Ep.8: Kopaonik

We are Ivana and Maki, your hosts.

In this podcast, we discuss interesting details about Serbian language and culture from a

learner's and teacher's perspective.

We offer new and fun resources for learners of Serbian.

To follow each episode with annotated scripts, vocabulary and quizzes, join us also at

Može Kafa podcast on Instagram.

So if you're ready, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the podcast.

Hello everyone.

I talked over you.

That's okay. Hello everyone.

Yeah. We are ready to go to Kapoanik,

as you can see, because today's topic is

skiing in Kapoanik.

In Serbia. The most beautiful place.

Look at that.

So Maki, you've been talking a lot about how beautiful it is.

Have you been there?

Yes.

And I can say that Copanic is the place that changed my life in

a good way forever.

Tell me. Tell me more.

Why do I say that?

Because this place is really magical.

I had nothing to do with skiing, with cold weather, snow.

I mean I liked it for a few days but just for maximum two

days but Copanik is such a beautiful

place and such a sunny place as well snow and sun together so it

made me love like snowy mountain

and I learned skiing there so this is my place where I learned skiing

I mean I'm still learning Yeah.

Level is not there yet but i tried i think five six

slopes there so that's good even i did one night skiing so i will

tell you about it later

nice i am i want that experience for myself too because i i

went twice to coponic i don't know if you know that and i only

once i talked to you i went twice it was with my school i

was like uh

when i was like 12 13 i think something like that and you i

actually even found a place on on google

where we used to go to it's some sort of like some sort of

like children hostel so and it was you know on a budget and

there was a lot of kids and there was one instructor so there wasn't

lot of time I think we had like one class something like that there

really a

wasn't really a lot of time to

for them to you know um how do you call it train you yeah

to teach us how to ski so basically was and I'm a naturally very

scared person like in the beginning like almost whatever I'm doing I'm

usually like have this instinct of being like afraid or something so I think

skiing was really

scary for me because you can't get injured you know if you don't really

know what you're doing

and there wasn't a lot of I didn't really feel that there was a

lot of like slowly building up It was like, okay, you had one class

and you had like a very, very slow slope of like 10 meters or

something like that.

And then, okay, now you go, you know, now you go and find a

path or whatever.

And, and I was just scared.

And I did, I did learn it for one of my friends at the

time, best friend.

She loved skiing.

She was quite good at it.

I did it for her, but I think I like went down several times.

And then the last time I went down, it was quite slippery because it

was, it was frozen.

And I just remember falling constantly.

And not only that, but I was really afraid of hurting other people around

me. And after that, I did not go.

The story ended.

That's it. But I would love to learn.

You fall a lot in this sport.

And you hate it at some point.

But when you don't give up, somehow it hooks you up.

Yeah, I think it's amazing.

I would love to learn it.

maybe that's the actually this year i'm planning to go to coponic but chance

yeah but the thing is

that i'm going to go with my parents and i'm pretty sure they don't

want to ski so i think

we're just going to go for a couple of days and just to like

hike a bit and to get warm in a

cottage or something like that yeah that's also good but maybe one afternoon you

can take one

class and try at least i can tell you which slopes to try on

your first day and at least you can have fun without big injuries so

actually now that we started talking about Coponic I hope some of the

people don't really know what it is right and it's like the place you

go to go skiing it's the mountain

right and there's so many trails over there and you can go skiing to

other places as well

but Coponic is like a natural reserve I don't know park I don't know

how you call it Yeah, and then, yeah, basically it's beautiful.

There's so many trails

for you and uh it's also

very very much in the south which is right next to kosovo in metohia

yeah exactly and did you know

that the name comes from kopati oh that will make sense kopati to dig

to dig yeah as these mountains are the mountain range is so big they

were digging for iron zinc lead for centuries here

I didn't know that and it became a national park in 1981

and I heard some stories from like relatively old people here who

were who lived in Yugoslavia

that time the companies had their own places there so for free you would

go there for winter

vacation like almost every company offered that it was such a thing especially probably

because it's so close but they said like big companies always had their own

in

places in

for their workers isn't this amazing oh my god it's kind of like the

thing that my dad has he goes to i think to tara every every

year his company has just gives them like free

like everything free like the hotel with the swimming pool and so on i'm

like wow

i mean kind of more like communist a communist thing that's how how it's

yeah yeah sounds great

because it's so expensive and it's hard to find the nice place there because

of the demand

it's really expensive although there are really really i was checking so many hotels

so many places to go to.

