Sarajevo - Bosnian Cuisine in the Ottoman Old Town, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (B)

The old town smells like a giant barbecue. The delicious aroma of grilled meat wafts down the alleyways on plumes of soft white smoke, heavenly as long as you aren’t vegetarian (Bosnian cuisine is very meat-based so vegetarians might struggle in more traditional areas of the city). It is about as picturesque as part of a city can be with cobbled streets polished smooth by countless feet, the minarets of mosques poking above the low, wooden store fronts of local craftsmen and the cafés with cushions serving Balkan coffee from intricately decorated bronze džezvas.

This Balkan coffee is definitely worth sampling and is a large part of social life within the city. If you are invited into somebody’s home then you will be immediately served a “welcome coffee“. If the host actually likes you and wants you to stay for a bit longer then a second coffee will be served and everybody will be buzzing from their caffeine fix. A third coffee is a polite way of signalling that your welcome is over and you need to leave. Nobody knows what happens if you get offered a fourth coffee, probably terrible, unspeakable things. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).