by It’s been sunny today, and I decided to pop over the border into Serbia. I visited Vršac, known as Vârșeț in Romanian, which is 80 km from here. It’s in the historic region of Banat, just as Timișoara is, and (just like Timișoara) was part of Austro-Hungary. I’d been there once before, with my parents 9½ years ago. Was it worth it? Maybe not, because within a couple of hours of arriving there I felt exhausted and just wanted to get back. Plus I really needed a pee by that point, and there were no public loos. I picked up two large pastries from a 24-hour bakery which had a loo. The only other thing I bought was a cheap bottle of red wine. Vârșeț isn’t a bad town to visit; it has some interesting architecture and history, though the Serbian signage was perhaps the best thing for me. Having two alphabets to contend with makes deciphering the signs an intellectual exercise of sorts. On the way back I felt intimidated by the border control guy on the Romanian side – I feel somewhat intimidated by most people I suppose – and also embarrassed, come to think of it. You’re on your own? Friends? Family? I thought he wanted me to open the boot, which is pretty standard, but he wanted me to wind down the back window instead. I’ll speak English if you want. When I got back I looked at my ongoing Scrabble league games, and saw I was losing most of them – hardly a surprise when most of my opponents are vastly more experienced and less fatigued.
The New Zealand election was a weird one. The two main parties ended the night essentially neck-and-neck with just under 30% of the vote apiece. (I remember the 2005 election when they were both around 40%.) But the two gaping overhangs distort the picture significantly. There are six extra electorate seats for National and five for the Maori Party as things stand, taking the size of parliament to 131 seats. This is not how MMP is meant to work – parties getting a far greater share of seats than their party vote share is disproportional by definition. Unless the special votes cause some seats to shift, which they could do, it looks like Christopher Luxon will remain as prime minister but with a weakened hand. Some very strong MPs have lost their seats. The Labour leader is Chris Hipkins, and I read one article warning of a “constitutional Chrisis”.
Compared to what happened in America, the NZ election seems almost inconsequential (even from my point of view, and I might end up back in NZ). Seeing the bottom fall out of MAGA, finally, has been fantastic. Hilarious, even. And there will be endless “content” for the next two years with all the primaries and an increasingly unhinged Trump. My favourite commentator for this election was Harry Enten who presented the numbers in a highly entertaining way. And boy does he know his numbers.
The Catholic church
Silence! (In Latin, Hungarian and Serbian.) And what you can’t wear in church. Interesting that they’ve borrowed the French bon ton, meaning good manners or etiquette.
Bora Kostić, Serbia’s first chess grand master
Vinko Lozić, “bohemian of Vršac”, though I couldn’t find any information about him.
The Romanian Orthodox church
There are placards around the town telling you who has recently died and when their funerals will be.
The man at the top (Slobodan, which means “free”) was 99 when he died (“in his 100th year”); the other man was 45 – younger than me.
I took this in Timișoara last Wednesday, though he’d already been gone a while. I can tell they really miss their cat. His name was Tiramisu. (My late aunt called Timișoara that as a joke.) The short form Misu wouldn’t really work in English because we put the accent on the last syllable as the Italians do. (Tiramisu means “pick-me-up”.) Romanians stress the third syllable for some reason.
