Kahve cehennem kadar kara, ölüm kadar güçlü ve aşk kadar, da tatlı olmalıdır...

Result of my first attempt brewing kafa bosankska at home.

It wasn't anywhere nearly as good as Zeytin's made for me, but it was tasty to have sitting at my own desk.  And it was better when I brewed it up this morning.

It should be noted that, despite the appearances being virtually identical, kafa bosankska differs from Turkish coffee (aside from using the questionably-sourced proverb quoted above), bosankska is made differently than is Turkish.  [once the grounds are in the fildžan—or dzezva, if you're making kafa jugoslavska—you put the container on a low-heat to 'roast' the grounds while the water almost-boils, and after the almost-boiling water is poured (slowly now, else you'll have an exploding mud pot of almost-boiling coffee sludge flying out at 90º+ radius around the fildžan) over the grounds, the fildžan is placed on a low-heat to froth a few times (to taste, I suppose) before serving.  I have no sugar cubes, and prefer raw sugar to refined, so I use the little brass spoon to measure out loose sugar for each cup.  While I do not sweeten my coffee to the degree that Bosnians (nor Jugoslavs, for that matter) do, I have brought myself from wanting milk in it (an heretical act!).  Alas!  I have no rahatlokum (Turkish delight) to nibble while drinking, but I'm sure in larger cities in this country, I'd be able to track some down.  I like the white ones with figs and nuts in them, then rolled in coconut.  Of the six-some variants I've had, those go nicely on my palette.

So, I've had my morning coffee and shared a bit about it.  Time to organize some things and do laudry and such that is much needed.  Today I hope to begin sorting through my notebooks and posting some things I hoped to post during the journey but couldn't or didn't.  These recent ten hours of sleep were just what I needed.

I'd fully enjoy being home if the air conditioning worked properly in this corner of the house.

~•~

P.S.  The proverb above is recounted in English as something like, "Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love..."

~•~

Slavic Proverb

Literally:

The church is near-
but the way is icy.

The tavern is far-
so I have to walk carefully.

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About a misquote...

Karl Marx has often been cited as the source of the derogatory comment concerning Southern Slavs to be "ethnic trash."  I myself have used the refernce in a published work.  Last night, I came across a minor refernce that indicated this attributation was not entirely correct and spend far longer than I perhaps should have searching for the source of the quote in its original language.

Marx may well do to share the credit/blame, but it was Fredrich Engels who actually wrote it.

In January, 1849, the tract Der magyarische Kampf ("The Magyar Struggle") was published in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (n.194, v.13), authored by Fredrich Engels (not Karl Marx, bless his long gray beard).  A paragraph midway through begins:

So in Östreich die panslawistischen Südslawen, die weiter nichts sind als der Völkerabfall einer höchst verworrenen tausendjährigen Entwicklung.


Previous to this the term Völkerabfälle had already been uused.  In this instance, the term is slightly changed due to context, Völkerabfall.

The beginning of the sentence would be: "…the pan-Slavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but people's waste/racial refuse/ethnic trash…"

Literally, this mean's "people's waste."

In the local language about who it concerns this term can be translated to naroda otpada.  If we take it to mean (and the translation would not be inaccurate) ethnic trash, the local tongue would have it be etničkih smeće.




So, the always eloquent (notice the switch to sarcastic font there) Fredrich Engels, is actually calling the Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, Albanians, and their neighbors, human shit.


Don't think that it is above ideological philosophers to use vulgar terms.  Engels and Marx were, after all, discussing genocide at a time when that word had yet been coined.




· • ·

Writing a roped puma

Imagine two people holding a captured puma on a rope.
If they want to approach each other,
the puma will attack, because the rope will slacken;
only if they both pull simultaneously on the rope
is the puma equidistant from the two of them.
That is why it is so hard for they who read
and they who write
to reach each other:
between them lies a mutual thought captured on ropes
that they pull in opposite directions.

―Milorad Pavić


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Traveller's Tip #72:

Never order Turkish coffee at an Armenian café.


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