DATELINE: budapest hungary    

Author: Sam      

I can't believe that I spaced on mentioning one of the most transcendent bread experiences of my life. Around sunset Saturday, Natalie and I went for a walk through the part of the old town Sarajevo we hadn't explored. I'm a sucker for good bread and I saw a crowd lining up outside a service window at a bakery wafting a heavenly aroma through the street. Our tour guide from the other day, Mustafa, told us that all the bakeries in town are run by Albanians, except for the ones from before the war, which he said are significantly better and which only the locals know about. This walk up window was one of those magical places. The bread, piping hot out of the oven, was flatish and round like pita but was almost spongy on the inside and was sparsely sprinkled on top with cracked black pepper. It was too hot to eat when we got it, so we walked through one of the country's ubiquitous cemeteries (way too many were built in 1993) while it cooled enough to eat. As I said, the experience was transcendent. We learned the following day from an extremely helpful waiter that the bread is only baked and consumed during Ramadan (Ramazan in BiH), which answered our question as to why the queue formed at sundown. That was seriously some seriously good bread. Seriously.