Yesterday we went fishing. I don't remember the last time I went fishing. Well, actually after thinking about it I believe it was shortly after graduating from college and it involved the boat breaking down and having to jump in fully clothed and tow the boat back to the dock. But, that is unimportant.
We met up with the group from the Council for Youth and Sport at 7:30am in Uzice. It was a group of about 30 heading out to fish and swim for the day as part of a government program to encourage people to enjoy nature.
We arrived at the lake and had breakfast. Breakfast was a Serbian dish called Komplet Lepinja. It is a bread that is the consitency of an English muffin, but shaped more like a thin bread bowl. The top is cut off and they slather a cream, butter, and egg mixture inside. They then top this with the grease drippings from pork and bake it in the oven. It is a GUT BOMB! It was really, really, really heavy for breakfast. It was my 2nd time having it as I had it over the weekend with Yvice and Namanja and I vowed not to eat it again. Ha, you can see how long that lasted.
We then proceeded to fish Serbian style for a few hours. It was a long fishing pole with no reel. The line was about 3-4 yards long with a hook and bobber on the end. We used maggots as bate. I was thankful for the Serbian guys who were willing to bate my hook. I could have touched the maggots, but wasn't very enthused about it. Yuck! So, you just threw your line out and sat. I persevered for about two hours with not so much as a nibble. No one else had any luck either so we broke for lunch. The weather was beautiful so we eventually abandoned fishing and went swimming.
During the course of the afternoon, I had an amazing conversation with Filip, one of the Serbian guys on our trip. He is 19 years old and studying agriculture so he can help improve his families raspberry farm.
He is a typical Serbian as he is Orthodox and so I asked many of my questions about Serbian Orthodoxy.
He explained that he is more an atheist, but likes the feeling of family that comes from celebrating saint days with the family. It was a fun conversation as I was able to explain what I believe and talk about how for me, my beliefs are based on Jesus' death and so give me freedom and that I don't have to achieve or do anything. This is very different from what he believes where you hope to be good enough and have many rituals to complete. In the end, I felt like it was a good chance to give Filip some things to think about and to expose him to the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus. We will see where it goes as we are hoping to catch up with he and a few of the other people we met on the fishing trip on Friday night. We will see what happens.
Fililp, Jenny, Michael, Ben and Ivan after our day of fishing and swimming.
