My host Jovana and I decided to travel north to Novi Sad for a day to explore the city. The bus system was complicated, but BlaBla car would take us directly there for an extremely low price. It is a sort of ride share, and you pay in cash.
The driver of the BlaBla car spoke only Serbian and Chinese, so he could communicate with my friend Jovana but not with me. He was Serbian and visiting his hometown, but usually lives in China teaching English to Kindergarteners (even though he doesn’t speak it). He also filled the third vacant seat with another BlaBla car user, who just happened to be living in Serbia married to a Chinese woman. This gentleman was a Jewish Serbian who spoke 8 languages, including Serbian, Chinese, English, Hebrew, Russian, and more. Needless to say I was impressed - and surprised at the unusual connection between Serbians with experience in China. The driver also told us he didn’t want to accept money for the BlaBla car - he just liked to have company on a drive. Things got interesting with my inability to understand Serbian when we slowed to a stop at a weird rest stop. “Do we get out here?” I asked, completely unsure of what was going on. “No no,” the driver said, understanding what I was asking in English, but not explaining anything else. They speak in Serbian some more, when suddenly a man runs up to the window and practically throws a chocolate bar into the car, and then runs off. More rapid Serbian; Jovana immediately takes the chocolate bar, rips it open, and thrusts it towards me. Instinctively, I grab a chunk of chocolate, shove it in my mouth, and ask, “is this safe? Do we know that man?” Nice to see my common sense regarding strangers being completely overridden by my natural instinct to put chocolate in my mouth. It turns out the man throwing chocolate was thanking the driver for loaning him sunglasses, or something like that, but the driver didn’t like chocolate so he gave it to Jovana and I instead. After we left the car, we laughed about the difference in our perspectives of what was happening. On the BlaBla car ride home, the man spoke English fluently, and engaged us in conversations regarding America’s involvement with the Kosovo conflict and our bombing of American civilians. The massacre is a very popular topic here - and not one I had prepared for. I highly recommend BlaBla car because of the amazing people I was able to meet and the conversations I was able to take part in - I do not recommend eating chocolate given to you by strangers.
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