Stearns: On almost nothing being what it seems

Today I was on the bus, falling asleep as I am wont to do, and suddenly the bus driver pulls off and starts yelling at this man who was sleeping in the back of the bus.

Stearns (in her head, and half asleep, to be fair): Ah! We aren't allowed to sleep on the bus! Communists.

Then the bus driver got out of his seat and walked back to the man and shook him.

Stearns (in her head, still): I have to figure out ways to stay awake! This would be so embarassing if it happened to me. Perhaps I'll set the alarm on my phone for every few minutes. (Is this even possible?)

But the bus driver was just waking up the man because it was his stop.

These sort of things happen to me a lot here. I think it's because it is a different, and somewhat harsher language, so I never really know what's going on, and what's going on always sounds remotely unpleasant. So I assume the worst. But it's always, and almost without fail, actually the best. Like today, I was carrying a plate of brownies on the train (for a get-together; I do not regularly eat entire plates of brownies on trains), and an old lady pointed at them and said something that I thought was a reprimand. Like, 'no brownies on trains!' But a nice lady translated and she really had said that they look good and did I make them myself. And then the three of us talked all the way to Bratislava.