LES MONTAGNES SERBES

OD SRPSKIH PLANINA

IN PARACIN, SEPTEMBER 1991

We met the breeder Petar Sobek earlier on, at dog shows. We thus decided to go and see his dogs.

 

Along the way we visited Resavska cave, rich in stalactites and stalagmites. Only 3 kilometers of the cave are, however, accessible to visitors.

We also visited monastery Saint Petka, built in the Moravian style.


Right above it, there exists a strong well believed to have powerful health remedy properties. It is the source of a lake that empties into the river Grza.

 
   Family Sobek welcomed us very warmly. We stayed with them overnight. The following day Petar took us to their weekend home where they keep their Sarplaninac dogs. One of the most beautiful dogs was female Alma.

She is the sister of Ari-Blejk, a dark-haired dog whom we already admired on two exhibits. She was tall, powerful, square-built, with a light color fur as our Lola. Her mother was also there.

Lola




From the males we took for a walk into the surrounding hills Cezar-Car



and Apac-Lepi. The first was the son of Karabeg, a likeable dog with a modest built, and the second the son of Dingo-Ben, a dog with a powerful head and somewhat lighter eyes, while his greatest fault was his gate.





Mr Sobek showed us the property on which he wanted to build new facilities for his dogs. We also took the photograph of a male pup with very powerful paws, the son of Apac.

   
     Paracin is a town of over 20,000 inhabitants, known for its well developed textile industry and a beautiful glass factory. The town, situated on the river Crnica, is pleasant and very clean. .


On the way to Paracin we could see the typical volcanic dome of Rtanj. At the foot of this beautiful mountain, whose summit I reached with the mountaineers as student, there lies the well known Soko-Banja. The famous Serbian writer, comedian Branislav Nusic, was a frequent visitor of this spa.
Tajson

In the afternoon, Mr Sobek took us to see the descendants of his dogs that lived in Paracin. First, we so a son of a Peter’s bitch and Dingo-Ben, whom I liked because of his impressive head.

 


Next, we saw in the yard the offspring of Peter’s bitch and Ari-Bejk.


Karabeg Bula   At the end, we visited Slobodan Arandjelovic, the owner of Ari-Bejk, and took a few shots of that Sarplaninac, remembered by those familiar with the dog as a very beautiful representative of it’s breed . This dog, as he became CH Yu, is also the product of the breeder Mr. Sobek, his parents being Ston and Beta.

I would also like to tell an interesting story. Not far away from Paracin, namely near Aleksinac, the town known for its nearby coal mines, near the location Gornji Adrovac, there lies the church Sveta Trojica, built at the site where in 1876 the Caplan Nikolaj Nikolajevic Rajevski lost his life in the Serbian-Turkish wars. This army officer was Tolstoj’s model for the character of Vronski in his novel Ana Karenjina, and under his own name he is also mentioned in the novel War and Piece. According to the novel, immediately after the suicide of Ana Karenjina who leaped under the train because of the love drama, Vronski, namely Rajevski, desperate because of the loss of the woman he loved, left as a volunteer to help Serbs in their war against Turks. He was under the command of the famous General Cernjajev. On the photograph, representing the Staff of Cernjajev, Rajevski is the third from the left. Rajevski arrived in Serbia on the first of August, and was killed already on the 20th, in his 36th year of life. In 1876, the Russians were the most numerous volunteers in the Serbo-Turkish war among all the nations, somewhere between 3500 and 5000.