The scientific project of its own accord has spread to the peoples we love, so far the Russians and Serbs have been dealt with, and those who have deeply resented us in our rich history (Ottomans, Germans, NATO, etc.) will also be included. But shouldn't I also write something preventive? How pleasant is it in countries with which we have not been at war and whose citizens do not bore us - they do not try to reach the dreamed of Europe through our country or to settle with us? I thought first of all about Norway, where my tambourine playing would take me in the winter of 77, and where, in Christiani, in Pilestredet street, which I would find in a novel only ten years down the road Smooth.
The first thing I remember from Oslo is the rustling behind me, like a slightly bigger snake when it is going through a blade, what was it, a citizen of her seventy years, which seemed like a very old age to me at the time, she rides a bicycle, the city cleanliness did clean conscientiously and professionally and the roadway and the sidewalk, and yet there was half a handful of trampled snow on the streets, but the cadet of the PIO there is not ready to wait for spring.
We play in the restaurant every evening from seven to eleven, we live in a separate house, we ride the subway every day for which we received monthly subscription tickets (our line was GRORUDBANEN, the stations were announced in advance over the loudspeakers, but that was all: the hosts had not reached our the current stage of development where the machine threatens to read your cards every three seconds so that the evil Bus-Plus controllers don't read your card); from our house to the subway, we pass by mostly one-story buildings with spacious courtyards, there are candles and flowers in the windows, children old enough for daycare are playing in front of the houses, I don't see anyone looking after them, they are in brightly colored waterproof suits, they have plastic shovels, shovels , and build something out of snow; those who play alone and who you hardly notice from the piled up snow call every passer-by a shrill and joyful "hai", and so do I, who pass by their native house with this stranger's muzzle (what Ž. M. would say).
In the restaurant, I'll notice something that I haven't really seen anywhere else: how whoever is waving glasses of wine looks around and toasts to everyone who notices him, and everyone takes his glass and toasts to that stranger (sometimes he sits alone, but he doesn't drink alone samciat). This may be their version of Ziva or Fortune, pre-internet social gatherings for marriage, friendship or debauchery, but no, their toasting didn't lead to the joining of tables, they said to each other, "Aren't we nice here, with this wine, with deacons and this music, which may not be top-notch, but still keeps us on the threshold of some lost memory, some kind of palimpsest, as if we knew it and then forgot, it doesn't matter, we lived!"
The business will start so well that our benefactor, ie. the employer M. (who was a co-owner of the restaurant, the other was the Norwegian J., an architect) came up with the idea to change at least two sets of guests at each table during the evening, so what do you mean, people loosen their belts, drink, we play music, and you you tell them: "I'm sorry, gentlemen, your time is up, pay the price." bill and let your compatriots have dinner too, and let them drive a little with the warm sounds of the overrated south!" M., however, knows that no warning will be needed: when they call to reserve a table, he will tell them that there are seats from seven to nine and at fifteen, they will tell others to come at nine fifteen, and they will pass each other on the stairs while the waiters clear the tables (the restaurant was on the first floor, there was a bar right down, just like ours).
Said - done. The first shift eats and drinks (making a toast to strangers too), the next shift waits its turn at the bar, it's been agreed that no one is sad to leave our program, and no one is impatient to get on board and enjoy themselves.
One day M. calls me to the window, come, come, journalist, you see that man with a briefcase, I see, well, that's your prime minister, going to work, alone... Indeed, there are no bodyguards, no jeep from the sheikh, there is no festive procession, and therefore no running into the candle. column, a man goes to work, just like his fellow citizens go to Holmenkollen, a nearby hill suitable for skiing, they go with skis under their arms, they have a train (metro) from the center, they are already in plinths, they get off the train in which they did not even read the tickets and they are already on skis, no big deal.
It would not be polite for me to settle here, even though everything is to my liking, this country has no long-term need for me, when I play what we agreed on (two months), in red quasi-gypsy shirts borrowed from "Tamburica", I return to a homeland where I will support an insatiable lord, where the president's men will become too free masons who will build houses where there is no place for houses, and where I will read that the first lady, the matchless kaciperka, bigger than Jovanka, spent fifty thousand euros on textiles: the tabloids are going scientific. using the set-to-set method and add up the prices of unique items and models sewn according to Dovorvorka's unique measure (in the absence of being able to address them personally, this is how I thank the otherwise weakly respected Koštunica and Tadić that we were spared the boring, imported and tragicomic concept of the First Lady ).
(it will continue)
