Brandy for Barbarogeny

What drive is it that makes us celebrate beyond measure. Do we want to feel the peak of life, its sparkling abundance? Tomorrow we are in some well of consciousness, from which remorse echoes. Aspirin, brine, ginger, and who knows what else. Today is a good day to think about it.

We love it when even our hair hurts

Earlier, on the fateful day, after drinking too much, the French said that even their hair hurt (mal aux cheveux). Today's French lovers of the endless drip usually say when they are hungover, if they manage to say anything, that they have a "wooden mouth" (the hangover).

More than 130 years ago, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, with his painting "La gueule de bois", made it possible for us to find out what his lover Suzanne Valdon looks like the next day, her mouth numbed with wine. Or painful hair.

Speaking of hangovers and painting - in the National Gallery in Oslo there is Edvard Munch's painting "The Day After". It's a woman again. She sleeps after drinking. That's how it is with artists. First they drink with their wives and models and then hungover people take pictures of them while they are hungover. I saw that picture in Oslo, a long time ago. But today it's hard for me to remember when that was.

What is it called?

By the way, various nations have humorous expressions for the state of headache, nausea and hypersensitivity to light and sound stimuli. The Irish call it the "brown bottle flu" (brown bottle flu). In the Russian expression for a hangover - pahmeljje - hops are written, so hungover Russians are in fact "hopped".

I trust the Irish because they combine dark beer and whiskey, but also the Russians because they drink vodka out of glasses that look like jars.

However, the hangover, our word for the punishment that comes to us if we don't know how to stop drinking in time, arrived here from the Arab East. Turkism, based on the Arabic word for wine - hamr - settled in all the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In Romania hangover, in Bulgaria a hangover, between Slovenia and Macedonia sometimes without, and sometimes with that "h".

I had my first encounter with alcohol as a kid in Bosnia. Among us teenagers, Dulo knew how to drink the most "patok" or "brja", because that poison was available. The next day, he would say with such self-pity and suffering in his voice that he was "hungover", that I classified my own hangover as a second-rate experience. Thus, through socialization in Sprečanski polje, I adopted two terms for intoxication. Mild poisoning, which I sometimes had, was called a hangover. But once I mixed kruskovac and beer, I found out the next day what Dulo feels when he says he's hungover. Hangover with "h" is a severe form of the same condition accompanied by karasevdah.

From eye powder to fuel for the soul

Records from the time of the Third Egyptian Dynasty, that is, almost twenty-seven centuries before Christ, testify to the fact that people were aware of the opiate character of alcohol from fermented fruit. This is also confirmed by Mesopotamian cuneiform records. On the first day of the year 2022, this means for all of us: we are neither the first nor the last who looked for joy at the bottom of the glass, only to find a hungover mourner the next day. The hangover in humanity is regularly renewed and lasts for at least 5000 years.

The substance produced by fermentation remained the secret spirit of fruit fermentation until the Persian physician and philosopher Razi found a way to isolate it 11 centuries ago. It was only much later that the substance was named by an Arabic word, originally reserved for a fine eye powder - that it came to our tables in Latinized form: alcohol.

"Cheap Meuse, Heavy Booze"

In my youth, there was an alcoholic competition between rockers and folkies.

It started innocently enough in childhood: Kemo sang nasally: "Wine and guitars, I want tonight in my home". Assisted by Miki Jevremović: "I drink but I don't know why". However, at the time of their success I was too young to feel the heavy shadow of a hangover behind those bright notes.

But already from the gymnasium, it started fiercely. Bora Chorba took the lead "While I'm Standing at the Bar Partly Drunk", "I'm a restaurant car thessalonica", "You were forcing cognac all night", Johnny countered manfully: “When Zagreb emerges from sleep./ Two conductors are waiting for him./ To lead them to a draw./ To break the crisis with vines"... "The smelly city opens cheap pubs / For the slags who separate who pesi..."

