A Lesson in Drinking Bosnian Coffee and enjoying Bosnian Food
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The second thing to understand is that no one drinks coffee by themselves. You have to be comfortable and relaxed and with company. In fact, go ahead and lounge - put your feet up, slouch in your chair. The more relaxed the better. When the coffee is served, it will come on a tray. There will be a small container with a long handle that holds the coffee, a small cup, sugar cubs, and a piece of candy (Turkish delight). The first thing you do is wait. The coffee is still steeping in the pot. After about 5 minutes, take the small spoon and carefully stir the top around - but not too much! Just to encourage all the grounds to fall to the bottom. Now wait a few more minutes. While this is all going on, make yourself more comfortable and keep talking to your friends. Now, to pour. First, take the sugar cubes out of the cup. Now, slowly and carefully, pour the coffee into the cup, making sure that you're not getting any grounds. It's okay to add the sugar cube if you want, but traditionally, people will just dip the cube in the coffee and eat it directly (I liked this method). You can probably get about 2 little cups of coffee from what is served to you. You know you're done if you start to see the sludge from the bottom come out - unlike Turkish coffee, Bosnian coffee is not meant to be drunk with the sludge in the cup. The sludge stays in the container. When you're done with your coffee and your sugar cubes, eat the Turkish Delight. Don't dip the candy in the coffee - that's not what it's for. It's just a little treat. Now, it's time to learn your future. The nice thing about reading the future in the grounds of the coffee is that in Bosnia, you never learn bad news. You can only learn good news. Pretty good deal, huh? This is how I learned to drink Bosnian coffee. Everyone I was with that day for coffee was absolutely enchanted with the ceremony. The cafe was so comfortable and relaxed, and hearing the story and instructions from my friend's mother felt like an honor. |
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If you don't have time for the whole typical Bosnian coffee routine, a good cup of kahva sa mlijeko - espresso with steamed milk - costs about 50 Euro cents, or about 1/8th the price of you could expect to pay in Paris. There is not an uncomfortable chair in the entire country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Every chair padded with cushions, big, sit-back-and-really-relax-for-a-while chairs are in every single cafe, whether it it is in the middle of the city or off the side of a mountain road in a village of 39 people.
As I stated above, I was taught that to properly drink Bosnian coffee you must be with people, you must be relaxed, and you mustn't rush. It was explained to me that to be truly alone, a Bosnian would describe his or her misery and heartache by saying "there is no one with whom I can drink coffee." Bosnians - and the rest of the former Yugoslavia, it seems - take relaxing very seriously. If you don't drink coffee, there is plenty of tea (Caj, pronounced "chai"), though if you're looking for a caffeine fix then tea isn't your best bet. Most tea served in Sarajevo is herbal, made from the beautiful flowers and herbs that grow locally. After I commented on the great smell that was coming from my friends cup of tea, Lada showed me the purple flowers that grew in the mountains that produced the taste. A few days later, I picked a bunch of those flowers and made my own herbal tea at home.
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People in Sarajevo understand their land and what it provides them. There are no factory farms for killing animals because it's not necessary - there seems to be plenty of land for everyone, and plenty of grass for the grazing cattle. As soon as you leave the city you enter the country without going through any type of suburbs, and there are more cows and sheep than people or cars. All of the animals graze in the fields, live a free life, and are not fed any type of hormones. That means means that the meat is phenomenal! Bosnians may eat vegetables at home from their own gardens, but restaurants generally serve meat dishes only. Vegetarian options are pizza, spinach (zeljanica) or cheese (sirnica) filled pastries (very tasty!), or any number of sweet honey-filled desserts. But for those who eat meat, your taste buds will rejoice - I have never had better meat in my life, and I'm not much of a meat-eater to begin with. Cevapi is the most popular quick meal, which in Sarajevo is a type of sausage made from lamb or sheep and cow. I can not explain in adequate words how divine the taste was - just cevapi and diced onions tucked in thick pita bread was the most amazing food I ever tasted. |
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