Ep.10: Chit-chat with Maki and Ivana & Srećna Nova godina!

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.

Good morning everyone.

Good Good morning.

We live. We drink Rakia.

Why do we drink?

I'm a little bit.

No. Why are we drinking Rakia?

Because it's our...

We're here.

Whom? Whom?

To whom? We're here.

For us. For We're here.

slavimo yeah okay slavimo yeah uh the final of

our fifth season exactly it's our last it's our last episode ever no i'm

kidding it's our last episode of the season

and we actually planned on meeting up but that

we just really wasn't feasible with all the schedule and traveling mind you guys

i am in zreninin and she is in krušovac and that takes

a while i think it takes like six five six hours by car and

if we don't have a car then there's a

lot of how do you call it like when you change transport now a

meeting stopover yeah yeah so

the thing is this is our first time both of us being in serbia

though, like at least.

It is. It is.

I hope the internet is good.

It's a different one.

Yeah, it is.

I don't have any liking there now.

Good, good.

So this one is going to be our QA, like question and answer.

Yeah. Both of us.

And I asked some questions to our followers on Instagram and I will share

the answers from there as well.

Before that, I wanted to say that my rakia is made out of quince.

And we call this dunya or dunya.

But it's really just easier to say the name of the of the fruit.

And it's just I mean, we just say dunya.

Yeah, not dunya or whatever.

And I think this one is made by my dad's friend.

And he's our neighbor.

He's been making rakia for the last I don't know how many days, weeks,

Don't ask me.

months.

so um so yeah that's his and smells really good probably doesn't taste that

it's probably strong i'm not really into strong alcohol but yeah

ito domacharakia where who did you buy it from from a local friends friends

friends but

i don't know who made it but someone from kurusha was made it i

know that far okay and that's actually a good um uh explanation kind of

like this is where we usually buy rakia from there's always someone who makes

it a home always yeah and always um it's a very common

gift if you join some kind of event like celebration party you might get

a bottle of

rakia back home exactly and i think you will be really safe with um

rakia coffee ground coffee obviously and chocolate like we call and the the

the nicer

chocolates the little like pralines or whatever we call them bomboniere bomboniere yeah one

bomboniera so it's like the more fancy like fancily packed you know like one

is

like 10 maybe

or maybe five only that you get yeah so we call these bomboniere

how do we say followers in serbian

so as

you know oh you like it i thought it was going to be more

stronger but it's not i'm i'm really happy with it and it has and

it actually has a taste of a fruit so i'm really happy yeah

thank you good okay i was gonna say as

you know we have so many new followers uh from different

places so i wanted to start with like brief you know summary of our

story like how did we start how did we change in time what did

we do so far this kind of things yeah i think it's also really

nice like a um to kind of like remember for us you know what

the things we've done and the things

that yeah just nice to remember yeah i had no idea we would finish

like the fifth season i didn't

know we would come up with so many different topics actually so no i'm

so happy about this I think what I'm most happy about is that I

have someone to chat with every week.

Honestly, it's such a nice way to um chat every week

but also to um have a way to connect to my culture I think

that's amazing imagine me I am in your

culture yeah and I'm having someone regularly yeah to talk about the

things that I find interesting

so I don't forget the past that much thanks to you yeah and I

also started writing to you in Serbian and way more than before so and

I'm like you know what in in conversation it's a bit tough

but when I write it down then you have time to process and to

maybe translate if you need

translating or ask someone what the word is and you've learned some new things

in the last couple

of weeks I'd say exactly you know what you can even write me in

Chiriritsu now oh really yes I've been practicing it

for the last month I think I'm quite

fluent-ish in that

not yet, still some letters

are kind of confusing I need some moment to think about them

but I can read it much faster

now oh that's so cool maybe we can do one on the Cyrillic alphabet

exactly

so So, as you know, I'm talking to

the followers. As you know, I'm talking to Moje Blue.

And this is how we started, right?

Thanks to your YouTube account.

Thanks to your videos on YouTube.

I was so into learning Serbian.

And you were explaining everything in such a nice way, in such a clear

way. And I wanted more.

So I had to come up with a plan.

That was smart.

It's really smart of you.

Yeah, go for it.

And then I emailed you and you were in Germany back then, right?

Yeah, still in Germany, yeah.

So I offered you to think about having podcasts with me and then you

jumped in. It was so unexpected.

