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Walking in Prague, one will not necessarily see the signs of Ajvaz’s “other city” (five days are too few to that), but in the details and moods there lies something from other cities, mainly from Vienna and Budapest. Even in the modern buildings, as if the sense of belonging together secretly survived the collapse of the pre-1918 world, or, in defiance of the crash, even decades later created squares and buildings of the same style, like Széna Square in Budapest and Anděl in Prague. It was the more surprising, therefore, when I stumbled across a tangible sign of this former unity on the 
Small Side of Prague, not far from the corner of the Újezd and the Petřinska:
I could not clear up what stood in the place of the current shop (maybe our readers can tell more about it). Most probably a simple colonial, a grocery store, as my newfound acquintance, Jakub pointed out, even though at first I thought it to be a liquor shop. In any case, it has a striking similarity with other fossils of the Monarchy, like the earlier seen inscriptions of Lemberg.
Bosnian Powidl caught my ethno-culinarian attention. I never imagined that boiled-down plum paste was known in the Balkans, much less advertised in the Motherland of all Powidls (for in Czech, powidla is strictly plural, never singlular like the derived form повидло in Russian).
ResponderEliminarWhen I'm boiling down plums, I add a dash of olive oil, salt, crushed garlic, and minced jalapenos - and we call the resulting paste a different traditional name. You are welcome to guess which one :)
Thank you very much, MOCKBA, for the addition! To be sincere, I didn't analyse the inscriptions in detail (only the familiar ones), I merely rejoiced at the discovery. So now we know not only šljivovica came from the Balkans... :)
ResponderEliminarWell, I'm not really familiar with Russian cuisine (maybe Studiolum will know it), but anyway it sounds good. :) (although plum for me usually connected with sweet flavour)
Meanwhile, in the Hungarian version Pera commented that István Rudinai Molnár, who dedicated most of his life to viticulture (one should say he had a fruitful life :)), was appointed in Bosnia-Herzegovina as consultant for viticulture and fruit-cultivation in 1886 by Béni Kállay, at that time common minister of finance and also administrator of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Beside viticulture Rudinai Molnár revived the plum cultivation in the region (he maintained the office until 1895). So his person is a very probable link to the bosenská povidla.
ResponderEliminar