Smoking with Nada
Žabljak, Montenegro
Last night once we finally pulled into Žabljak, we were greeted by our lovely host, Nada. She lives downstairs and the guest house is the two floors above. I can’t believe how easy it was to sit at her table outside in the tiny front yard and drink her beers and enjoy her father’s raki. Once we brought our luggage inside she started offering, “Beer? Wine? Lemonade?” Um, sure!The boys slammed a powder mix orange drink and went back upstairs. Josh loooves sitting outside, drinks flowing, chatting up whoever is around. He is ON.
Nada speaks some English but not enough to have a real conversation, and of course we don’t speak Serbian. It’s really incredible the connection that can be made through Google Translate. It’s really fun.
At different points in the evening, other goodies arrived: homemade bread with Nada’s sister’s homemade cheese, half a ring of salami, even a new friend (we can’t remember her name).
Nada has three sons and once used the word “best” in place of the word “oldest” to describe her one son so we joked for the rest of the night about her “favorite.” Nada’s husband died, not sure how long ago. He was also from Serbia and worked as a truck driver in Germany and would sometimes be gone for days. We told her my dad was also a truck driver. Her “favorite” son studied computer databases in Boston for awhile, so of course we told her Josh’s work is also on databases. She was familiar with the company Oracle and even called Favorite on the phone and made him talk to Josh about his work. Generous with her cigarettes (it’s no fun smoking alone in a group), she even gifted me one after I quoted a Bible verse: “faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.” “Nada”means hope in Serbian and Vera (her sister’s name) means faith, so I recited the obvious reference. I lit up the cigarette and in Josh’s phone translation app I wrote, “I’ve never been given a cigarette for reciting a Bible verse!” To which she laughed and wrote in her phone, “There’s a first time for everything!”
The boys - especially Ari - is very concerned about Josh smoking and says he hates smoking and hates alcohol. He’s not wrong; it’s terrible for you. And I’m not sure why he isn’t worried about me, but okay. The next morning we explained to them about the situation around smoking. It was exciting to connect with someone we would never have, could never have met without traveling. She was so inviting and generous and part of the experience was her gifting us cigarettes, smoking together, having a laugh. It was all part of the connection.