I mean, I was so pleased.

Yeah, it was for me.

It was for me too.

I think one of the things that I learned from you from that experience

is like, you cannot

get like a yes if you don't ask, right?

you know so and I think for me I really never thought about podcasts

that much because YouTube

was already too overwhelming and I just really didn't have any time to dedicate

like on Instagram

I like I was on Instagram but I really didn't have like structured posts

or anything like that

because it was just too tough to do that um and that's why podcast

was really never on my mind but

having someone there who is excited who has some ideas and who is willing

to share that job with you I think it was like so much easier

but your tech saviness helped us a lot not only

for YouTube later on but in the beginning as well I learned a lot

from you in that oh I learned a lot

from you too you were also like really um you also you knew a

lot of stuff you were very informative

about certain things so we tried also we tried and failed certain things right

so and that's okay that's exactly what so many funny failures we have but

still we kept going yeah yeah one of the

toughest things was like the selection of topics right because we have different mindsets

about serbian culture you don't think about your culture in in different perspectives as

i do right so i

was offering you weird things sometimes and you were like wow what are we

going to talk about

that and then we we turned it into something more common and it was

it was very interesting for example I talked about I wanted to talk about

Serbia sorry Rakia Serbian Rakia and then we went

into like all the process I was going to just focus on vocabulary right

fruit names and stuff But we then came up with the regions, like what

fruits are produced where.

So it was more broad when you think of it at the end of

the day. Yeah, I think sometimes I would like ask you to write down

a script so that I see how you think, right?

Like what you were, because, you know, giving a topic is just very broad.

And then I really wanted to see how you are going about like thinking

about that topic.

So, yeah, sometimes it just surprised me, you know, because I also really, I

don't really, as you said,

I don't really structure it as a like as as a from a learner's

perspective right and that was

even though I was taught to be a teacher a professor actually I was

I wasn't teaching

languages I was teaching grammar and linguistics which is theory it's just purely theory

there's not a lot of like kind of like exercises I mean there were

and

of course but not like this real-time exercises so so i think um i

think we also really jumped in whenever someone was like

you could see someone else's strengths you know and then divided everything really um

yeah i think that's a good thing about having like we balanced it out

definitely yeah yeah

balance it out at the end of the day do you know how many

times our episodes so far have been download it?

I think I should know

but I have no idea.

what was the last number that you remember i don't remember 10 000

it was months ago yeah it was funny

yeah almost 17 000

I mean times it was downloaded our podcast episodes yeah it's a bit crazy

for me yeah to

think about it because it's different on YouTube right you go on YouTube and

it's just one platform

and then everyone knows like that they can find certain things over there yeah

I feel like

podcasting we were not on YouTube so I really it was really tough to

move people from YouTube to podcasts I know I'm tough I still really don't

listen to podcasts that are just listening I

like to watch them too so very rarely do I listen so I understand

that struggle and

what did I want to say something about that basically so it was a

challenge definitely now on YouTube it's the same by the way for the other

side of the group like me I never listen to podcasts on YouTube still

I listen to hours from time to time but I feel like

I need to move when I and when I listen to podcasts so that's

how I'm used to it yeah

but that number makes me happy yeah it's a good number it's crazy to

think about it we mentioned this like maybe at the end of the first

or second season but

some countries like top countries that we are listened from uh Serbia definitely

Why do you think Serbia is the most, like, is the country that people

listen to us to most?

I don't know.

It always popped up, like, Serbia was always Belgrade, like, from the top.

I don't really, I mean, I don't know

if it was always like that but but um i was really i remember

being really surprised it's like

who is listening why are serbs listening to us because this is um it

maybe is not serbs maybe

the internationals living and like studying like me like and then it makes me

think how many

international students or like people or expats we have in serbia that's that's still

crazy to you think about yeah crazy like there is business people there are

students there are you know

project-based workers here so many i guess so i really wonder the number of

internationals in

belgrade or in in serbia in general hopefully we will find it one day

second country what would you

say the u.s exactly i knew it was a again i don't really know

if it's if it's like our people in in the U.S.

or it's like the U.S.

people really wanting to learn because of I don't know their

partners or whatever but um but I think it was the U.S.

