More Balkan Coffee

10 March 2018

As I prepare to return to Sarajevo in a couple of weeks, I have turned more towards drinking Bosnian coffee. Being a coffee snob as I am, I have very specific tastes.  And one of them is for Turkish-style coffee with a Bosnian twist- officially Bosnian coffee in that country.  Made in a dzezva (one of many alternative spellings I have found), a uniquely-shaped coffee maker, Bosnian coffee has brew and drinking methods all its own.

Bosnian coffee, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo by Gerald Trainor.

A beautiful dzezva of Bosnian coffee ready to pour and enjoy. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The drinking method is the most important part for me- I have been instructed that it is all about time.  Taking time to grind the beans, to brew the coffee, and to sit, to look around, to talk with others. Unlike here in the US, where for so many people coffee is something you get in a paper cup at a Starbucks drive-through window, in Bosnia, coffee is drunk with others, sitting in a cafe, watching people and life. I do not recall seeing a single laptop or tablet at a cafe there. Only people sitting together, interacting, or in the case of those alone, watching the interactions of others, be they passersby or at the next table. We should take a lesson from them.

 

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