This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
Travel: tickets, stations, the road and a bed for the night
You covered the city in the lesson “City & transport”. Now we leave town: buy a ticket from Novi Sad to Niš, read the departures board at the bus station, get through a border, find somewhere to sleep and, in a strange town, ask the way and follow the answer.
Around town you idete “go”; on a long trip you putujete “travel”. The verb putovati brings a whole family with it: put “road, way; trip”, putovanje “a trip; travelling”, putnik “passenger, traveller”, saputnik “fellow traveller”. To set off is krenuti, to arrive is stići. You travel autobusom “by bus”, vozom “by train”, avionom “by plane”, kolima “by car”: the instrumental case (the case of means) does the work of English “by”, with no preposition at all. To wish someone a good trip, say Srećan put! “Have a good trip!”
Watch the clock: pola jedanaest is 10:30, “half of eleven”, counted towards the coming hour as in German halb elf.
The ticket: u jednom pravcu or povratna
A ticket is karta, or more precisely vozna karta (for a bus or train) or avio-karta (for a plane). You buy it at the ticket window, the same šalter “counter” you know from the bank. The destination takes the preposition za with the accusative, where English says “to” or “for”: karta za Niš “a ticket to Niš”, voz za Beograd “the train for Belgrade”.
On international timetables, neighbouring cities can be hard to recognise: Beč is Vienna, Budimpešta Budapest, Solun Thessaloniki, Temišvar Timișoara.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Travel & directions
The road: putovati to travel, put road, trip, putovanje trip, putnik passenger, saputnik fellow traveller; krenuti to set off, stići to arrive. “By bus” etc. = instrumental, no preposition: autobusom, vozom, avionom, kolima. Good trip: Srećan put! Time: u pola jedanaest = at 10:30.
The ticket
Station and timetable
The border
A bed for the night
Route and sights
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