In the usual way, the old regular auntie as she sits down to it offering some of her repast with spade hand, — Join me, Mister?
Thank you. Silikan, silikan.
Which quickly recalled our, Samo izvolte. Be my guest. Please proceed.
But how did our own comparable invitation go?... Was it, Pridruzite?...
On the equator eating out in the open this was all rather different. There was little alfresco in our corner of Europe and up until recent years none in Australia.
Pridruzi.... Join me.
Thank you. Silikan, silikan.
Which quickly recalled our, Samo izvolte. Be my guest. Please proceed.
But how did our own comparable invitation go?... Was it, Pridruzite?...
On the equator eating out in the open this was all rather different. There was little alfresco in our corner of Europe and up until recent years none in Australia.
Pridruzi.... Join me.
The example returns in Slavo’s voice, his particular, polished gallantry.
How many fine meals were taken with Slavo? First of course together with Bab’s cousin Bosa in the kitchen, though it was Slavo who was the real host, outstanding bon vivant, raconteur and charmer. Later after Slavo and Bosa’s split we counter intuitively took Slavo’s part, not quite intentionally, but that was how it panned out. Eventually the rupture with Bosa, her daughter Nada and grandson became final. The then little boy’s name has now totally slipped.
Afterwards Slavo stayed with us in Spotty two or three stretches, in the third bedroom at the end of the passage where he always sought to avoid meals. Without contributing rent eating our food was altogether shameful. Even commandeering the kitchen for his limited culinary offerings, such as beef goulash was an embarrassment.
Still, we prevailed often enough and got Slavo to join us. In return he was always on the look-out for tasks around the place — new guttering for the house went up, useful shelving appeared, the garden and yard had never been so tidy.
There were restos in Willy, Fitzroy, Footscray and Preston, with Bab always of the party. She had always been a second mother to Slavo out in the foreign land and all the more so once his own passed on.
How many fine meals were taken with Slavo? First of course together with Bab’s cousin Bosa in the kitchen, though it was Slavo who was the real host, outstanding bon vivant, raconteur and charmer. Later after Slavo and Bosa’s split we counter intuitively took Slavo’s part, not quite intentionally, but that was how it panned out. Eventually the rupture with Bosa, her daughter Nada and grandson became final. The then little boy’s name has now totally slipped.
Afterwards Slavo stayed with us in Spotty two or three stretches, in the third bedroom at the end of the passage where he always sought to avoid meals. Without contributing rent eating our food was altogether shameful. Even commandeering the kitchen for his limited culinary offerings, such as beef goulash was an embarrassment.
Still, we prevailed often enough and got Slavo to join us. In return he was always on the look-out for tasks around the place — new guttering for the house went up, useful shelving appeared, the garden and yard had never been so tidy.
There were restos in Willy, Fitzroy, Footscray and Preston, with Bab always of the party. She had always been a second mother to Slavo out in the foreign land and all the more so once his own passed on.
At least ten years of filling in Slavo’s paperwork, taxation, real estate matters, appeals against parking fines and the like, before we noticed that we in fact shared a common birthday. Golly! Really?... It was the other language that screened that fact, entering the figures in a Serbo-Croat transcription involved a disconnect. Neither of us were birthday people. Similarly orphaned at a young age and raised by mothers, that kind of commemoration did not figure.
Much of the added layer, the more sophisticated, refined and certainly vulgar Serbo-Croat was learned under Slavisa’s exceptional tutelage. Brilliance, force, indomitable spirit is more difficult to conceive snuffed out and buried in the ground somewhere up on that hill above Komren where we marked Slavo’s elder brother Pero’s yearly observance. On that occasion Slavo might have pointed out his prepared grave. People commonly took that necessary measure well in advance in the Balkans.
When the old auntie offering to share her food bid farewell and was offered Jumpa lagi, Till we meet again, she in fact responded with a South Serbian term; or at least a term the Southern Serbs shared after their five hundred years of Ottoman occupation.
— Mash’allah!
The precise, literal meaning remains in fact unknown to this day, though there is no doubt about the ceremonial courtesy involved.
The second largest city in Serbia Nis. It had been the Nislije rising up against Milosevic that finally brought an end to his regime. During the trip to Slavo’s city we paid a visit to Cele Kula, House of Skulls out on the road to Sofia. The Bulgarian border was only 80kms from Nis. Yugoslavs from other quarters, more refined and celebrated locales, called the Nislije either Bulgars or Gypsies. Slavo and his wonderful ratbag crew of drinkers, footballers, harmonica players and wastrels of various kinds benefited greatly from the latter community in their midst. All that panache and verve, defiance and dazzling rattle was little in evidence elsewhere
Much of the added layer, the more sophisticated, refined and certainly vulgar Serbo-Croat was learned under Slavisa’s exceptional tutelage. Brilliance, force, indomitable spirit is more difficult to conceive snuffed out and buried in the ground somewhere up on that hill above Komren where we marked Slavo’s elder brother Pero’s yearly observance. On that occasion Slavo might have pointed out his prepared grave. People commonly took that necessary measure well in advance in the Balkans.
When the old auntie offering to share her food bid farewell and was offered Jumpa lagi, Till we meet again, she in fact responded with a South Serbian term; or at least a term the Southern Serbs shared after their five hundred years of Ottoman occupation.
— Mash’allah!
The precise, literal meaning remains in fact unknown to this day, though there is no doubt about the ceremonial courtesy involved.
The second largest city in Serbia Nis. It had been the Nislije rising up against Milosevic that finally brought an end to his regime. During the trip to Slavo’s city we paid a visit to Cele Kula, House of Skulls out on the road to Sofia. The Bulgarian border was only 80kms from Nis. Yugoslavs from other quarters, more refined and celebrated locales, called the Nislije either Bulgars or Gypsies. Slavo and his wonderful ratbag crew of drinkers, footballers, harmonica players and wastrels of various kinds benefited greatly from the latter community in their midst. All that panache and verve, defiance and dazzling rattle was little in evidence elsewhere
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