Inaugural Q&A session from the peanut gallery

Sharing some questions that have come my way....

Looking at the Google maps of the area around Leskovac, including the family villages of Keva and Deka (by the way, Google translator says that means “that”), it looks like everywhere is farmland

Yep, mostly farmland, with a bit of forest in the hillier sections. And Deka is grandpa in slang.

It looks like a patchwork with all the different colours and shapes. Would each of the different colours be different crops?

Yep again. Most common crop that I can identify is corn, but there are many other crops, & even a few orchards as well. Each one is only ~10m wide at the road, but is a few hundred metres deep.

Or in different stages of growth or planting?

Well, mainly different crops. It gets bloody cold here over winter (snow), so I don't think much is grown in winter. A lot of work is going on now preparing for the winter (ie storing the harvested corn, & preparing other food for the animals, which will be living inside barns for the duration etc) All depends on the time of the year, in different seasons there is also wheat grown (& different kinds of wheat too), grapes, raspberries and much more....

Or owned by different people?

Each family in the village would own their own small holding, and each would grow different crops on that small plot. Hence the long narrow strips in different colours.

How many people would live in the villages?

Good question, although my estimate is that a larger one would be a couple of hundred. Leskovac apparently has a population of just under 100,000

And there seem to be quite a lot of little villages, all not that far from each other

I recall my first drive in Europe, from Calais to Paris along the autoroute. At any one time, you could see probably 5-7 steeples, each one a discrete village, seemingly only a few km from each other

You seem to be having an absolute ball with all the socialising, but it also seems that a lot of rakia is being drunk

Well, generally only 1-2 shot glasses at a sitting, or per day. However, if I accepted ALL the offers, it would be significantly more! :-)

Are you getting a taste for it?

Not really. Not that it is bad, but not my preferred poison, so more a matter of being polite. Although I do note that it does not seem to make me cough & splutter as much as the first time. Helen says its easy to get used to, so you don't notice the taste any more :0) (& the reason why many Serbian men have problems with drinking :0)...)

If it’s anything like the grappa I’ve had in Italy, it is pretty potent stuff, without a huge amount of flavour – basically it goes straight to my head and I get all silly.

Same same (or "isto isto") - almost pure alcohol, to the extent that they use it to disinfect scratchs etc etc. It is the universal panacea, if you are sick, have a glass of rakia every morning! Also used for preventative medicine, ie to avoid getting sick, have a glass of rakia every morning! Detect the theme here?

What script is used mostly by Helen’s family?

Not really seen them write anything, but Anastasija has homework every night (... and isn't that fun to watch....:-( lots of tantrums and crying and yelling is happening then), and all the textbooks I have seen are in Cyrillic

And what one is used for signs and things? And newspapers?

Both Cyrillic & "roman" are used, probably fairly equally. Although I suspect that increasing use of computers will give "roman" the upper hand. But having said that, the computer I am using now displays in Cyrillic. Road signs tend to be in both. Kids learn both scripts at school. I have seen both used on TV. My feeling is that Cyrillic is probably pushed by the government, as a means of promoting national identity, but I think Croatia uses purely roman, and they essentially speak the same language (same as English & Australian :-))