Music in the right ear, music in the left ear

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12/07

I knew that I’d return to Exit this year and I bought the ticket already in April. Four days of extreme pleasure do not happen always. This time, though, I felt much better during the night and almost didn’t get tired and danced much less; generally, I spent less time at the festival, but that does not mean that I disliked it or anything of the kind. I just rested more. As always happens during my short trips, I had to make certain translations, so the pattern of the stay in Novi Sad was translate – dance – sleep – eat – translate – sleep – dance – sleep – eat – translate etc… This time I stayed in student dormitory Bajic alone in the room, because the second man moved out of the room due to the ardent heat, but left his things there and came several times a day to have a shower. I guess he stayed with his friends.



My friend Vasia stayed in Beograd during these days and would come on the last day to explore the city. While in Beograd, we slept till 9.00 and then went to the autobuska stanica to buy tickets to Novi Sad (for me to leave immediately) and to Budva (windows 21 and 22, there are plenty of connections between Beograd and the coast during the day, cost about 50 Euros both ways, buses are very punctual).



Our bus encountered some problems perhaps 20 kilometers after leaving the city and we were quite quickly transferred to another bus. The hostel was 40 minutes’ walk away from the autobuska stanica so I did not hesitate to take the bus; I found the hostel surprisingly quickly; the room was spacious and hot. I immediately got down to work and then went to Mercator food supermarket. This time my selected artists generally started their performances at about midnight, so I had the whole day (almost 4 full days) of conscious labour. I try my best to combine working with trips, but I must confess all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and travelling does not go hand in hand with working.



The first day at the festival. I listened to Eats Everything, Duran Duran, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Jacque LuCont, and Avicii. All the electronic names I’ve mentioned were completely new to me except Avicii perhaps and so I was learning some new facets of electronic music, though I must admit I favour a deeper, softer, dreamier kind of music (like John Digweed or Paul Kalkbrenner last year), or at least some banging ruthless techno. My next big dream is to visit a hardstyle festival. At something about half past two I fell asleep sitting by the fence and got very cold and wore only warm clothes the next days (last year it was warmer during the night), though almost no one wore jeans or jackets there, only shirts and such like. I dislike the fact that so many girls smoke there. In spite of that, the atmosphere is very friendly and positive. This time I never went close to the stage and took no photos because I make bad photos during the night and the photo camera was spoilt. I thought how nice it would be just to sit in a comfortable armchair and listen to music sipping some expensive cocktail. There was a Green Village chill zone near the Dance Arena where people slept and rested on big mattresses. Generally the music was housy that night. As for Duran Duran, I listened to 3-4 songs.



13/07

On the second day I found several university wi-fi networks in the hostel (demanding a login and password) but the receptionists said it was not possible to use wi-fi there. When I asked them whether the hostel had an internet room they said yes, on the second floor, but there were only simple rooms. I needed wi-fi to send a file, so I went to the trade centre to the ‘Coffee to go’ establishment (I have previously saved a list of wi-fi spots in Novi Sad while at home) and successfully sent the file there drinking some tasty cappuccino.



Well, a magical thing happened next. I’m always translating with the help of Translation memory tools and I accidentally opened a different translation memory (there are two of them at my desktop) and voila! I was pretty much astonished, surprised, happy, etc, etc – each segment after each would come “off-the-shelf”: the text had already been wholly translated by someone else and saved in the database, so I just had to copy, paste, and edit here and there. It was just a happening that I opened a different translation memory which saved me many hours of work!



I had my dinner at Vitraz café on Bulevar Cara Lazara (highly recommended place, to my mind, twice cheaper than cafes in the centre) with spaghetti carbonara and they also had free wi-fi. I returned to the hostel and slept till 23-00. It was for the first time then that I had the wish to abandon the party, but I fought my somnolence and was rewarded by New Order, Reboot live, and Luciano playing some good stuff. I have heard several tunes by New Order before and took an immense liking to them.



14/07

I got up and translated and finished reading Summer Lightning by P.G. Wodehouse. What a writer! Again, I stayed in the slumberland till 23-00. Azari & III played live but it seemed to me there was some trouble with the sound. Miss Kittin was the first and only female DJ I ever listened to. Richie Hawtin provided a banging techno set and I danced for two hours quite energetically.



15/07



I slept till 9-00 and went to meet Vasia at 12-00 at the autobuska stanica. It became a bit colder and rained a little, but fine weather resumed in about an hour. We walked in the centre, along Danube embankment, lined our stomachs with food at the same Vitraz and made purchases at Mercator. It was hard, but I had to leave Vasia alone at the beach to translate the final words of a difficult text on uranium ore processing. However, work was finished earlier and we went to the city beach Strand and bathed in Danube. There were lots of people and the river current was very fast. Party all night long, and then lie on the beach all day long. Vasia went back to Beograd in the evening (he promised to join me at the party next year for a day or two). The party continued with the dynamic Knife Party (perhaps the most energetic DJ this time), and Laurent Garnier (awesome music, my favourite this year). A girl asked me where I was from, and I said from Russia, and she said from Ottawa Canada; later I noticed that she was asking everyone in the vicinity. At 3-30 I went to the hostel, slept a while and at 5-45 left for the bus station. Content filled my whole being.

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