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Buybook and Karabit Café

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captain oddsocks
captain oddsocks
First Reviewer
4 out of 5
Avg. Member Rating
1
Review
4
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Editor Pick

Buybook and Karabit Café

Buybook and Karabit Café

Karabit cafe is inside the Buybook store on Onešćukova, which is the main street leading to the western end of the Old Bridge. Both the bookstore and the café are nicely set up and if the low winter sun is streaming through the front windows, it’s the perfect place to warm up with a hot drink.

The bookstore area is well organised and stocks big glossy art books, travel guides, and translations of Balkan literature that might appeal to travellers through the area. I spent quite a while browsing through the different books and if they’d been a bit cheaper I probably would have bought a few. There were some good guidebooks and travelogues by foreigners, including the much-quoted 1930s classic 'Black Lamb and Grey Falcon' by Rebecca West.

Mostly though, my purpose here was to drink coffee. With book browsing out of the way I sauntered across to the café section and chose a low seat by the window in the winter sun. There were also several traditional tables and chairs, but I couldn’t resist the low Turkish-style seats of folding cushions with small wooden chests for tables. And as any household cat or dog knows, the sunbeam is the place to be on a winter’s day.

Leafing through the menu showed a comprehensive selection of different teas, but I was after a quick coffee and chose the large milk coffee for 1.50KM. A small espresso would have been 1KM, but cappuccino and everything else was the same price as my flat white. The background music was a soft ethno-jazz deep-foresty kind of groove, and it didn’t stray wildly from that at any time during this or later visits.

My coffee was the only thing I bought on my first visit so it came to 1.50KM. Unfortunately the smallest banknote that I had was a 50KM. The waiter looked a bit upset when I offered it in payment and after a moment of looking in the cash register and back to me and then at the cash register again, he waved me away and said something dismissive (perhaps best not understood). I promised to come back to pay and his face said “yeah right” while his words were saying goodbye. He seemed a bit surprised and sheepish when I came back to pay, but graciously and happily served several good cups of coffee throughout the remainder of my time in Mostar. Just the same, I was pretty careful to have some coins to pay with.

Despite only being in Mostar for three days, I began to think of the Karabit Café as my local, and it’ll certainly be among my first stops if I ever have the chance to return to wonderful Mostar.

From journal Marvellous Mostar

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