It’s 6 am. I’ve been awake nearly an hour after 4+ hours of sleep. The monastery church bells are ringing. I’m surprised because I read that they don’t ring again until Easter, although there was disagreement on the internet about what Orthodox churches actually do or should do. Yesterday they didn’t ring at all until the 9 pm service at which time they rang for 20 minutes or more. In any case, I’m delighted to hear them this morning. Hearing the bells is one of my favorite things about traveling here. The roosters have been crowing since I first woke at 4:15. Also heard the cuckoos and an owl.
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We packed up and gave the key to our hosts right after they got back from church. I also gave them a copy of the story I had translated into Serbian for Zoran the painter. The reason I thought they might like it is because the story starts with the main character sitting on the terrace of their little house. I thought they might be happy that I have such positive memories and associations with their place.
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We had no trouble getting from Vrdnik to Busije, a small village created in the late 1990’s by Serb refugees from other parts of former Yugoslavia. Apart from it not looking old and it being close to Belgrade it feels more like a village than a suburb. The ride through farmland took about an hour. As we do every time we are here we commented to each other about how deep brown and rich the soil looks.
Zora inherited from her mother the little 1 bedroom house that her parents built in the late 90’s after once again losing their home in Slavonia, due to war. Their house there was occupied and they never were able to go back. They lost their previous house in WW II. We hear this sort of story, of people losing one house or two in the war/s, and having to rebuild or relocate as refugees, again and again. Zora’s nephew and family also live on the property in a larger house. Zora lives in Zagreb where she works as a psychotherapist but she comes to the little house on weekends or for relaxation. She might move here full time when she is older but for now she likes her life and work in Zagreb. She is of retirement age but her pension is only about 150 Euros a month so she cannot afford to retire, but luckily she loves her work and has no plan to stop working anytime soon.
Zora, who I first met online in a ProcessWork group in the mid 90’s, has become a special friend over the course of our many visits here. Kendra and I stayed at her apartment on our first trip in 2014, and she was with us when our mom died the day after we arrived.
The little house is small by American standards but designed and furnished with practicality and efficiency in mind, and her parents lived here happily. They had no need or desire for something bigger even had they been able to afford it.
Zora had prepared for us a beautiful meal of homemade bread, dried meats, cheeses and a salad of asparagus and hard boiled eggs. Of course we had rakija, and she provided ajvar and jam to go with the meal. And she had dyed eggs that we used to play the egg cracking game. Throughout our visit three of her nieces came by (and played the egg game with each other), as did her nephew and brother.
We enjoyed a long leisurely conversation and would have stayed longer but we had told our next host we would arrive by 4 so we left Zora’s at around 2:30 to drive to another village, this one much older, east of Belgrade called Dragovac. Before leaving Zora showed us the fruit trees in the yard that her parents planted 25 years ago, and she gave us branches of rosemary to make the car smell good.
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