The Balkan Soul

About The Balkan Soul

By the ULTIMATE Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Life in the Balkans keeps a different clock. This is our portrait of the things the whole region shares: the café, the market, the table, the water, the seasons and the welcome.

A different clock

The Balkans keep a different clock from much of Europe. Time here is measured less by the minute than by the second coffee, the morning market and the long evening walk through the square, when families, students and grandparents all seem to be out at once. Between the white limestone of the Adriatic, the forests and gorges of the interior and the slow sweep of the Danube, the region holds on to a way of life built around family, friendship and the table. Centuries of Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian influence are written into its food, its streets and its manners, and the result is a lifestyle that is relaxed, generous and warmly social.

The café

Coffee in the Balkans is not something you carry down the street. It is a reason to sit down. From the Viennese-style cafés of Zagreb and Ljubljana to the old kafanas of Belgrade and the coffee houses of Sarajevo’s Baščaršija, the café is where the city meets itself, and where people practise what Bosnians call ćeif: the pleasure of taking your time.

Here, time is measured by the slow drip of coffee and the banter of the morning market.

In Sarajevo, Bosnian coffee arrives in a small copper džezva on a tray, with a fildžan cup, a cube of sugar and a piece of rahat lokum. Elsewhere it might be an espresso on a terrace under the plane trees. Either way, the tables fill with every generation: students with laptops, friends putting the world to rights, and, in parks and squares across the region, older men bent over chessboards while a small crowd offers unsolicited advice. In summer, musicians drift between terraces, children play in the squares late into the evening, and nobody hurries you for the table.

In Zagreb the Saturday-morning coffee has a name of its own, the špica, when the whole city seems to dress up and fill the terraces of the Lower Town. Podgorica lives at its café tables on Njegoševa, Hercegovačka and Bokeška, and in Tirana, where there is a café every few steps, a coffee is a meeting, a negotiation and a way of watching the city go by. In the evening, Tirana’s families take the xhiro, the stroll along the main boulevard.

The market and its characters

If the café is the city’s living room, the open-air market, the pijaca or pazar, is its kitchen garden. Long before “farm to table” became a slogan, Balkan cities were fed by smallholders who came in at dawn from the villages. They still do. Tables bow under seasonal abundance: peppers in late summer, wild mushrooms and forest honey in autumn, home-cured ham, jars of ajvar, and blocks of white cheese kept in brine.

The real pleasure is the people. The woman who insists her tomatoes are the best in the market (and is probably right); the cheese seller who cuts you a taste before you’ve asked; the regulars greeted by name; the gentle bargaining that is as much about friendship as price. Visit Kalenić in Belgrade, Ljubljana’s Central Market under Plečnik’s colonnades, Split’s green market by the palace walls or Skopje’s Bit Pazar, and you’ll understand a city faster than any museum could teach you.

Tirana’s New Bazaar, first built in 1931 and renovated in 2017, has covered halls of cheese, olives, honey, mountain tea and raki; in Montenegro, the stop for pršut and cheese is the village of Njeguši, on the road from Cetinje to the coast.

Empires on the plate

Balkan food tells the story of the empires that met here. In the north and west, in Zagreb and Ljubljana, the cooking carries a Viennese accent: breaded schnitzel (Zagreb’s version, zagrebački odrezak, is stuffed with ham and cheese), potato salad, and strudel layered with apple, cheese or poppy seed. Head south and east, through Belgrade, Sarajevo and Skopje, and the Ottoman influence takes over: charcoal grills turning out ćevapi and pljeskavica, slow stews and soups, stuffed peppers and vine leaves, and pastries soaked in syrup and walnuts. Along the coast, the Adriatic adds its own chapter: grilled fish, olive oil, black risotto and wine.

Each country has its own proud dishes, and we cover them guide by guide: Serbian cooking on our Belgrade guide, Bosnian on Sarajevo, Macedonian on Skopje, Montenegrin on Podgorica and Slovenian on Ljubljana.

Fishermen at dawn

Get up early near the water and you’ll see the region’s oldest rhythm. On the Adriatic and the Danube, on Lake Ohrid and Lake Skadar, small boats are out at first light, fishermen silhouetted against a sky turning from grey to gold. By lunchtime the catch is on the grill in a waterside restaurant: sea bream and squid on the coast, carp and catfish by the rivers, finished simply with olive oil, garlic and parsley.

Four seasons of the wild

The Balkans have four true seasons, and nature is never far away. In Belgrade, Great War Island, where the Sava meets the Danube, is a protected haven for birds; a pair of white-tailed eagles, among Europe’s largest birds of prey, nests there. Across the river in Zemun, the Danube quay fills with swans in winter, a lovely sight on a cold, bright morning. Further afield, the mountain forests of national parks such as Tara are home to brown bears and wolves.

Spring arrives in a rush of green across the beech and oak forests. Summer moves life outdoors, to café terraces, open-air cinemas and long evenings by the river or the sea. Autumn is the most beautiful season of all: the forests turn gold and amber, the markets overflow, and in the villages the plum harvest begins.

Wine and rakija

Wine has been made here since antiquity, and the region grows grape varieties you’ll find almost nowhere else, from Vranac in Montenegro and North Macedonia to Žilavka in Herzegovina and Prokupac in Serbia. But the spirit of the Balkans is rakija, the fruit brandy distilled in copper stills in villages across the region each autumn. Šljivovica, made from plums, is the best known; there is also dunjevača from quince, kajsijevača from apricot and viljamovka from Williams pears, and along the coast, loza, made from grapes.

Rakija is hospitality in a glass. It is poured to welcome guests, to toast weddings and births, to seal a deal and to remember those who are gone. When a small glass is put in front of you, accept it: it is a handshake.

Where to go next

Each of these places has its own page on our city guides, chosen and checked by our editors.

Our advice

Slow down. Have the second coffee, go to the market early, eat what the next table is eating and say yes to the rakija. Then let our guides show you where: the cafés, markets, restaurants and places that our editors have chosen and checked, city by city.

Festival dates, opening times and seasonal services change, so please check with each place directly.