Molim, Vod(k)a

it was after the departure of Anne´s train that I left Ljubljana towards the south and pretty soon I was on a climb. It was a very hot day, I was suffering up the mountain (which I anyhow do when riding uphill, but this time it was even worse, as my bike was malfunctioning, I was not able to use the climbing gear, just the next one, making the progress quite tough with all the luggage). I stopped to take a picture of the amazing panorama.

Then I noticed I was running low on water and in a small village, I knocked the gate of a house to ask for some. The gate opens and a rather rugger man appeared. I told him in my knowledge of Serbo-Croation "Molim, voda", meaning "water, please". He replied "Voda - njet! Vodka!" and literally pulled me inside the garden. Well, that was the end of my ride for the day. Once inside, a group of people was evidently celebrating some sort of an event. They made me join them and It was not quite vodka, but some sort of home-made wine that I was served - I scarcely remember getting one, no, two, wait, three, or was it four?, maybe five, etc, etc glasses of this alcoholic fluid. Dinner was served and I was actually getting quite drunk with family Sustarsic and their friends.

My "host", who was called Vit, showed up with his accordion, and he, together with Marek, played some amazing Slovenian folks music. I later found out the reason of the celebration - the previous evening a baby girl was born, so it was more music (and even more alcohol...) that was presented. Soon even me, the author of this blog, became an accordion player - for that, I needed a lot of alcohol.

Now, twelve years later, I remember pretty clearly what had happened in the evening, or more precisely, at night. Back then, twelve years ago, it was only the following morning that I could piece together what had happened that night, when I woke up with some significant head-ache, wonder why – anyone? I was on a couch in the bright sunshine and opened my phone. Looking at my photos, something rather strange happened – I saw pictures of myself from the previous night and slowly I got a recollection of that night. At midnight, our very much "illuminated" group went to a shed in the middle of the village and took out all equipment that could make a loud noise and we gave some sort of a serenade, waking up the entire neighborhood. Someone had a chain-saw, another person a trumpet, I had the accordion. Wow – reminds me of the movie White Cat, Black Cat by Emir Kustorica, if you have not seen it, it is highly recommended. People in the Balkan have their way of living – it is not boring at all.

It is your eyes at fault, the above pictures are pretty much blurred. Probably even my camera was drunk...

So ended my first solo biking day...