So yeah, yeah, so crazy.

uh i so guys if you want to go skiing feel free to go

and uh maybe avoid the christmas season

because i don't know how expensive it will be but if you if you're

okay with that then also

probably quite busy i'm not just not just expensive but quite busy right yeah

last year i was going to

tell if we stayed we wanted to stay there for the new year's eve

it was three times more expensive

if you stay actually christmas doesn't affect that much so between 25 and 28

of december you can you can stay there like relatively normal places new year's

year wow that's impossible

almost well actually it makes sense because we don't really celebrate catholic christmas so

why would you i just thought maybe people would go for like a week and

they would combine like that week

and then the new year's eve but yeah it would make sense why the

new year's eve yeah yeah it's highly booked around that time for sure yeah

and not only for skiing though I wanted to say it has a lot

of

like it's a national park it has a lot of things to see waterfalls

lakes springs like mineral

springs and spas that you can go and relax so if you're not a

skier definitely you should still go

there and experience it but in some other season or or in winter as

well I think every season you can go for spa for sure you can

go in the winter maybe waterfalls lakes better to go but the thing

is in Coparnic even winters are so great I mean I've been there more

than five times last winter

and it was mostly sunny so sunny that's why I think it's good holiday

destination even for the winter

for not non-skiers yeah let's give them some of the facts that i found

oh you have some more facts actually like yeah i go on the

nickname is sunshine mountain because

of the reason that i told you it's so sunny actually i don't remember

the days but 200 days or something full sun like that it must be

something regarding the height or something

like that what is it about the weather somehow the climate yeah it's called

sub uh alpine

uh climate so that's why it's like it looks like alpines it is part

of it but still it's

sunnier version yeah i love the sun so i mean so happy that we're

going there this year yeah you need actually sunscreen to go there that's a

good tip i'll do that i'll do that okay other

than that i was curious about the height because when you go to the

top it feels so high so the

highest point is 2017 meters above sea level and

the lobus is 1650 so it's always high yeah and And

I think around 2000, that's where the mountains starts getting rocky, really rocky, right?

Because it's for some also like climate reasons.

I think that's where it becomes like, not until that point that you have

a lot of vegetation and so on, but I'm guessing then it gets rocky.

Yeah, you see on top, it's kind of bold.

Yeah, yeah. Although there's no, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Which ones did you want to share first?

Well, I just kind of I actually just went on their website and I

just like, you know, learned some things that I think will be interesting for

ski

lovers mostly. And you said that it's not just for ski lovers.

It's really for anyone, anyone who likes nature or just wants to chill somewhere,

have really nice views and maybe disconnect.

But if you do want to connect, there's also social things that you can

do over there.

I'm pretty sure because it's quite busy.

It can be quite busy.

And it's beautiful, right?

before we continue with the show here's a quick reminder this podcast is free

for everyone and

supported by listeners like you we hope that this podcast is useful and companion

to you this is a labor of love for both of us to help us continue

creating useful content for everyone

we will appreciate your help if you have the means you can support us

in different ways

you may just go to buymeacoffee.com slash mozecafa podcast and send us some cups

of coffee You may also become a member of our show on patreon.com slash

mozda kafapodcast and get extra benefits like bonus content, full transcripts of the show

in Serbian, or even join us on the show.

We rely on your support to help everyone more in learning Serbian language and

culture. Thanks for joining us today.

And now let's get back to our episode.

I mentioned it's the biggest key center in Serbia, right?

So you can find some other ones.

and there's the trails are basically for like from beginners to advanced so you

can cover all

of them as you already said yeah and for each level there's not only

one or two options if

you're a beginner you can have three four different slopes and if you're intermediate

like it gets to tens and then yeah the black ones are the hardest

ones and they are only one

one to three I guess I'm not sure but mostly they are blue blue

means beginner to intermediate level

so for especially new uh beginners that's a great place

cheaper than the other European destinations yes and I think a lot of people

don't really know because almost everyone will goes to like France

you know to ski and then actually some in a way this isn't the

budget

it's somehow it's like somehow compared to other ski resources on a budget but

compared to other

parts of Serbia it's not a budget friendly place and they have what

was it 64 different

trails right tracks actually not trails tracks 64 kilometers

actually sorry 64 kilometers

so there's all all of these combined right and they also have the cable

cars and I mean cable

cars in many different shapes right like they can be for one person they

can be like just to hold it

they can be for four people and there's a lot of these also there's

like cable cars for people that

just want to just sightsee right so you don't have to ski you just

go there I did that actually because I didn't want to ski.

