All I Know | Bojan Cvjetićanin

17. There's Our Douchebag

Eva's POV

The next day Bojan and I spent the entire day together. We had breakfast in the cutest little Slovenian bakery before hiking up the hill in the city to visit the castle, where we had a gorgeous view of the city in the outlook tower. Bojan pointed out the neighbourhood where he grew up in, the stadium where Joker Out had a sold out concert this fall and tried to show me their studio and rehearsal space, but we didn't get much further than a wide proximity where both were supposed to be as the buildings weren't exactly landmarks you could easily point out. After we had lunch in a restaurant in the castle on the patio, which vaguely resembled the one we had our first dinner, although I had to admit the views of this one beat the Dutch one.

After lunch we rented bikes to tour the rest of the city, we stopped once in Tivoli Park before continuing our tour, which finished with dinner where I tried žlikrofi and potica for the first time.

The next day Bojan and I planned to go to Joker Out's rehearsal space. Bojan was eager to show me the space, and well, I was eager to be there when the other boys when the boys berated Bojan once again for scaring the fuck out of us. I had also brought my laptop, as Bojan had found a website for me to learn Slovene, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to practise while Bojan was busy with band stuff.

Bojan drove us to the building, where Kris and Nace were already busy setting up their instruments. I didn't know what I expected the rehearsal space to be, but it wasn't this. It was some weird mix between a home for the elderly and a frat house, with on one side of the room books covering the walls, on the other I saw countless of bras and Jack Daniels merch. "There's our douchebag." Kris was the first to say when Bojan stepped through the door. I laughed and playfully patted his back.

"You deserve that." I hummed at Bojan, to which he just grumbled, before I greeted Kris and Nace with a tight hug.

"I hate all of you." Bojan replied playfully and greeted Nace and Kris before turning to me.  "So this is it, we spent most of our time here. Not just to make music, but we often hang out here outside of band stuff too. We play games, listen to music, whatever we want to." He said and gestures to the loft. "We have a small lounge area up there, watch your head though. We've had about enough accidents happen here."

"I like it. It's very cosy." I said as I looked around. "Who's idea was it to turn this into a library?"

"I think it just happened kind of naturally?" Kris replied. "Although Jure definitely created most of what you see here. He's pretty much the only one of us who's sort of a handyman. We used to rehearse here back when we were all still enrolled in university. We had our books here so we could study after or before rehearsals if we wanted. I think it was Martin who came up with the idea to fill up the space with books as a sound diffuser. We were able to get some books from a library in Novo Mesto who didn't have space for them anymore. Now they're here."

I nodded in understanding and looked through the various books on the shelves. There were some textbooks there, but also some I figured were Slovenian literature. "Mmm, I like it." I said as Jure was the next to show up, greeting all of us before sitting down behind his drum set. 

When Jan arrived I headed up to the loft. I listened to the first few songs they played before I sat behind my laptop to practise Slovene for a while before I listened to the band again. It went on like that for a while until the band joined me up in the loft. We ordered some food and played some cards as we waited for the food to be delivered.

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The next day the band met up early at the rehearsal space again, but this time to get into a van heading to Rakičan for today's gig, a drive just a little under two hours from Ljubljana. The day after, the band had a show in Maribor, so we were gonna stay in a hotel overnight. Before heading to the rehearsal space Bojan and I said goodbye to Martin who was leaving for Greece later today.