ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 117

So here is an interesting one, at least I think so.

On 27 March 1999  a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk  NATO Stealth plane that was shot down near the village of Budavnovci in Serbia.

It was a big deal as the Stealth plane was practically invisible* and had never been shot down before. The pilot ejected and was rescued and some parts of the wreckage was sent to Russia and China for research and the rest is preserved at the Aviation museum in Belgrade.

In around 2003, Katarina and I visited her Serbian side of the family in Surčin, near Belgrade airport. Her cousins, Nenad, Vanja and Radovan took me to Aviation museum in Belgrade and then gifted me a small bit of that Stealth plane. 

The museum’s shop was selling numbered bits of the aircraft and Katarina’s cousins’ gifted me bit number 006024. “Here’s what we did to your plane!” I wanted to say that it wasn’t really my plane but I was really happy with the gift.

Also, on the night we arrived, Radovan opened a bottle of a special šlivovica that had been aged for 7 years “it’s so special that you can drink a whole bottle and not have a hangover the next morning”. I don’t drink at all now but even when I used to drink I was never a competitive drinker. Anyway, he opened the bottle in my honour and poured a fairly large glass each (it was just going to be me and him) I drank it, it was very nice even if a bit strong for me. He poured another one each, I tried to say no, but what the hell. He then poured a third and Katarina intervened “He’s not used to it, he shouldn’t drink it”. Radovan explained that that was the third glass and not accepting it would be an insult to Serbia.

I drank it and it pretty much knocked me out. They were large glasses of a very alcoholic drink and Radovan wasn’t in a good state either.

That was that, drinking over … I really don’t know why, possibly the alcohol … I wasn’t’y feeling good but I saw Radovan flagging and thought “this is my chance” and said “let’s have another one!” Katarina  looked at me incredulously, Radovan looked up, slightly surprised and said “Allright!”.

We finished the bottle. I was in a really bad state and Radovan decided that we should watch a war film. He was on one sofa and I was hugging Katarina on the other. I was in a bad state, I am going in and out of consciousness under the sound of machine gun fire on TV.

I wake up hours later hugging Radovan, he is a big man.

And it’s not true that it doesn’t give you a hangover.

 

*From wikipedia: “While no aircraft is totally invisible to radar, stealth aircraft make it more difficult for conventional radar to detect or track the aircraft effectively, increasing the odds of an aircraft successfully avoiding detection by enemy radar and/or avoiding being successfully targeted by radar guided weapons.”

26.4.2020.

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