Getting Off at the Wrong Station in Serbia

At the end of June, after learning I had been admitted to my dream university, I again complained that my mother had not arranged my visa earlier. Before the entrance exam, whenever I asked her by phone to arrange it so I could travel in the summer, she told me to focus on revision first and discuss travel after the exam.

I could no longer contain my excitement and suggested Serbia as a destination. In fact, I knew little about the country beyond the name of its capital, Belgrade. While daydreaming before the exam, I imagined secretly taking my passport and traveling there alone, but gave up after getting my phone back and finding that a one-way ticket cost 7,000 yuan.

My mother knew no more about the country than I did. After asking my father and hearing that the situation was relatively stable and the country relatively friendly to China, she booked flights with me that evening. (In fact, on our departure day she learned from Xiaohongshu about protests in Belgrade and was somewhat afraid. But that comes later—and helps explain why we were bound to be overcharged.)

When I previously visited Singapore with my mother, she did most of the planning. Singapore is exceptionally well documented by Chinese travelers: we even experienced the SkyPark atop an office building, the SkyGarden at the Marina Bay Sands hotel and an indoor boat ride for free. For Serbia, relying on that experience, she did not prepare in advance. Like me, she decided to take things as they came. We booked the round-trip tickets to Sarajevo and each night’s hotel piecemeal whenever we remembered.

There lay the problem. Failing to prepare properly led directly to our getting off the high-speed train at the wrong station.

That day, after leisurely visiting the Church of Saint Sava and the site of the former Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, we set out to ride the Chinese-built Belgrade–Novi Sad high-speed railway.

The high-speed trains ran once or twice an hour, rather like Beijing–Tianjin service. For safety, my mother asked me to forgo the small online discount and buy tickets at the station. The waiting hall was spacious and clean. At a ticket window in the corner, I said, “Novi Sad, two tickets.” The clerk understood, sold me the tickets and gave me the platform number.

These were our two tickets. Even the gates were open when we entered the platform, though our tickets were checked later on board. One should never assume that one can evade a fare inspection.

We went straight onto the train at the appropriate platform. But my ticket said Petrovaradin, not Novi Sad, so my uneasy mother asked me to check with platform staff. Just as I was about to step off, she pulled me back; the doors closed the instant I stopped. She explained why: only one of our devices had mobile data, and with the language barrier, being separated would have been troublesome. It was a false alarm—the doors had merely closed to keep the air-conditioned carriage cool. In very basic English, I asked a bespectacled local passenger where the train went (I forget the precise words, something like “go to where”). He replied, “Novi Sad,” and I relaxed.

On board I was still trying to work out whether we needed additional tickets, with no idea we were about to get off at the wrong stop. (GPT had found all the ticketing information and websites for me; at that point I trusted it greatly.)

I kept watching a train-information website. It listed Novi Sad as the terminus (I did not realize the significance; if I had, I could have simply followed the crowd off) and Petrovaradin as the penultimate station, so I fixed on getting off at the second-to-last stop. What I did not realize was that our particular train terminated at Petrovaradin. I led my mother off one station before its terminus.

Seeing fields of wheat around us, I realized the mistake. The train had departed, so we could not reboard. My mother suggested waiting for the next train there, but I insisted we cross the tracks to the ticket office to ask about it, lest it arrive at another platform while we waited.

The ticket office was empty. As I fiddled with a ticket machine, an older man came in. I explained our situation in English, but he did not understand. (One of the most difficult things in Bosnia and Serbia was that some locals could not communicate in English, leaving us reliant on translation apps.) He went inside, put on his reading glasses and worked out what had happened.

Communication went smoothly: we could use our old tickets on the next train. But we did not grasp what he meant when he said, “At Petrovaradin, your bus is waiting to take you to Novi Sad.”

We successfully boarded the next train and were delighted. I was still happily taking photos.

At Petrovaradin everyone got off, and we followed. Just outside the station—really only a few railings—a taxi driver approached us. We had not yet figured out the local ride-hailing app Yandex Go, nor how to reach our hotel in central Novi Sad, a ninety-minute walk away. My mother asked me to find out the fare. The driver did not give a specific figure, so I asked for an approximation. After thinking, he said 2,000 dinars (about 141 yuan). That sounded acceptable and we got in. My mother urged me to ask about local sights. His English was limited, but he spoke warmly enough about churches and the fortress by the river.

To our surprise, the meter climbed rapidly. Near the accommodation it went from 2,800 to 2,900, then 3,000; by the time we stopped it read 3,200. I hurriedly took out my wallet and asked whether 3,000 would do. He agreed, and I paid him. After he left, my mother taught me two lessons: first, do not pay before retrieving your luggage; second, if the agreed price was 2,000, pay 2,000, not 3,000 out of foolishness. She understood that I had never taken a taxi alone and had rushed to pay 3,000 to avoid an even larger fare. She treated it as part of travel and a chance for me to grow.

What upset me most was discovering, while searching travel guides from bed, that a free shuttle bus runs from Petrovaradin to central Novi Sad. That was what the older man had told us through the translator. We had needlessly lost 3,000 dinars (about 212 yuan), and I felt miserable that evening. (The local ride-hailing app would have cost about 50 yuan.)

That evening, after enjoying the blue Danube, we happened upon a protest in the streets of Novi Sad. Only later did I understand why it was happening.

The local protest was essentially a huge party—smoking and drinking, occupying an intersection and blocking cars.

The memorial outside Novi Sad railway station

Readers can look up the full story. In brief, a canopy at Novi Sad station collapsed late last year, killing several people and provoking lasting public anger. In my final year of high school I saw news in the cafeteria about the resignation of Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic, not knowing it was connected. (GPT answered when I asked about the incident, but when I asked about tickets it had never mentioned the station closure.)

The station remained closed as a result, so trains from Belgrade could run only as far as Petrovaradin. I got off at the wrong station and was overcharged 3,000 dinars, but the experience was also valuable in my life.