I thought it was going to be before we

started a podcast I thought it was going to be Australia because there's a

lot of Balkan people

in Australia but it wasn't yeah yeah actually between Australia and the U.S.

there's a huge

difference in percentages so Australia comes next and then Germany I think either you

are listening to us crazy in a crazy way your friends yeah

yeah and then uk and canada uh are following yeah hello

people hello what serbia the us uh australia the uk uh

germany everyone austria sweden so

hello everyone that's that's crazy I can't even grasp that honestly I

mean even if it was like 200

like downloads I would be like what you know like people actually listen they

took their time

the time of the day to listen to us and it was it's a

nice it's like I guess it's ego boosting

as well but it's mostly like oh but you actually like what you're listening

to you know like you care about what we're talking so that's really nice

to know exactly and it really motivates us

and we appreciate um not only who are listening to us the

people who are listening to us but our

followers as well we have these uh regular and irregular followers and supporters

on buy me a coffee and patreon so that's another like big part actually

of my motivation exactly yeah and

it's a i mean not to say that your money is everything of course

but um it's really good

to know that you know someone is is willing to invest in us you

know in that sense as a as a as a project as well and

i don't know if i told you but now i was in belgrade and

i met with one of our viewers or listeners yeah exactly he's known me

for a long time already I mean from my

YouTube but also he's he's always like always texts me something oh listen to

your episode or

whatever and then he gives me honestly he gives me a lot of input

Serbian input that I'm missing

if he's Serbian he's Serbian and he is from Laskova I think or or

the surrounding of Laskova So that's a really, really big cultural difference as well,

because it's, it's, I'm, I'm in the North.

We are specific and they're also specific.

Everyone has like a, it's a, and also the accent is

different and it's just, it's really nice too.

Cause whatever, I remember I would correct people

when they were pronounced certain things like, uh, morava, not morava, you know?

And then he'd be

like, but we do say morava, you know, like we do accentuate the second

syllable. So these kinds of things that i would learn oh cool yeah so

what do you think our uh top three episodes are okay

favorite places to visit exactly yeah i know that was the first one yeah

um our first episode is the

first one can you imagine that was a really good topic and you were

so much more amateur in that one it was our first i cannot

i don't think about the learners what they need the most when they first

start learning serbian how to i don't know i don't know so many things

i don't know what

how to do small talk so small talk in serbian is the number two

i thought it was gonna be something cultural like um like what the people

are like or something like that i don't know what

the third one could be it's cultural it's cultural it's someone that is someone

that's very famous in

your culture yes that one is number three that makes you so happy it's

such a it was such a

big part of yeah who i am yeah and my story that's really nice

and not only serbians i guess he's famous all around the world, right?

Yeah, he is all around the world.

That's why maybe it's number three.

Yeah, it's all the Balkan, basically, people, the slavs um and probably also worldwide

but the thing is that i think it would be very difficult for

other people to understand him because he has a way of poetic way of

writing so it's very difficult

to translate it in such a you know seductive way how he was doing

it he just draws you in so

i wouldn't understand why people uh like outside of our area like the balkan

area would not understand so yeah yeah cool I mean some songs of his

are kind of easier but some songs I'm like

I'm just memorizing even memorizing helps so it's it's cool yeah okay

not about me or you know

technical thing but what I'm gonna start asking you questions about podcasting in general

podcasting in general yeah yeah what do you think podcasting has taught you

uh podcasting but not like any any like content wise is that not

content wise not like this job

this new job area well you know i think a lot of like metaphorically

or maybe like let's say

it's mostly general like to be willing to learn new things i think always

to i i think i pride myself from being humble and driven and I'm

always humble with my like when it comes to my

accomplishments but I'm always like I know there's so much more to learn and

I think that was like

one of the things that it taught me just to be always yeah just

to be always learning and that

was my podcasting for me you know basically when I thought about this question

and your answer,

I thought maybe you would also feel kind of a different challenge

because you are used to being in front of the camera, right?

Yeah. You are always producing something visual.

And all of a sudden you went into this, you know, just audio content.

So that's why I thought that might be a little bit tough in the

beginning for you.

That is, that's exactly what it is about, because now you have to shift

your attention to what grabs the attention is not the visual, it has to

be either good quality audio, or, and or things that you have to say,

right? Exactly.

So and it's a format where people don't click on podcast episodes that are

two minutes long, which is exactly the format that works on YouTube, like up

to five minutes is perfect though, right?

so um and this is not what works on on for podcasts right so

i had to like distinguish

that and be like how are we different and how are we creating value