Guca

Guca
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
1:12 AM

I woke up Wednesday morning feeling pretty drained although Tuesday had been really relaxing. While the rest of the group took a trip into downtown Cacak to walk around and get lunch Mitch and I stayed behind. Mitch delved deeper into Harry Potter and I caught up the blog like I had been meaning to. I've been carrying my beloved IBM ThinkPad around and doing my best to write posts in OneNote as I'm traveling in between places then uploading them in bunches whenever I have a good WiFi connection.

While I have no problem cranking stuff out on planes or trains, in Serbia we've spent a lot of time on busses which I have a lot more trouble getting focused on. My biggest shortfall recently has been doing single picture posts as although when I post to the blog everything is already written finding the pictures and uploading them to the posts tends to be the tedious part that gets rushed. In the earlier posts when I had a bit more time work with and less competition for time on my laptop I really liked having multiple pictures because it tells a much better story than anything that is written down. On that note, if there is anything you'd like me to share/focus on, or any questions/suggestions about anything please shoot me a Facebook message or email and let me know.

While that was a fairly long detour as far as writing was concerned, my afternoon was actually spent napping. After everyone got back we all cleaned up to head out to Guca. As far as trumpet festivals are concerned Guca is, like many things in Serbia, the #1 in the World. Miles Davis once said that "I didn't know a trumpet could be played like that" and Marko had built it up pretty huge for us. The Festival itself doesn't have any tickets and is held in a very small town in the mountains about 5 miles outside of Cacak. Our bus had a police escort right into the thick of things and we looked like great tourists with the entire group wearing 'Jelena and Aleks' Big Fat Serbian Wedding' T-shirts.

Once we began walking through the streets sounds of brass bands could be heard from everywhere. To say the atmosphere was wild would be a great understatement, but with a few thousand people in a tiny area and 2 Liters of beer costing just under $3US do your best to grasp it. We danced a bunch then were rounded up for a live interview of Jelena, Aleks, and their entourage for a local television station. After asking the group a few questions we all danced the Kola for the cameras which I'm told by people who saw it, went well. Once I get a hold of the video I'll link it up for sure.