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I’ve been told about the soup Nazi from Seinfeld. “No soup for you!” he purportedly says. Then he doesn’t give you any soup. With fruit I seem to be having the opposite problem lately.

Yesterday I stopped to take a picture of picturesque house. People sat on the porch at a house next door. I hoped they didn’t mind.  They not only didn’t mind, but gestured me over.  At the table sat four middle aged Serbians around a table with coke and grappa.  To my surprise, one of the men spoke a bit of English.   The man, Radoica quickly obtained where I was from, where I was going and where I had been.  His wife, a women with red hair and amazingly blue eyes, and the rest of the people at the table eagerly discussed each new piece of information.  I caught bits and pieces, but was mostly happy to sit out of the sun and drink something.  The wife of the other man offered me coffee.  I took it, knowing coke would not be enough to wash down grappa.

After the grappa, a man my own age showed up, the son of the coffee server.  He showed me pictures of his infant child and pictures of his pigs.  Suddenly, he was leading me through his yard, past reams of flower gardens, and into a building, and I was confronted with the smell and sight of real three dimensional pigs.  He gestured to my camera “take a picture, take a picture” he demanded.  I snapped a few, and soon we were off.  The family had a narrow plot of land that extended all the way to the expressway, and we walked past loads of fruit trees almost all the way to the highway.

He paused and tore a plastic bag out of his pocket with relish and grinned at me.  We were surrounded by plum and pear trees.  The ripening fruit had fallen on the ground and practically formed piles in places.  He held the bag and encouraged me to pick.  My plucking rate proving unsatisfactory, he shoved the bag towards me and himself grabbed handful after handful of fruit.  I had about 5-7 pounds by the time I had finished.  On the way out he showed me the well with a pump you’d find in the U.S. and a nice 60 gallon pressure tank to go with it.   I did the only thing I knew how to do, I gave him a thumbs up and a big smile.

When I got back to the porch, I barely had time to cram the fruit into my bags before Radoica was pulling me away from my initial hosts.  “Now, you come to my ranch,” he said.  It wasn’t a request so much as an order.  We strode into his yard and back to his own fruit trees.  It was clear I had somehow gotten in the middle of a “Who can give the American the most fruit contest.”  I played along happily as Radoica madly plucked from this tree and that.

An old woman crossing her own field next door saw the excite and called out to Radoica.  “I’m hear with an American!” he yelled back (I presume).  The lady, seeing my camera, insisted that I come and take her picture, which I did gladly.

Back at Radoica’s porch, he brought out another bottle of grappa.  His was made from fermented and distilled plum juice.  We talked for a while about his sons in Belgrade and about my not having a girl friend.  Soon he had to go help his wife pick more fruit (not for me, thank god).  I found myself preparing my bike to go.  I didn’t even bother trying to fit the other five pounds of fruit in my panniers.  I simply double bagged it and hung it off my handle bars: so much for my balanced steering, and retreated down the road before anyone could give me any more fruit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 4:55 am and is filed under Jim's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.