Greetings from Belgrade where, for once, the soaring temperatures are marginally less soaring than those in London right now. So I can hardly use heat exhaustion as an excuse to write about Jelen - a Serbian stalwart and my favourite ever beer - the heritage of which dates back as far as Mozart's birth year of 1756. But while walking down Knez Mihailova, Belgrade's equivalent of Oxford Street, I chanced upon a fantastic exhibition. Always up for a chance to experience another country's aircon, I ventured inside...
Zivea Zivot ("Long Live Life"), is a design exhibition which celebrates and depicts life in the former Yugoslavia between the 1950s and 1990s, through the everyday life of "the common man". According to the exhibition, "the common man" got up at 6am, brushed his teeth with homemade toothpaste, downed a quick coffee and then hopped in his Fico and drove to work. If he had had a radio in the car - which was unlikely - then he'd have been listening to Ivo Robic and The Silhouettes.
Before he reached work, though, it's possible that he may have stopped off at one of Belgrade's iconic hotdog stands - known as the K67. It may seem unusual to us in the Western world to eat hotdogs for breakfast, but let's remember that most continental countries do favour meat over marmalade (which is actually a wiser health choice, incidentally - protein over sugar); and bread is still essentially bread, whether it be toast, a croissant or a hotdog bun: it's still a carbtastic boost to start your day.
Big, red and friendly, these K67 stands sold only two items: hotdogs boiled in a colossal steel pot, placed in a bun, and yoghurt which came in a triangular-shaped carton. (Oh, and drinking yoghurt rather than the slightly firmer yoghurt we're used to is also much more common here too. In fact, I'm having a "burek sa sirom" - a doorstep-sized flaky cheese pasty - and drinking yoghurt in a local pekara for my lunch in a moment.) But that was it - the K67 sold nothing else.
Made in Slovenia, and designed by architect and designer Sasa J. Machtig in 1967 (hence the "67" part of the name, with "K" for Kiosk), they were prevalent throughout central and Eastern Europe, with roughly 7,500 kiosks dotted around. But they unfortunately died out in Belgrade during the war when Yugoslavia fragmented into its constituent countries. This wasn't the only reason, though: quite simply, the factory "Ingrad" in Ljutomer burned down.
Design-wise, although they eventually turned pretty grubby due to their location beside train stations and such like, the cuboid but rounded simplicity of the polyfibre modules was clean and iconic. They made it into the permanent exhibition of design and architecture of the 20th century in New York's MoMA - and one even reached New Zealand. Yet more amazing is that these K67 stands heralded the start of fast food chains in Europe. Yes, even before McDonald's.
Buying hotdogs from the K67 remains firmly in the memory of many generations still living in Belgrade. "Eating hotdogs from them was the best treat ever," says Dusan, who is roughly my age and lives in Belgrade. "They didn't have them where I used to live in Sremska Mitrovica, so whenever I got off the bus when I came to Belgrade, that was my first stop. The bread was often stale, but somehow that didn't bother us. It was the most delicious treat!"
A clean and shiny K67 is now the ticket booth for the Zivea Zivat exhibition in Belgrade. That may be all it's used for these days, but the iconic hotdog stand will always occupy a little [street] corner in the history of Eastern Europe.
by Ashley Morrison
Ashley is a blogger, copywriter and editor
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