The avenue Maršala Tita pulses arterially through the centre of Sarajevo; from east to west it ferries people and cars across the whole breadth of the city, and on it are located many of the city’s most impressive and important commercial buildings. From it, though, branch a thousand arterioles and capillaries, side streets that are often no more than alleyways; from being in the centre of the city, one can vanish into silence in a moment, with no more than stray cats and dingy apartment blocks for company.
I headed down one of these side streets, right in the heart of the city. Rows of anonymous, Austro-Hungarian buildings, three-storied and dirty with age, towered above me, as they did in much of this part of the city; in one of them, though, a strange frontage occupied part of the ground floor. Wooden panels covered the façade, and its narrow door was recessed into a porch from which hung an elaborate golden clock.
I stared into it, curious. The doors were open; a warm, incandescent glow was pouring out onto the street, and I could see only that the narrow building tumbled deep to some indeterminate point, unseen and cavelike. I headed in. A waiter in a white, straw cowboy hat passed me in the opposite direction, grinning; I headed into the heart of the cave, and took a seat. I tried to establish what sort of place I was in, but looking around brought more questions than answers.
My table was topped with a rectangle of glass, under which had been slid souvenirs by past guests; banknotes were stuffed next to business cards, old ticket stubs next to coins. Opposite me sat a huge armchair, upholstered in a dense, luxurious pile, at the same table as a bar stool and a carved mahogany caquetoire, incongruous at first and yet somehow harmonious.
Behind them, the walls were a jumbled mess of wood panels, carved balusters and recesses, into which were stuffed all manner of oddities: in three such nooks, televisions were playing, all on different channels, all muted; on a shelf, a pearl necklace was draped over an antique candlestick. On a plinth, a glass urn containing a live goldfish was illuminated from above by the tungsten glow of a lightbulb; in front of it, on a lower plinth, was a huge bowl of fruit.
The bathroom managed to be somehow more surreal. Just past the antique, rotary dial telephone was a tiny, black-and-white television showing a French channel; on it, a dog was running through a field to a sparse piano soundtrack, seemingly endlessly. The room, like the rest of the bar, was full of trinkets, stuffed into every available alcove. It was mesmerising; not disturbing, but simply bizarre.
I headed back to my seat, next to the goldfish, and watched the evening go by over a few beers. The clientele was predictably eccentric; well-heeled twenty-somethings mixed with bearded eccentrics, all attended to by the waiter in his cowboy hat and surrounded by the insane décor. Everything was carved, stained, antique; it was like an insane inheritance, as though a madman had attended the auction of an eccentric’s estate and, without thought or discernment, bought the lot. It was wonderful.
