Europe Day 3: Zagreb to Salzburg

Talking "naši" to strangers

Going through this part of Slovenia seduced me. This was only my second time travelling through the country, even though once upon a time it was part of my old home. Somebody in my family said that the Slovenes were the most academically inclined of all the Yugoslavs.

In the carriage on this trip there were two women who spoke to each other in Slovenian. I would catch a few words (even an English one like “essays”) and then also a name of an author once in a while. As a Bosnian, the Slovenian language sounds so uncanny to me - you want to say you understand, but honestly no. There are words and familiar expressions, but it sounds a bit more clipped and less vowel-y to my ears.

After my adventure with the unnecessary train transfer, I felt embarrassed enough to start talking to them. Turns out they were both authors (makes sense) and one was also a university professor. So we chatted a bit about academia. When I said that I work in the university library, she said: “Oh that’s a nice quiet life!” True, I suppose there are no essays to mark.

We were conversing in a mixture of my “stuck-at-Grade-3-level” Bosnian, their Slovenian and the world’s English. But even that Bosnian was enough for the older one to say to me: “Oh you must be from Sarajevo, you have a Sarajevo accent.” Turns out she had spent some time in Sarajevo. It felt strange to have my accent reveal me like that (I like to think that when I speak in English, I’m more mysterious).

I was not sure what the talking to strangers in a train etiquette was, but I did not ask for their names and they did not ask for mine. Though I would have been curious to read their work.