Category: Serbia

I like coffee. Cyndi not so much. But people here love coffee. We stopped by a coffee shop on our way home from language class one day. I got my normal (Turkish Coffee and Kisla Water)…cyndi got some frufru coffee (A Carmel Moca or something like that). Mine came in a normal glass…but hers came in a drinking class. With a straw! And this is hot coffee mind you. Oh well…what can you say….we aren’t in Kansas anymore toto!

Кафа ѕа понети is how you say Coffee to Go in Serbian. It actually means Coffee for Taking, but we won’t get into symantics about how that doesn’t make any sense. By the way, if you want to learn a foreign language, get used to it….It is way hard. Not only do you have to learn what the words mean…but you have to learn what they sayings and phrases mean. Anway, I digress.

At the start of the week (or end of last week) we got some coffee to go and took to language class. This is a picture of Cyndi wth her Caramel Moca. She said it was good. I got turkish coffee, but it was just ok. Don’t ever get that stuff to go. It doesn’t work well.

Want to see a map of our city (Cacak)?  Well, here you go.  You should be able to go to flickr and get the full-size original version (well, as much as flickr would handle…20MB) if you want.

By the way, the individual scans are up on flickr.  I thought I should be able to get a way good big image because I scanned everything in a grid.  But huggin (the app I use to stitch pics now) didn’t really like it.  if you want to give it a go, download the images and give it a whirl.  Let me know how it comes out.  All of the images can be found here.

I got tired of running to google to have their search box do my conversions for me. So, I came up with this quick reference sheet to tape above the stove in the kitchen. Feel free to download and use my imperial to metric and metric to imperial pdf.

Instead of just going one way, I tried to do two-way conversions. That way, I can estimate easily without thinking. Enjoy.

Tennis is so so so popular here in Serbia. Yesterday, two friends went to play in an indoor court. I took some pictures. One is below…the rest are here in our flickr photostream.

Remember this post about the 4×4 cars I didn’t know what they were?  Well, they are name brand Lada and are from the Soviet Union (now Russia).  Here are some links you might find interesting:

Wikipedia Article on Ladas
Lada Club Serbia

Here are some videos you may like:

{metacafe}407380/lada_niva_4x4_under_water{/metacafe} 

 {youtube}wMxwHhmQMzs{/youtube}

{youtube}4rJ14qlRl2I{/youtube} 

 {youtube}Qr3o8aEapSg{/youtube}

 {youtube}16GaCbN185E{/youtube}

 {youtube}TzdZVY8q6b0{/youtube}

Aaron…if you are out there, I think you need one of these.  It’s much better than mudding in your van  🙂

Ocasionally, we’ll hear the honking–lots of honking–and know that someone is getting married. However, until Friday, we had no idea what was really going on. On Friday, our language teacher showed us a video of her wedding. It was neat. She explained what was going on, how things happened, etc… We learned quite a bit. I’m currently working on an article that will explain the differences (I’ll post a link when it comes up). In the meantime, you can find some more information on Serbian weddings here and here and some interesting pictures:

Our weather forecast for the past 3 days and the next 15 is going to be crazy. 2 days ago, it was in the high to mid 30s (celcius). Over the next few days that is supposed to dip down with lows into the single-digits…then go back up. Here is a vew of what I saw today when I looked (you’ll probabaly have to look at the original view for the full detail):

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve updated my Serbian Quick Refence sheet. The original post is here.

All of these videos happened here around Cacak.  It took me a few days to get them off the camera and upload them to google.  On to the show……

It hasn’t rained–really rained–in quite some time.  It did sprinkle one day.  I was waiting on language classes (I had been around town and didn’t want to get wet so I went to the school early).  As it was raining, I noticed that the water was evaporating just about as fast as it was falling.  I took a video to try to show everyone.  Once it was uploaded, it doesn’t look nearly as good as it did live.  I decided to put up two versions of it….one from google video and the other the original file.  You’ll have to wait for the second one to fully load (sorry, I don’t have streaming):

First from google video:

{google}-84879674356588718{/google} 

The second local:

http://media.maxsons.org/20080903_RainInCacakEvaporating.mp4
download the file from here

A few days ago, one of the other Americans in town had a son who had a birthday.  There is a go-cart track in town that we went to.  It cost 450 dinars (about 9 dollars) to ride for 10 minutes.  But, these weren’t the detuned US putsy go-carts.  These things were fast.  If there had been enough room, you probabaly could have fone a donut.  And we didn’t have to wear a seat belt or helmet.  And no one got hurt.  Take that nanny goverment!  Anyway, here is the video:

{google}-7268409312191533782{/google} 

 This last one is of a random fireworks display.  I was sitting at my desk last night working on the computer when I heard fireworks.  That is something fairly standard here and random (people will just shoot them off.  I wish I knew where they bought them from….I would have for the 4th!) so I didn’t think anything about it.  However, when they kept going and going, I got up.  I happened to grab my cell phone and took a movie of the last half of the show.  It was amazing.  I’ll ask one of my friends today if they knew what was going on.

{google}5231905742113392597{/google} 

By the way, these videos are licensed under the same creative commons license this website is.

[Update 09-07-2008 09:00:00] I took the local video off.  It took way to long to load.  I left the download link up though.

[Update 09-07-2008 12:29:31]  I found out that one of the daughters (or daugher) of one of the richest guys in town got married.  The fireworks were at the wedding.  WOW!