*A really nice piece of culture studies writing here.
How often is one sitting in an ethnic restaurant
when the NATO secret police show up to intimidate
the gun-runners? If you write for RFE/RL, I reckon
that must happen pretty often.
*I kinda wish I'd written this. Kudos to Patrick Moore.
THE DEMISE OF THE GERMAN BALKAN RESTAURANT. The virtual disappearance of the once ubiquitous Balkan restaurants from the German urban scene reflects changes in West European tastes and travel habits but also in perceptions of what was once a highly regarded part of Europe.
Everybody knew them. They had names like Split, White City of
Zagreb, Dubrovnik, or Mostar that conjured up images of a recent or
planned Yugoslav vacation in the minds of passersby in most every
German city and town in the 1970s and 1980s. Some had less common names like Lika or Morava, which provided a clue to the owner's home region.
Still other establishments prompted one Berlin professor to
remind his students that "the Balkan studies expert is always on
duty" (((Hey, I'll say))) and pay attention to the hidden message in the restaurant's name or decorations regarding the politics of the place.
Students would then carefully notice details in a Croatian restaurant, like a picture of World War II pro-Axis Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic on the wall, or the particular variation of the Croatian checkerboard coat-of-arms associated with his regime to deduce that the owners were Ustasha sympathizers or veterans. If a restaurant was called St. George the Knight, a student of World War II Croatian military formations could guess that the owners were of the same background as the people with the Pavelic picture. And if the managing company of the business was called Walter, which was the German World War II code name for Josip Broz Tito, a passing visitor from the Balkans would know that the restaurant's staff were sympathetic to the idea of a united, left-leaning Yugoslavia. (((Or, well, maybe they just put it there to be confusing.)))
These were some of the Yugoslav, or Balkan, restaurants that
once numbered in the thousands across Germany but now have become few and far between. Some were family or neighborhood restaurants run by political emigres or economic Gastarbeiter seeking a better life. Others were larger or downtown operations, sometimes with business links to companies in Maribor, Skopje, or somewhere else back home. (((Some of us are globalizing, while some of us are having de-globalization thrust upon us.)))
Some of those became virtual institutions, such as Munich's
Slovenian-owned Opatija am Koenigsplatz or West Berlin's Novo
Skopje, both of which existed for decades and were known for their
open-fire charcoal grills and excellent fare.
They served up a variety of dishes from around former
Yugoslavia, usually from the Serbo-Croatian-speaking areas, with a
sprinkling of traditional steak and schnitzel dishes to attract
German customers whose older neighborhood eateries had now become Yugoslav, which often meant Croatian.
The universal staple was grilled ground-meat sausages, or cevapcici, (((and a fine universal staple those sausages are, mind you))) and their close relative, the pljeskavica patty. These dishes could either be the owner's way of getting rid of scraps, or a lovingly seasoned meal of the finest quality. (((Like there's a difference in the restaurant biz.)))
Other universals were grilled meat skewers known as
raznjici, a spicy stew called muckalica, or, especially in winter,
stuffed cabbages known as sarma. The Novo Skopje and other Macedonian establishments paid particular attention to grilled meats, including the standard mixed grill called mesana skara.
The Yugoslav restaurants also introduced their guests to
salty sheep cheese, sharp ajvar salad – which is essentially a paste
made from cooked peppers – and a panoply of spirits starting with
the slivovitz beloved of Serbs and the loza that flows from Croatia
on down to a host of wines, including a dry Herzegovinian white
called Zilavka or the reds of Kosova. The wines and spirits were
usually served in a specially shaped glass decanter that bore the
name of a well-known Slovenian importer. The meals were then rounded off with a Turkish coffee served in the traditional fashion (see "RFE/RL Balkan Report," 22 October 2004). (((I have been known to live and thrive off this stuff for weeks on end. Well, so much for the Angeleno taco chips – it's ajvar and kajmak, dead ahead.)))
These restaurants generally did a good business and enabled
many an immigrant to raise and educate children, support a family
back home, or start a larger business, especially in former
Yugoslavia itself after the collapse of communism.
The heyday of the Balkan restaurants coincided with the boom
in German tourism to Yugoslavia in the late 1960s and 1970s. Later,
however, their image began to change.
Trendy and wealthier Germans increasingly went further afield during their vacations, and Yugoslav holidays became associated in many people's mind by the 1980s with budget travelers and the elderly. One by one, the Balkan restaurants made way for Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, or Chinese restaurants, much as the Yugoslavs themselves had once taken over from traditional German pubs. (((It's amazing what you can see if you look, eh?)))
With the collapse of communism, some restaurants nonetheless made a political mark for themselves. When the communist rulers in Croatia tried to prevent the generally conservative Gastarbeiter from casting their ballots in the first free election in 1990 by requiring them to return to Croatia if they wanted to vote, one Munich restaurant put its premises at the disposal of Franjo Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) for a day for election meetings. The result was that hundreds of Croats in Bavaria chartered planes and busses to go home for election day and vote for the HDZ. President Tudjman then rewarded them by allowing them to cast their subsequent ballots in several German cities, including Munich. (((Globalization is all about the diasporas.)))
