Zajecar irons

It's a sunny day. Just after Niš, near Malča, we turn off the highway to Pirot. The name of this village has been etched into the collective memory because of the Malča barber, a pedophile and rapist who cut his victims' hair. I reject this ugly association. The areas we pass through – leafy marshlands – are actually extremely beautiful. Nature is not monstrous, even when it kills. Evil is part of man's world.

I am amused by the names of some places. On our way to Zaječar, where we were headed, I read on the roadside signs: Pasjača. Grbavče. Prekonoga. Rgošte. Potrkanje. My favorite is the village of Žlne. A word older than žune, dzetlića, drvodublje. The sound shift from “l” to “u” occurred everywhere in this language except in one village, which preserves the speech of our ancestors.

At a gas station that clearly says NIS, we try to pay with bank cards. At the cash register, they remind us that this is impossible due to American sanctions. We are given dinar cash. Today's world is bizarre, we all pretend that everything is fine, and supposedly a distant war has crept into an ordinary gas station in southeast Serbia.

We pass Svrljig, climb Tresibaba, and from above on a clear day we can already see Knjaževac. After that, Zaječar is not far away.

WHEN THE RADULES WERE BEGS

We enter the city on the street of Ljubo Nešić, a national hero who died as a partisan in 1941. We stay on the street of 7 September – on that day in 1944 Zaječar was liberated for the first time and until recently it was also a city holiday. I haven't even arrived in the city in good time, and the names of the streets remind me of a past that just can't seem to let go. Some want to erase it, others want to remember it.

We walk down the street that leads to the center. I listen to the conversations of people in shops, on the street, the monologues of smartphone owners who talk as they walk. It sounds familiar and intimate to me. You hear a similar melody from Kumanovo to Leskovac and all the way to the Timok region. Linguists have their own name for these speeches – the Prizren-Timok dialect. Bulgarian linguists claim it, Macedonians define them as northern dialects of the Macedonian language. Serbian linguists ignore such attitudes, considering the dialects of these people to be variations of Serbian. “Idem si doma,” I hear. Or “odose si gosti.” I begin to feel like I am in Leskovac.

The street is no different from those in towns of several tens of thousands of people in Serbia. A few dilapidated facades, a tangle of cables overhead, here and there a betting shop tucked into a row of shops. But then the Balkan bandručara shines in full glory. Radul-beg's residence. Its origins are hazy. It was first mentioned in a report by an Austrian officer in 1784. Local tradition links it to an unknown Turkish bey.

After the liberation from the Turks, the konak belonged to the richest merchant in Zaječar, Radul Gligorijević, and was later purchased by the municipality from his descendants. Today, this historical pearl is part of the National Museum in Zaječar.

RABBITS OR GRASS?

We are sitting on the main square, where the imposing Museum building, the Hotel Srbija, and the newly opened garden of the expensive restaurant Evropa are located. Nearby is a fountain that reminds me of the one on Terazije.

Against the increasing morning glare, the black silhouette of the monument to the fallen soldiers in the Balkan Wars and the First World War stands out. It is decorated with laurel wreaths on a pedestal, in which the places of battle are inscribed. Three bronze Serbian warriors are at the top. It was unveiled in 1929. In fact, it is called the Monument to the Warriors of the Timok Division. The creator is Frano Menegelo Dinčić, an artist born in Kotor, who studied in Prague, Munich and Paris. He came to Belgrade in 1928 and remained there for the rest of his life.

I heard about Zaječar as a kid – as soon as I started getting interested in rock, because the Gitarijada festival was held there every year. I studied Russian in elementary school, so I knew that in that language, the word for rabbit is zajac. I imagined the city on rabbit's paws. Only later did I learn that in neighboring Bulgarian, the word is similar – zaek. While the Leskovac rabbit is – zajac. And in the Zaječar area, it is zajec.

Local saga says that Zaječar was named after the multitude of rabbits that roamed around the settlement, which was first mentioned in Turkish chronicles in 1466. In fact, after a man who looked after the rabbits and whose name was Zaječar. At that time, this settlement of eight families belonged to the Vidin Sandžak. Perhaps the rabbits were not the godfathers, but, as other sources claim, Said Ashar Pasha, who built an estate at the confluence of the Black and White Timoks, settling it with Bulgarians and Vlachs. The local population heard Said Ashar as Zaidšar.