The Sarajevo pop-rock school was not far behind. Bad heard from somewhere - better to be drunk than old. The guys from Crvena Jubaka were throwing: There are empty glasses on the table, the brandy has been drunk... Gino Banana, already on the edge of the folk hall, cried out: "Let me drink / let me smash / come on don't ask / I'm going to spill my soul". From Novi Sad, Đole threw: "Drink another one, for the third shift". And then the famous rhetorical question of the band "Jugosloveni": Who likes to drink it / who can't live without brandy / Who can't live without a bar / who is in it as soon as it dawns..." Of course - on the eve of the breakup of Yugoslavia, the answer in this hit is clear - Yugoslavs.

"Tavern is my truth"

But already with Đina Banana and the Yugoslavs, elements of folk music were intertwined in the experience of the world. Narodnjak were original in that area. Their field is a pub, the one with checkered tablecloths and tin ashtrays, a plump singer in a too-tight miniskirt and a greased-up bassist behind her.

"There is no better woman than brandy" claimed a guy named Halid Muslimovic. Where should he pour it? "There is an inn in the mountain", advised by his senior colleague Nedeljko Bilkić. "I don't have money to drink wine", complained Marinko Rokvić, and Haris Džinović has a reply to that: "A lot of wine runs through my veins...". Toma consoles them in his own, paradoxical way: "Hey pub, muko". Dima has another theory about torture: "It wasn't me, honey, it was the red wine that killed me". His torment is unfaithful love, and when love torments you in the Balkans, you simply have to drink. To all this, Hashim Kučuk Hoki will say: "I drink to forget it, and the desire is created". Sinan Sakić states: "Glass after glass, a break in the head, a reason for each - the other is with her". Zlata Petrović bursts into the entire virtual inn and says:Oh, wine, wine, that red wine, we'll be fine with red wine". Then he raised the register: “Come on, come on, come on, give us emperors, take all our money, life is short".

Even when I look a little deeper on youtube, in the thrash offer, and see the singer doing that hit "I like guys who drink brandy", shoots a gun, then I know exactly where we are.

So, no matter how you turn it, if you go to a bar, you'll come back penniless, and your hangover won't go away.

"Ah, I would roar wildly"

And so, it seems that in the competition between rockers and folkies, the latter won the definitive victory. Ljubomir Micić knew this back in the twenties - Barbarogenje will win. Micić, a Dadaist zenithist, then had an inkling of what would happen to us: "Ah, I would roar wildly in the mountains of the Balkan continent".

That wild roar is all around us. And we act as if the Balkans is our continent, we don't need another. Pure barbarogenies who instinctively react to all sad and cheerful rhythms - to ace and to seven eighths and to Spanish rumba.

As for me, in the year that we saw off, I was in a lot of bars. But I never once got drunk. I guess that's the moderation brought by decades of bar experience.

I drank ouzo with ice in a Cretan tavern in the middle of Athens. But I also drank it in a tavern in Zemun. In a restaurant in Sombor, a good šljivovica from a barrel. In Leskovac Brat restaurant local plum. In Tuzla I drank unfiltered Tuzla, in Struga I drank Skopje. In Vevčani, in a pub Householder's house the "yellow" brandy of my life.

In Koblenz, I tasted a magnificent white wine, Riesling from that region. In Brdo piva, in my neighborhood on Banovo brdo, I drank German white wheat beer, less well-known than the famous ones, but better. A little further, in a cafe, excellent Banat craft beer Salto, which smells like flower wine. I drank golden rum in a Cuban restaurant in Skopje, on the banks of the Vardar. In Nis, I drank draft Niško. And red wine? A friend recently brought a bottle of Kamnik. It has a multi-layered taste, the sun emanates from it. It reminds me of Sicily and Portugal. And it's Macedonian. It's the best I've had in the last year.

Looks like I'm not hungover. I just remember the trip and the meal. Despite everything.