Soon after Croatia declared independence in June 1991, the
often faded travel posters with inscriptions like "Plitvice Lakes -
Yugoslavia" came down from the walls in the Croatian-owned
restaurants and were replaced by glossy new ones for similar tourist
sites, now identified as "Croatia." Signs and menus were similarly
purged of words like Balkan, Yugoslav, or Serbian. The
Slovenian-owned Opatija took down its small Yugoslav flag from a
display case, leaving the German one alone in a stand clearly
designed for two flags. (((A fine novelistic touch there – I may have to steal that one.)))
In some restaurants, the response to changed political
circumstances went beyond the cosmetic. In one such establishment, Herzegovinian and Dalmatian Croats met regularly in a side room, speaking in muffled tones. After some weeks, a large van appeared outside, and the staff and their Croatian friends were visibly nervous. The van then left, only to return a few days later. When that happened, the relief of all Croats present was palpable.
It did not take long to conclude that a gun-running operation
was in progress. (((I like what this quietly implies about our narrator. Does he wear a trenchcoat to dinner, I wonder?))) This was noticed not only by some of the regular customers, but also by the German authorities.
One evening, about a dozen or so middle-aged men arrived at the restaurant, either in pairs or one-by-one. They sat apart from each other, at different tables. All spoke German, but they let it be noticed that they were hanging on every Serbo-Croatian word spoken among the staff and the Croats in the side room. They also let it be noticed that each had a full and bulging holster somewhere under his sweater or jacket. The point was taken, and the van returned no more. (((This is known in police circles as "the atmosphere of deterrence," and it sure saves a lot of trouble in court.
Other restaurants engaged in politics in a less sinister
fashion. In Berlin, the Novo Skopje was well-known as the salon of
Ljubco Georgievski's party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organization (VMRO-DPMNE). (((The longer your acronym, the fewer people there are in your faction.))) Georgievski himself could sometimes be spotted in a booth at the back on one of his private visits to Germany. When Georgievski's party was in power, the relations between the restaurant and consulate were open and close.
After the wars of the 1990s broke out, however, the
restaurant closures also began in earnest. There were many reasons
for this, starting with a rise in city rents and in beer-sales quotas
that had already begun in the 1980s (most pubs in Germany are owned by breweries, which rent to concessionaires, who are obliged to sell a certain quantity of beer). Some restauranteurs got around this problem by moving to smaller communities with lower operating costs, like the man who hosted the HDZ meeting eventually did.
After the wars made anything Yugoslav or Balkan generally
unappetizing to Germans, many of these restaurants reinvented or
renamed themselves as international, Mediterranean, or fish
establishments. But others simply closed, and the owners either
retired in Germany or went back home, especially to Croatia, and
began a new life with their savings. When discussing the demise of
the Yugoslav restaurants, one Bosnian journalist at Deutsche Welle
commented, "Can you blame the German customers for staying away from our places after all the violence they saw on their TV screens?"
In Munich's Schwabing district, (((traditionally, one of the hippest places in ther world))) for example, there were
probably well over a dozen Balkan restaurants in 1980. Fifteen years
later, there were two or three. They struggled to stay afloat thanks
primarily to older German regular customers, fellow Croats or
Kosovars, and Balkan-studies people of various nationalities.
Despite generally attentive service, pleasant decor, and meticulously clean settings, the remaining Balkan restaurants generally seemed to do less business than most of the neighboring Greek, Italian, or sushi establishments.
The disappearance of the Yugoslav restaurants that have
survived seems to be a matter of time, and many of the proprietors
are fatalistic. Some, however, are confident, such as the waiters at
one Dalmatian establishment in central Bonn, who point out that they have a good location and a solid base of regular customers, many of whom came from other Croatian restaurants that are now closed.
Nonetheless, some of the venerable institutions are now gone.
Within the past few years, the Novo Skopje made way for the wrecking ball as its building and the one next to it were leveled to provide space for yet another steel-and-glass Berlin office building. The Opatija has become a pricey drinks bar (as have many other former Yugoslav establishments), and with it disappeared its huge mural showing folk dancers from all parts of Yugoslavia performing
traditional dances. Neighborhood restaurants like Berlin's Morava
that have been around for decades have closed to make way for trendy bars. (((There time too will come; those who live by trendy die by trendy.)))
One of Munich's few remaining classic Balkan restaurants
is the Zaja family's Zadar in Schwabing. The guests seem to
become fewer with time, despite the hospitality of the Zajas and
their efforts to adapt to changing tastes. When leaving the Zadar, it
almost seems prudent to study one's surroundings carefully,
having what might be a last look at the huge wall painting of Split
harbor, which was done 30 years ago by a man who learned to paint
from a Roman Catholic priest in the 1950s, when both men were
Tito's political prisoners. It will probably come as no surprise
some day to find that the Zadar has become a Thai snack bar and that the painting of Split has gone the way of the Opatija's mural.
(Patrick Moore)