So I went with my friend and I just sat down

and we went like, you know,

you look at it from above and it's pretty amazing.

Definitely. This is what people do as well.

People get tired as well.

They just get the lift and they go to the top

and there are very nice restaurants on top.

So you can just chill, enjoy the sun and snow and the view.

So you don't have to go with your skis there.

Yeah. What are the most important, like most important, more popular trails over there?

Do you know?

Which ones have you gone to?

The peaks are very important.

From that peak, you can have different roads to go, different slopes, blue ones,

red ones, brown ones.

So that depends on whatever level you are.

So the most famous one is Pancı Çevur, which is the highest and Karaman

Greben. I like the name Karaman Greben.

Yeah, Karaman Greben.

Yeah, exactly. It sounds a bit Turkish.

I love these places because of first restaurants views and the varieties of slopes

that you can

take from so you can go wherever slope you want and you can come

back and try the other one from

the same peak so that's why I really love these two Malo Yezoro I

think it's a lake right yeah

Yezoro is lake yeah yeah it's Malo Yezoro is again another kind of I

guess peak or like trail that you can take this is also one of

the most popular ones although I haven't been there

though so I don't know last year actually they started this cable car from

Brzeche yes I wanted

to mention that yeah and it changed a lot I think in Kaponi it

will especially this year because

it was such a traffic jam there because everybody goes around the same time

like especially the people who go for the day they go early in the

morning and there's a traffic jam all the time

but now in Brzeca you can just leave your car there and take the

closed cable car to go to

I think it was Karaman Greba and it's going so you can just go

there and start your life from there

you don't have to park your car or you I think saves time as

well yeah I think this was one of

the biggest investments that they made in the last I don't know how many

years so uh so yeah You don't have to be in the

the center of happening right so you can just go to Brzezic and and

do that so that's an option

maybe I'm guessing that also um the accommodation over there maybe is a bit

cheaper compared to the

core center but still I'm guessing the prices are rising right now because of

the the cable car

but yeah that's another option yeah yeah and one thing that I really love

there night skiing night skiing is a totally different thing the weather is colder

there are just lights and it's

kind of scarier because it's dark like there are lights on the pitch but

uh it's the you know it's

a wooded place like there are lots of trees on each slope like on

the sides at night they are completely dark so you feel like creepy a

little bit yeah experience experience or adventure yeah

they also do have fake snow so even if there's global warming or whatever

so they they have

i don't know how much you like to ski and escape fake snow but

you know at least actually they do

it before the season starts for example they did it last week um to

like have a welcome party to start the season because snow is not there

yet but when snow comes they don't need any fake snow

i think it's snowy there the snow hasn't started um as far as i

checked not much okay i should go

soon i should go soon but the season starts on the 9th of december

so they're expecting to have

enough snow until then and then they are going to start and they sold

the tickets online this year and like with the discount.

So, so many people already bought their tickets.

Wow. Even during the pandemic interesting I mean last year there were a lot

of people even though there weren't any vaccines and stuff

what else have you noted uh wrote down here so

you have more than 200 accommodation options yeah

we talked about that oh yes ski pass yeah ski pass and for accommodation

so there are two options you can stay near the slops near the skiing

resorts like where you can walk to the

skiing beaches but also there's a little village that I actually sent you it's

just five kilometers

away three to five kilometers away and you can if you go by car

you can stay in that small village

as well it's so beautiful that's what I wanted that's what I wanted exactly

because I know that I'm not going to stay for that long and I'm

not expecting my parents to go skiing we didn't like

organize anything don't have any equipment nothing nothing nothing so we just thought we

be like in a really beautiful place like where we can see like just

just want to

a really nice you know sightseeing

place and where you can maybe walk a bit and that sounds like a

good and not in the in the busy area

right so that sounds like a good alternative definitely and it's called Kapoenig again

the village name you just see it on the map when you oh i

saw it okay yeah okay and ski passes

that's a tricky one they sell half the day one full day two

day three day four day tickets so

many options we didn't know that in the beginning we were just buying tickets

oh you realize we

could have both half day tickets and then we did that so if you're

going for a week that's going to be cheaper to buy the weekly pass

also there's seasonal pass of course which is the most economic one if you're

and

going there quite often is there anything else we want to say before we

start talking about the vocabulary actually actually we can go with the vocabulary because

uh that's also interesting to learn we mentioned already work right yeah that's