retiredmartin

October 2023. Tuzla. Bosnia & Herzegovina.

It was only 17:28 on our only night in Tuzla before an early departure the next morning to Sarajevo.

And Tuzla, a city of 110,000, the Newport (Gwent) of Bosnia, looked dead.

Even the famed “free beer dispensers cunningly disguised as water fountains” weren’t operational.

Tuzla is over 75% Muslim, and the minimal tourist trade comes from folk bathing in salt water, so I didn’t expect Blackpool, but there must be some craft beer. Even Mansfield has craft beer*.

The redoubtable European Bar Guide hasn’t got there yet, RateBeer just has the brewery we’d been to, and Untappd is obsessed with beer rather than pubs so can be safely ignored.

The main trade seems to be in CDs of Bosnian folk music Cher.

But just then, we stumbled on the “alternative quarter”.

With hundreds of young folk in deckchairs.

Honest. Pretend I’ve edited them out of the photos.

Great street art. Tuzla went from Bexhill to Bristol in an instant.

Never write a place off till you’ve seen it.

Mrs RM decided we’d give up on craft beer and go in the Just Caffe Pub, described on Google as “Best place for tourists in town. Staff speaks English and German almost perfect“, “styled after British pubs“.

Well, possibly.

If they scrapped those silly hand pumps and allowed smoking, possibly.

We picked the table with the least fug over it, and attempted to identify the musicians.

I stared, blankly, at the beer menu.

And asked for Carlsberg (£1.50 a half litre, value fans). Why didn’t I have the Bud (the fake one, from up the road), like Amel did, repetitively ?

No idea.

It was OK, it was OK. And I discovered that the main activity in Tuzla is playing cards with your mates.

Or possibly Top Trumps. I should have asked.

*This may not be 100% true.