This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Third in a seven-part series
Bosnian is spoken at the Bosna café
Today: Bosna, a Bosnian café
Where: 3142 S. Main, South Salt Lake
Language: Bosnian
Hours: Sunday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Kitchen closes at 9 p.m.)
What to expect: A Bosnian café and pub where customers can buy Bosnian CDs and rent movies.
Inside: A look at some of Bosna's specialties.
Wednesday: Great China Market
SOUTH SALT LAKE - In this dark café, filled with the aroma of coffee and cigarette smoke, men often walk in alone, grab a seat and toss their Marlboro pack on the counter.
They gather at Bosna - a small Bosnian restaurant in a quiet industrial neighborhood, south of Salt Lake City - to drink espresso and visit with friends and strangers.
They share jokes. They talk about soccer and European politics. They reminisce about the good times they had in their country before the war, before they were driven out and lost their homeland. But regardless of what they discuss, they speak in Bosnian, their native language.
"When they come here, they don't want to speak anything else," says server Elvina Mehinovic as she cleans up the counter. "It's too hard to think in English. They just want to come here to relax and drink coffee."
There are slightly more than 3,100 residents in Salt Lake County - or less than 1 percent of the population - who speak Bosnian, or Serbo-Croatian. Of them, roughly half live in Salt Lake City, according to 2000 census data compiled by the Modern Language Association.
Bosna is one of a handful of places in Utah where Bosnians feel comfortable speaking their language and enjoy reminders of home, but it doesn't keep them from longing for a country that doesn't exist anymore.
Customers stop by Bosna for homeland favorites such as Yupi, an orange-flavored soda, and homemade cevapi, a pita bread stuffed with sausage links, as well as to buy Bosnian CDs and rent Bosnian movies. But they also come here to feel normal and fit in with people who are like them, says Bosna co-owner Elvis Hadzialijagic.
"It gives them a place to belong," he says. "They can drink coffee at home. They can smoke alone. But nobody wants to be alone. They come to see people."
After work at 5:30 p.m. most days, 43-year-old Maksida Filipovic drops by Bosna to drink coffee and chit-chat with Hadzialijagic or other customers. She moved to Utah in 1998 as a refugee and lives in Murray, about a 10-minute drive from the café.
Filipovic says she enjoys BosĀna because it's one of the few places where she can order and talk to the server in Bosnian. She also loves the people and food - she eats cevapi here at least three times a week.
Sometimes, Bosnians says they feel out of place at English-speaking places because people stare at them when they're speaking their language or, sometimes, snicker at their accents.
Binela Antic, 18, and her boyfriend, Sijan Sabic, 18 are Bosnian refugees who have lived with their families in Utah for about eight years. But they are still more comfortable around Bosnian friends.
Bosna is the "Bosnian version" of the popular café, Salt Lake Coffee Break, the couple says. But, they prefer Bosna because they can play pool, listen to Bosnian music, watch Bosnian music videos on a wide-screen TV and switch from English to Bosnian whenever they want.
"You can be yourself around these people," says Antic, snuggling next to Sabic in a booth. "No one's going to judge you by your accent here."
Hadzialijagic says he and his father-in-law, Muharem Mehinovic - who used to sell about 300 cevapis a day at his shop in Bosnia before the war - wanted to open a café so that young and old Bosnians would have a place to call home.
When Hadzialijagic moved from Chicago to Salt Lake City in 1999, he says there wasn't "anything Bosnian." No markets. No cafés. No bakeries.
"There was enough of us, but nowhere we could call our own," he says.
Now, there are two bakeries, five grocery stores, a private club and four restaurants, Hadzialijagic says. About 95 percent of Bosna's customers are Bosnian, he says.
"Six years ago, we had nothing. Today, we have a little something," he says. "In five years, we might be bigger."
For Zoran Gvozden, Bosna reminds him of his neighborhood café he used to go to after work in Gracanica, Bosnia-HerzeĀgovina.
"I feel . . . like I'm somewhere in Bosnia," the 44-year-old says in between sips of coffee. "It makes me feel good."
Like most Bosnian refugees, Gvozden fled his country because of the war, which started in 1992 and ended three years later. He lived in Germany for seven years before moving to Salt Lake City in 1999.
Gvozden misses his country, town, co-workers and boyhood friends, but he knows it's not the same place anymore. There is no money and there are no jobs, he says.
"My country is totally different," says Gvozden, who owns a small construction business in Salt Lake City.
So, if only for a few hours a week, he feels at home in a small, dark café - roughly 6,000 miles away from a country he once called home.
Some menu items:
* Cevapi: Sausage links in a pita bread with a side of onions. $3.25-$5.50
* Goulash: Chunks of beef in gravy served with rice or mashed potatoes. $6
* Sirnica: Cottage cheese in a pita. $3
* Zeljanica: Spinach and cheese in a pita. $2.50
* Yupi: An orange-flavored soda. $2
* Cocta: A cola-flavored soda. $2
* Kafa (coffee): $1.60
* Espresso: $1.35
Wednesday
Fish balls, dry squid and duck eggs are grocery items found at Great China Market. Customers say they come here because they can speak to the owner and read signs in Chinese and buy foods that remind them of home - halfway around the world.
Thursday
St. Patrick's Catholic Church is the only Salt Lake County parish that has services in Tongan. Here, people say they prefer to pray and sing to "Otua" in Tongan because they can feel it deep in their soul.
Friday
Even though they moved here from Europe decades ago, some Utahns still prefer to speak their native language, German. Vosen's Bread Paradise is one of a handful of places in the state where they can speak in German and find bauernbrot and bienenstich.
Saturday
Not all people who speak Spanish are Mexican or eat tacos, say customers at El Arepazo. At this South American eatery, people say they feel at home here speaking with strangers in Spanish and eating arepas and teque os, favorite foods from their homeland.