Like every other Tuesday, the day dawned with a crazy, promising energy that I resolutely ignored. I had agreed to meet my friend, Bruno, for a morning coffee—that sacred ritual of the modern man—even though our ritual amounted to drinking coffee twice a month, and the other twenty-eight days we admired the world on the move, not through a smoke-filled window.
For today’s ritual, Bruno’s pet, Toto, joined him. Toto is a rescue dog whose temperament is so unstable that even Schrödinger would envy his duality of existence. He was at once the most beautiful dog in the neighborhood and a nervous breakdown with a tail. We affectionately call him Brko, which means "mustache," because we like to think we're hilariously clever. And so the three of us—two men and one mustachioed dog—embarked on a mission to find the perfect neighborhood cafe. In our neighborhood, this is a mission on par with Odysseus’s—long and full of peripeteia. The neighborhood is, you see, an epicenter of cafe culture, where every other doorway hides a cafe, and every cafe hides the same story. A story about people who have created a threefold holy mass out of coffee, cigarettes, and gossip.
The Ritual of the Day
We entered the first establishment. A thought immediately echoed in my head: "I don't need psychotherapy, I need coffee." But here, coffee was just an excuse. The sound of house music at 135 BPM at 10 AM, with no bass, pierced our ears like a landing aircraft. For a moment, I thought Brko was scared, but then I remembered that the dog who survived Hiroshima was also scared, and sadness soon washed over me.
"Where did my money go?" someone often asks while drinking coffee. "On coffee. Three times a day and two packs of cigarettes," Bruno, Brko, and I would answer in unison. Our ritual is different. We don't need to sit and drink coffee. We need to be on the move, walking, running errands, and talking along the way. Yet here we were, sitting and feeling like we were in a funeral home with dimmed lights, even though it was daytime outside, and my gaze drifted toward the counter, which, to be gentle, needed a deep clean, not dimmed lighting.
I remembered a gentleman from the neighborhood, who, after ordering his third coffee and a shot of Pelinkovac, sighed deeply and said wistfully, "Don't take this away from me too; it’s all I have left." I felt the hair on my head stand up like a seismograph sensing an earthquake. "My day and my life are already hard enough, and if you take away this little pleasure, what do I have left?" he added. I smiled discreetly and shook my head, thinking to myself: "Maybe you should walk two or three kilometers instead of sitting and poisoning yourself with cigarettes and acidifying your body with alcohol? Maybe you should exercise a bit, develop spiritually, spend time with your wife, go to the theater, and so on?" But no, we were at a cafe, and that was that.
Bruno and I are cosmopolitans, sensitive to beauty and trends, and scenes like this are anything but beautiful. It seems we're just arrogant narcissists. In reality, we just want a little peace and dignity. This cafe charade is like a performance of Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," only we're waiting for a waiter and a well-kept cafe that will never materialize.
We Were Mistaken
We fled that cafe, seeking salvation in another, but we gave up because the story was the same. A smoky room, loud music, and so much more. At one point, I felt our senses were so battered that we felt unwell. The coffee cost more than at Piazza San Marco in Venice, and the service, communication, and overall atmosphere were miles away.
I wonder, do I have to endure this and still pay for it? What is the story of these establishments? Why don't they ask the customer what they need? Or maybe the whole point is that in Croatia, a cafe has become a refuge, a place for drinking coffee, smoking, and gossiping, not a place for enjoyment?
I wonder how to enlighten these owners and waiters. Is it so hard to play some light lounge music in the morning and only increase the tempo in the evening? Is it a problem to be in a slightly darker space if it’s daytime and we like to feel at home? Why is priority always given to smokers, who cost the state, their own health, and my health more than non-smokers? What is this primitive narrative that's always in the air and how do we eradicate it? Or should we just move?
I love my homeland and I fought for it, rifle in hand, but also for a refined story. I thought we could aim higher. That Western culture would bring some kind of revolution. I was mistaken. There are signs of a silent revolution in some establishments whose owners are consciously telling other stories, where you go for an experience. I have to walk farther or drive to get to them. They are so rare, but they do exist. They also offer something to nibble on, which is great if you've skipped breakfast. I remember the Italian "rebechina" (click on the story), which is shyly creeping into our country as well. In those establishments, you can't smoke; a different story prevails. The speakers pulse with a different melody than the unlistenable distortion. Yes, but such a place doesn't exist in our neighborhood, and we were short on time.
An Escape from Savagery and the Counter as a Signpost
The air smelled of ashtrays and eternal doubt—were we the crazy ones, or had the world around us lost its compass? As Brko nervously sniffed under the table, as if searching for hidden evidence of the meaning of existence, my thoughts drifted to my friends.
I remembered a friend who moved to California a few years ago. He says he's never coming back. Yes, California has no soul, you're alone there, but when you sit down somewhere, you know what you're getting. There are no surprises. No squeaky music at ten in the morning. A positive cloud of small talk is always measured and has no ugly tones. There's no aggressive entrepreneurship where profit tramples culture. You don't have to shower after every coffee.
Another friend went to Zurich. He also says he's not coming back. He misses Croatia, that primordial beauty, but he can no longer tolerate that "savagery of the ignorant," as he puts it. They are aggressive in their entrepreneurship, without refinement and without the desire to learn. They are only interested in money, not the culture of living. It's as if they picked up the worst of the West and forgot the best.
The Counter as a Signpost to Ruin
And then, an old friend, long deceased, crept into my thoughts. He was the owner of a legendary Zagreb cafe, the one where actors, writers, and bohemians used to gather. He used to say: "Every counter is a signpost to ruin." And he would add, in his old age, that he regretted ever opening a cafe. He said the place outgrew him because of its popularity; he couldn't close it. It became Frankenstein's creation, alive, unstoppable, and devouring people.
Coffee, a cigarette, morning until noon, and then alcohol, a cigarette, and drunken stories in the evening. He saw people melting away, their lives sliding down their throats with every sip. And he felt responsible. "I even gave many things away for free," he would say. "Because I felt responsible for poisoning them." It was his confession, his admission. An admission that the counter, instead of being a place of meeting and joy, had become a silent witness to ruin.
Questions Without Answers
And we, Bruno, Brko, and I, sat in that smoky cafe, surrounded by the silence that should have been music, and the squeaky music that should have been silence. We drank our coffees, overpaid, and wondered: where is that refined story we fought for? Where is that culture of living we dreamed of?
Maybe the problem is with us. Maybe we expected too much. Maybe our struggle was in vain. Or maybe we simply haven't learned to enjoy the "little pleasures" that neighborhood cafes offer, those "little pleasures" for which, it seems, it's worth enduring everything else.
In the end, as we left another "funeral home" cafe, I asked Bruno: "Italy or Austria?" He smiled, and Brko, as if he understood, barked happily. Because there, the story is different. There, you know what you're getting.
I comfort myself with Bruno, me with memories, and him with plans for an escape—our routine, short escape across the border, where the story is completely different. And so, we returned home to shower and change, because we were too smoky, but still with the hope that one day we will find a cafe in our neighborhood that will be an oasis, not an obstacle.
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