Recently, a friend asked me to make him a list of places he should visit while travelling to my hometown of Novi Sad with his partner.
Making a list of places you like - places that represent the city you love and suit someone whose tastes you more or less know - is not easy. I’m a creature of habit: when I visit my hometown, I mostly go to the same places, until I don’t - or until they close down.
I found an old online map that I had made almost ten years ago, and after a quick online check - I realized that many of my old haunts - and recommendations - had closed down. Many others were no longer the places they used to be. Before I started overthinking what to recommend and what not to recommend - and wondering about the passage of time, life, and everything else - I contacted friends whose information and taste I trusted and created a map that I could easily share.
If you’re ever heading to Novi Sad, message me, and I’ll be happy to send you a link to the map.
I made a list of my favourite places in town. This took a couple of days, as places kept popping into my head while I was doing other things.
I created several categories for different kinds of experiences: food, coffee shops, cocktail bars, viewpoints, culture, and more.
I went through the list again and added each place to the relevant category.
I contacted friends to gather accurate information and check that the existing details were still correct.
I added everything to an online map that could be easily shared.
This little research project brought back so many memories. One of the people I contacted was a good friend of mine, and I asked him whether a fancy terrace - with a great view, and perfect for visitors to the city - still existed and was open.
He replied: “Even during those ten years when we went out almost every night, we never went there. How would I know anything about it now?”
I laughed while looking at my phone. He was right.
One of those nights, we did end up on a terrace - a different one, above the city, attached to a bar called Pulitzer that may have existed for only a couple of months. We don’t remember why we went there. Maybe it was someone’s party, or perhaps we were simply out for the evening. But once we started retracing our steps, we concluded that it must have been on our way between my parents’ home, where we had started the night; a place where metalheads used to hang out—I think we went there to support a friend’s band, but neither of us can be sure; and some other place that our memories have chosen to ignore, pompously called The Electric Powerplant. We weren’t particularly interested in dancing or electronic music, so we had no idea why we would have gone there. Maybe it was in Narnia, because Google doesn’t return any results for it. Then again, it was such a long time ago that it would be stranger if I had found it online.
We ended our little trip down memory lane none the wiser. We remembered that it had been a great evening, and that was what mattered - and perhaps all we had left: places from our youth that were either closed down or, it seemed, invented.
All this wandering up and down the memory lane of my twenties brought me back to a project, I’ve definitely mentioned before, I did in 2015 called One Hundred Days of Paris. For 100 days, I wrote and illustrated stories about my first year in Paris. When I finished, I remember wondering whether I should do the same thing for my hometown: 100 Days of Novi Sad.
I never got around to it. And now, many of the stories that might have been featured have been erased from the chip in my head. They simply faded beneath the weight of time, new stories, and - yes - alcohol. I stopped drinking six years ago, but the damage had certainly already been done.
Spotify gracefully suggested a song out of nowhere: one I had heard and loved before, but hadn’t listened to in centuries. It became the soundtrack to this whole story.
I bumped into a metro love story of a writer that I’m following online a couple of weeks ago and in return I posted my 100 days of Paris story love story - probably my favourite one from this project and I will repost is here below.
Day 43
I was sitting on the metro one day reading Just Kids. Just Kids is a memoir by Patti Smith that documents her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, her early days in New York city, nights in Chelsea hotel, love for art and for artists and the endless search for oneself. Two or three stations after I found a position to read, a good looking man entered the metro, set opposite to me and…well, just looked beautiful reading his book.
I knew a guy who married a girl that he met in Miami on public transportation. I knew a girl who is engaged to a man that she met on a 2hrs plane flight. Me and the well dressed person sitting opposite to me had about 45 minutes to fall in love. More than enough. Line 7 of Paris metro is slow and long. We stared at each other. My concentration was balancing between wonderful sentences of Patti Smith and the charming way in which he paired his glasses with his belt and the rim of his watch. He smiled. I smiled. It was 10 in the morning. This day started well. We arrived at the station Opera. He looked at me, stood up, looked at me again, stood on the wagon door waiting to get out, looked at me again. Went out finally, after something that felt like 7 minutes while it was more like 7 sec. And made a gesture “what are you waiting for, jump out.” I stayed sitting there. Balancing between wonderful sentences of Patti Smith and my heart that planned to jump out of my chest.
I’ve never seen him again. Hello stranger!
A couple of Saturdays ago, I took some lovely clients - two professional flea-market ladies - to the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen to show them around. It was a warm morning, and not many people were brave enough to venture out and explore, as we were. Read: the heatwave!
Our tastes and shopping approaches matched, which is always delightful, so we had a great time. I had been searching for a barbotine flowerpot for probably two years, and I finally found one at a great price.
I also bought some old stamps, just to wonder what kind of love letters they had once carried to someone, as well as some small copper stamps. One of them has a snail on it - a reminder to slow down.
I got all of this for less than €30. All in all, it was a successful morning!
And that’s it. I hope that you are well and joyful and thank you for reading,
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