Since local chroniclers haven't unraveled this, neither will I, as I contemplate rabbits, pastures, and the whimsical history of borderlands in the middle of a beautiful morning.

UGANDA IN ZAJECAR

From here, the path leads us past the market, which on Saturdays transforms the surrounding streets into a charming Balkan-oriental chaos. It reminded me of the market in Struga – a similar concrete cube beneath which the life of a merchant's anthill unfolds.

It's time to look for a place where coffee is drunk long and slowly. The benefits of civilization, such as the internet, have allowed me to find an unusual place right behind the monument to the most famous man born in Zaječar – Nikola Pašić.

The famous radical would probably be amazed to learn that there is an African coffee shop in his hometown – Uganda Connect.

After Belgrade on the Water and Niš, this small town with a population of just over thirty thousand people is only the third place in Serbia where real coffee from Uganda is drunk and sold. Since we missed visiting these coffee shop embassies of the African country in two large cities, we did not miss it here. And we did not regret it. Over the rim of the cup, we could watch Nikola Pašić, frozen on his pedestal, silent and probably thinking about all the historical traps he avoided as well as all the radical corruption stumbles in which he participated.

WHICH BEACH POP?

From here we walk to the Zaječar train station. It's as if time has stopped there. There are no people. There are no trains either. Just rail buses – buses on the tracks that pick up a few passengers and then leave the platform deserted for hours.

The clock always shows the same time. It's not five to twelve, but twelve past seven.

We cross the railway line and after about ten minutes we are on the shore of the Crni Timok. The promenade next to it dates back to Tito's time. Soon we come to Popova plaža, a beautifully landscaped city picnic area. Beach volleyball, five-a-side football on artificial grass, basketball, handball on a hard surface, badminton, outdoor chess, a children's playground.

I was watching the river from the bridge and wondering why one Timok has the color black in its name and the other has the color white.

They merge somewhere on the outskirts of the city, so the only true city river is the Crni Timok.

That day we were wandering around Zaječar. Outside the center, the streets, like elsewhere in Serbia, are made up of two rows of family houses. The yards are almost as neat as in Pirot. Here too, abandoned houses are a sight to behold. Sometimes the owners build a larger, decent house in the yard. But the old, parental, single-story, leaning house is neither demolished nor renovated. It collapses on its own.

There are examples of dilapidated unfinishedness here too. Huge houses, half-finished. And time has already begun to take its toll on them. Incompleteness, perhaps, has some rational core. Maybe the tax is higher if you finally plaster the house. I am inclined to believe that the desires and possibilities of our people are hopelessly and forever diverging. And that people make decisions according to what pleases them, but without any specific plan. And then the results are half-hearted.

LET THE SEA SELL HIM, THAT HAJDUK VELJKO

We pass by the monument to the hajduk Veljko Petrović, a Serbian national hero from the First Serbian Uprising who fought to liberate Serbia from the Turks, but is also a kind of folk hero in Bulgaria and Macedonia. He was born in Lenovac, about fifteen kilometers from Zaječar.

A song by the band Suncokret Kara Mustafa immediately begins to echo through my inner acoustic space. It is older than this monument.

What saddle will you use for your swift steed? What pasture will you use for your sharp sword?

Well, really, safe deli Kara Mustafa

Let the sea saddle him, that Hajduk Veljko. Let the sea graze him, that Hajduk Veljko.

Because he is a better hero than me.

Suncokret is not alone in his musical adaptation of folk treasures. “Kara-Mustafa” is a folk song from Stevan Mokranjac’s Sixth Handwriting that glorifies the Serbian hero Hajduk Veljko. The ailing Turkish leader Kara-Mustafa acknowledges his superiority and leaves him his sword and wife. This song, which Mokranjac shaped as a triumphant finale, also exists in Macedonian tradition.

I didn't encounter the artistic canonization of this hajduk only in music classes or on Radio Belgrade music shows. I also read the novel Hajduk Veljko as a child. It was written by Dušan Baranin in 1965.

