anyone who spent time inside a concrete sphere can attest. Sometimes I was standing by the middle of the semicircular bench we used, he'd be sitting on the left end of it, and his reporter's cassete player (with all the new Idoli, Azra, Kazalište, Električni orgazam, Film, Boa, the whole new wave, and of course Azra on a separate set of cassettes) on the right. I'd barely hear the music, and he complained on how loud it was. He'd simply get it focused into his head by the geometry of the dome. The worst thing you could do was to stand with your head in the center. You'd almost suffocate by just listening yourself breathe from everywhere.
The business went fine. The soldiers are the best customers, they all want their photos taken as they are, to send home. We even took some shots downtown, of other guys whom we'd eventually meet again in a month or two, deliver the prints and take the money. The charge was nominal - twice the price of paper, which covered the other costs as well, such as film, chemicals and our drinks. I came home with six or seven spools of negatives, and still have them (while some more important ones didn't).
Thereabouts, I only remember the weather outside was sunny (which means it could have been any month, but must be april or later, when that cuntiot, who was the oldest by time in, aka staž, and pretended to be our boss, the sleaze, got dismissed), I took to killing time by using old transmission logbooks to scribble. The previous crop of soldiers mostly used first twenty pages and then took to a new book, leaving oodles of empty pages. I don't remember whether I had brought my old calculator from home, probably not, and the trip home was later, anyway... so I started calculating e by hand to some insane number of decimals, I'd say 60 - that's how many fit an A4 page in my handwriting. Around the 20th row I discovered I made an error around the 8th row, so gave up on that futile exercise. Not quite futile - I spent time, many hours, excellent, anything that kills time is welcome.
And then it occured to me that now I have the time and concentration... and I started writing. My first serious SF stories. The previous two attempts, what I remember of them, were so-so, just attempts, I didn't like what I wrote there. This now, well, this is how I imagined it would be. I preserved the pages and, in the end, took them home.
28-VII-2021 - 2-IV-2026