Raining cats and dogs

Met a nice realtor who liked practicing English. We had a long meeting. Man he sure does love to talk, and he clearly thoroughly enjoyed practicing his English which he couldn’t speak all that well. He rambled and rambled and I tried to get as much as I could out of it. But, when I was finished asking questions, he said to my surprise; is that it? Are you sure you don’t have anymore, because I like speaking English and answering questions. Well then mister, if you put it that way… sure I’ve got some more for you! So I kept on going. I wish every realtor meeting went just like this.
Earlier, I had been looking for a building that I had to visit. I was on the way to a realtor meeting, it was rainy and miserable. I took out my notebook under a ledge Nice guy who showed me the way to the realtor building. Old Russian style bazaar shops. So sunny and hot yesterday, today cold and rainy. 30 degree difference! You would think I was in New England, wouldn’t you?

Today, it poured cats and dogs. But, it was mostly a good day. I woke up and had some breakfast (not as nice as Zira’s breakfast, but it will do), then I went for a jog. Man, if I only knew that later in the day it would be raining as hard as it was, I would have brought my camera and jogged into some places that I never had a chance to visit. The hotel staff helped me with some phone calls I needed to make and then I got all packed up and ready to go. Came down and had a cappuccino on the house while finishing up some online work and then headed out to brave the rain. Both auto shops I went to were extremely helpful. They followed me around and one even wrote down on paper as we walked everything I was requesting the price for so that I could take it with me. Of course, there were four people tending to me while only one of them actually spoke English. No one even asked me why I was asking for the prices. They just happily handed them out. And when I had gotten everything I needed, they asked if there was anything else they could help with. I wish it was this easy all the time! Got in the taxi and tried to tell him I wanted to go to the “skull tower”. He didn’t understand me, so we went back into the shop and they translated for me.

Taxi dropped me off in a different place than I had expected to be going. It was absolutely pouring out, with lightning hitting left and right. So that I could run faster, I decided not to open up my umbrella. After running through the rain for less than a minute, I arrived at a small building which looked like a church. There was a door on each of the four sides, I tried to open all doors with no luck. While trying to open the last one, I noticed a woman running towards me. At first I didn’t think much of it, but then I thought well, maybe she’s coming to talk to me. Sure enough, she was soaked; but she had the key. Inside the small church, in the very middle there was a wall that was covered in skeleton heads. Many of them had come out of the wall, but the ones that were still intact were quite spooky. She told me the story of how the Turks had built it and put the heads of the deceased Serbian soldiers on the wall to scare away attackers. Creepy. When I had had enough of dead people, we went out into the rainy day once again. I had an umbrella, and we both huddled under it and laughed nervously the whole way into dryness as lightning striked all around us. Poor girl was soaked. She called me a taxi and I gave her a tip. I was disappointed; I had wanted to walk around in the gated old city but it wasn’t very practical to do so with the weather we were having. So, I sat at the hotel bar instead and had some lunch. Figures, as soon as I got into the taxi to head to the bus station the lovely sun came out. It’s OK, I was in positive spirits. I had just finished yet another survey and was inspired by the kindness offered by many of the people I met in Serbia.

Though, I got on the bus and that changed a little bit. I sat in the back, had no problem getting my ticket and bags onto the bus, but the bus ticket man came back to check on everyone’s tickets. We all watched as he had words with some people after checking their ticket. He started talking with me and I told him, of course, that I didn’t speak Serbian, English only. No matter, he continued speaking Serbian with me.