The art of sipping your coffee, ignoring all your worries, chatting with the neighbors, while the feeling of accomplishment still manages to spread through your body. It marks another day in which you have managed to simply enjoy living. This might seem inconceivable for whole nations but here, in Southern Europe, it’s an entire philosophy, to which the Italians have given the prominent name of dolce far niente. And it’s true—not everybody can do it—but those who master the skill are definitely in for some quality relaxation. What differentiates the Italian concept from the Balkan one, however, is the root cause of why such a lifestyle has been adopted. Italians do it as a choice, a perception of how life should be experienced, while for Balkan people it is a reaction to the whole chaos surrounding them, starting from their turbulent political environments and economic uncertainty, topped with a serious dose of irony and bitterness.
Two years ago, I went on a trip to Florence and Siena with my girlfriends and, of course, we had a strictly planned program, because we were not going there and seeing anything less than… well, everything. On the day we visited Siena, we got up at 5 am, caught the train at 6 am and, after a series of very unpleasant situations, at 10:12 we finally set foot in the old town. I was already truly exhausted since we were running behind schedule, but, all of a sudden, the three of us shared a look that asked, “Where are we rushing to?”. We only had a couple of hours in the town and either way we couldn’t change what had upset us that morning, so we wondered “why not just kick back and enjoy the lovely day?”. We explored the tiny streets, drank coffee, and ate brioche (more than once), spent time sitting in the iconic square, passersby, the surrounding buildings, absorbing even the smallest detail. Then, we continued wandering the streets until we ran into a very charming greengrocery with the most beautiful strawberries I had ever seen. We bought a pack of them and some grapes, and we settled ourselves on the stairs of the famous cathedral, under the caressing April sun. After laying there for more than an hour, laughing and enjoying the balmy weather, it was time for pizza and gelato and before we even noticed time flew by; we indeed had to get back to the train station. We made the conscious decision to actually experience the dolce far niente in a town that seemed untouched by the everyday hurry, and I really believe it couldn’t have gone better.
A movie I hold very dear, Eat, Pray, Love, portrays this concept when the character of Julia Roberts says that, for three weeks in Rome, she has only “learn[ed] a few Italian words and eat[en]” and she feels guilty about it, while the men in the barber shop explain to her that this is the whole point. To live in the moment, hang out with people without a special occasion, take a break from constantly striving for perfection and simply enjoy around us. Also, it is socially accepted and even encouraged—think about the aperitivo, the long lunches, the walks. Everything about it screams “slow down!” and enjoy the moment.
Anyone who has been to the Balkans can tell you one thing—whenever we meet an Italian, we invite them to go out with our friends, because we know we have met people sharing our idea of a fun time. We are famous for having a night out like it is our last one, reserving the whole period of December to January for all kinds of family gatherings and traditional holidays, which you cannot miss, and perceiving coffee time as a sacred ritual. If you go to Sofia, Belgrade, or Athens, you will see the cafes full at any time of the day, not because the people there don’t have jobs, but because they allow themselves to take a break. You will see the Belgrade kafanas (a traditional Balkan restaurant hosting traditional live music with a distinctive atmosphere) packed even on a Wednesday night until 4 or 5 am, and then these same people will go to work in the morning. When somebody offers you to go out for a drink or come to their house for a “quick chat” which turns out to be a five-hour-get-together, you usually don’t think twice. There is rarely a gathering without plenty of food and music. And people here, just like in Italy, know that slowing down is worth it.
However, if Italians see this as “the art of living”, we subconsciously see it as escapism from the rough reality. In the span of a bit more than a century, most Balkan countries have gone through liberating themselves from the Ottoman rule, then tsardom, then a communist state and finally a very chaotic democratization accompanied by a dramatic economic crisis. It doesn’t sound like a life full of certainty, does it? Institutions which don’t work properly, corrupt governments, work that is often not rewarded properly, and currencies which today can be worth $2 but tomorrow $20. All of this has inured us to a myriad of problems that faith can throw at us, but it has also taught us how to deal with them by keeping our spirits up and not getting worked up over them. We have adopted the attitude of “ah, just forget it—it’s not worth it anyway” and “why bother” since the system doesn’t work properly. We say it bitterly, with obvious pessimism; yet one moment we are declaring how fed up we are with it, and the next we are ironizing the situation and having a good laugh about it.
The years under a foreign rule or a rigid system have forced us to build a mentality of coping with it by doing only as much as we have to, and by finding a way to get by, without wasting our energy on pointless battles. The sudden changes in the 1990s—the Yugoslavian war, drastic inflation, political crisis, erosion of moral values—have strengthened even more the cynicism and the ironizing. Our sweetness of doing nothing became a necessary tool for survival, helping us enjoy life despite the chaos.
Italians have grasped the dolce far niente concept approaching life with a certain elegance and pleasure. They absorb the surrounding beauty, celebrate simply being alive without feeling the guilt of “wasting their time”. Us, Balkan people, we always make fun of ourselves and of the society we live in to stay positive. We create our very similar version of dolce far niente via our endless get-togethers, numerous coffee dates throughout the day and by enjoying the little things; but the root of it lies in our need to stop for a minute and find shelter from madness.