We leave Veljko and his hefty saber behind and set off in search of a tavern recommended to us by the owner of the place where we were staying. On the way there, we will pass through the center again. The Municipal Hall building, begun in 1909 and completed only in 1923 due to the wars, attracts my attention. One of the most beautiful buildings in the town tells me what would happen if the old building fabric of melancholic, dilapidated Serbian towns were renovated, if the facades were repaired and painted.

ZORAN AND THE SPACEMEN

The tavern is called Dva brata. Just as I recognized the similarity of these people's speech with the speech of Leskovac, Niš and Pirot on the street, this tavern showed us that Zaječar should also be put on the gourmet map of the country with these cities. The bun from the oven was really prepared just for us and came out hot on the table, reminiscent of the Istanbul "ekmek". The mutton patty was really made of mutton. And the "Dva Brata Salad" is an excellent Moravian salad disguised by its name.

Before we got here, we wished for a moment that we could go to the epicenter of Zajecar's barbecue scene – Kod Mede. The burgers there are oversized. But we should leave something for next time.

From here, we return to the center along Svetozara Marković Street – another famous Zaječar resident. There we will be greeted by a monument to the man who, during his lifetime – he died more than four decades ago – was the king of humor and improvisation in Serbian theater. The figure is located in front of the Svemirac playhouse. There is some metaphysical humor in that.

Those who saw Zoran Radmilović in the play Radovan III at Atelje 212 in the 1980s know what it's all about. Everyone else has the recordings. And they can take our word for it that such people are rarely born.

Many admirers of this actor do not know that he is of German origin. His paternal grandfather was named Richard Lang, he was an architect. He married Zoran's grandmother Stevka, converted to Orthodoxy and took the name Radmilo. Hence the family surname Radmilović.

Zoran's city has put him on its map. In addition to a monument, there is also a street named after him. In addition, a theater is named after him.

FROM CHURCH TO BEER

The next day before leaving, we walk through the lovely pedestrian zone from the National Theatre of Timok Krajina, past the beautiful garden of the Jazz Cafe, all the way to Gostoprimnica – the cafe with the most beautiful name in town. It seems to me that it somehow belongs to the Cathedral Church, which is located on the other side of the street.

The beautiful churchyard is bustling. Trumpeters are cheering the wedding party on. The bride is dancing in a circle. If someone showed me these scenes in the middle of the night, I would know it was somewhere in Serbia.

The construction of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary began in the spring of 1834. Prince Miloš explicitly supported its construction and ordered the local authorities to provide people and materials for the urgent construction of the church. The order worked, as the church was built by the end of that year. The bell tower was built separately from the church, the bells for it were cast in Kragujevac.

The trumpeters play tirelessly until they are interrupted by the bells of Kragujevac, calling people to enter the church.

And we head to the Uganda cafe for our farewell coffee. I think about all that Zaječar has given to Serbia. From Pašić, through Svetozar Marković, Zoran Radmilović, but also the Radenkovic brothers – members of the band Zlatni prsti who, back in 1970, pushed Gitarijada. As a kid, I dreamed of performing on that stage one day.

However, the most famous Zaječar brand is Zaječarsko, a beer that, according to beer drinkers, is among the very best in Serbia.

In 1875, a report from the head of the Zaječar district to the Serbian Minister of the Interior stated: "Last year, the local brewer produced 2.000 cases of beer, which is consumed significantly by the people themselves." This document testifies that beer was being produced and drunk in Zaječar well before the official date of the founding of the Zaječar Brewery in 1895.

The brewery is now part of the Heineken concern, but it seems to me that it has managed to preserve its distinctive local touch – the only thing that matters in a globalized world.

We leave Zaječar with the feeling that the city is historically much more significant than its actual size. And that in a happier country it would be a rich, well-groomed town.

As I leave the city, I see on my left the stage I wanted to play on in the 1970s. Nearby is a new stadium – like a flying saucer that has strayed onto the banks of the Timok River.

The current concept of modernization wants to impress in the wrong way. Some Zaječar courtyards with blossoming orchards are much more beautiful.