F2 WHAT’STHEDEAL?
This week’s best travel bargains around the globe
LAND l Several hotels and resorts in Myrtle Beach, S.C., are offering Labor Day deals. For example, with the Surfside Beach Resort’s Stay & Play Labor Day package, stay aminimumof two nights and get daily breakfast for four, a welcome package and a one-day pier pass for four, including a fishing rod and bait. Rates start at $165 per night, plus about $25 in fees and taxes, for an ocean-view roomthat sleeps four. Value of perks is $150. Valid Sept. 1-8. Info: 800-533-7599,
www.surfsidebeachresort.com. For a list of participating hotels:
www.visitmyrtlebeach.com/ laborday.
l HalfMoon Resort inMontego Bay, Jamaica, has a third-night- free deal for stays Sept. 1-Oct. 31. Rates start at $250 per night double, plus $62.50 in fees and taxes. Kids younger than 16 stay free in their parents’ room.
EZ EE
KLMNO
Book by Aug. 23 using promo code TNF. Info: 800-626- 0592,
www.halfmoon.com. l The Offshore Sailing School is offering a Learn to Sail package at its campus at Pink Shell Beach Resort & Spa in FortMyers Beach, Fla. The three-day package is $995 per person double, instead of the usual $1,395.With the deal, the total for two, including taxes, comes to $1,990, plus a $12 resort fee per night. The package includes a three-day course, three nights’ accommodations, a sailing textbook and personal log book, and a practice test sail. Book by Sept. 30; travel by Oct. 31. Info: 888-454-7015, ww
w.offshoresailing.com.
SEA
l Lake Powell Resorts & Marinas, on the border of Utah and Arizona in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, has a fall houseboat offer. Book a houseboat vacation for five or more days and get 40 percent off peak prices. For example, a five-day rental in early
November on a 48-foot Navigator that sleeps six adults and eight kids costs $3,207, including taxes, vs. the usual $5,344. Book by Sept. 15 using promo code FALL2010; travel Sept. 1-Dec. 22. Info: 888-486-4665,
www.lakepowell.com.
AIR
l Virgin America has a sale on late-summer and fall travel fromWashington Dulles to San Francisco and Los Angeles, with fares starting at $119 each way. Round-trip fares for nonstop flights come to $259, including taxes. Delta and Alaska Airlines arematching fares to Los Angeles; fares to San Francisco on other airlines start at about $350. Book by Aug. 23 for travel Aug. 23-Nov. 17. Info: 877-359-8474,
www.virginameri
ca.com.
PACKAGE
l RockyMountaineer, which offers rail vacations throughout Western Canada, has a deal on a scenic train ride and hotel stay.With theWhistler Rail & Stay Special, travel round trip by train fromVancouver, B.C., toWhistler, B.C., and spend a night at a luxury hotel starting at $199 (U.S.) per person double, vs. the normal rate of $305.With taxes, total cost is $223 per person double. Package includes the train ride, called theWhistler Sea to Sky Climb; breakfast and one light meal onboard; and one night’s lodging at the Fairmont ChateauWhistler,Hilton Whistler Resort & Spa, Nita Lake Lodge or DeltaWhistler Village Suites. Travel through Sept. 28. Info: 877-460-3200,
www.rocky
mountaineer.com.
—K.C. Summers BIGSTOCK Vancouver, B.C., is the starting point for a scenic train ride. TRAVEL
Submit travel deals to
whatsthedeal@washpost.com. Please include your phone number and e-mail address. Prices were verified Thursday afternoon when the Travel section went to press, but deals sell out and availability is not guaranteed. Restrictions such as blackout dates and advance purchasemay apply.
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washingtonpost.com/subscribe SMARTMOUTH Everywhere Yugo in New York
SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010
PHOTOS BY ANJA MUTIC
Cevabdzinica Sarajevo serves cevapcici, or casing-less minced meat sausages. The restaurant is one of several in theAstoria section of Queens that specializes in food from the former Yugoslavia.
BY ANJAMUTIC On a Saturday night in Man-
hattan, I navigate hipster-packed streets to meetmy friend Amra at an East Village street corner. Un- like the crowd around us, we aren’t here for the bar action. Instead, we head to a friend’s slava, a Serbian tradition cele- brating a family’s patron saint on the saint’s feast day. Right across from Tompkins
Square Park, we ascend to Vladi- mir’s small apartment to find a handful of early arrivals. The host, an architect and the owner of Kafana (116 Ave. C; 212-353- 8000), the city’s only Serbian res- taurant, takes his slava seriously. He cooks for days ahead to con- jure up more than 30 dishes — from gibanica (layered pastry with cottage cheese) to prebranac (baked-bean stew) and sarma (minced meat rolls wrapped in sauerkraut). Amra and I are given a spoon-
ful of slavsko zito. This bready cake, made of boiled wheat, wal- nuts and sugar and/or honey, is traditionally given to every guest upon arrival as a sign of welcome and to pay respect to the host’s saint. More guests arrive, and the
feast begins. Three plates of food later, I take note of the many newcomers to the apartment.The space, hazy by now with cigarette smoke—it wouldn’t be an ex-Yu- go party without the chain smok- ing—is buzzing with people from all over the former Yugoslavia. Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, chatting over food and drinks. As Serbian poetCharles Simic writes in his essay “Refugees”: “Nostal- gia is big on the menu at such gatherings.” Smack in the middle of the East Village, a dead country comes alive for one night. The Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia, or SFRJ, as we called it, disintegrated during a brutal civil war that started in 1991 and spanned nearly a de- cade. During this treacherous time of ethnic cleansing, people left in droves. Some, including many ofmy Bosnian friends now based inNewYork, were forced to leave their homes with little but a plastic bag of hastily picked pos- sessions. Others, like me, a Croat- Serb combo, left on a self-im- posed exile for reasons of ideolo- gy.Men ran away from obligatory military service, women to save their lives and their children.And so our old country was split up, and the ex-Yugoslavian commu- nity abroad grew rapidly during the 1990s. In New York, many of my
ex-compatriots set up house in Astoria. This part of Queens has become a hotbed of Balkan food and culture since the collapse of Yugoslavia. Butchers proudly dis- play suho meso (dried smoked meat) in the windows; tiny gro- ceries stock ex-Yugo products; and restaurants dish out cevapci- ci (minced meat sausages). At the Bosnian-owned Brick Cafe (30-95 33rd St.;
718-267-2735;
www.brickcafe.com), you can lounge over strong coffee and
Phyllo-wrapped spinach burek can be found at Djerdan Burek, which has three locations inNewYork. Other versions of the pastry feature cheese, potato or ground beef.
gossip for hours, the way the locals do. There is solace in these traits ofmy transplanted culture. I moved to Brooklyn in 1999,
after four years in England and two in Vermont and Massachu- setts. Always drawn more to for- eign cultures than to my own, I kept tomyself for a fewyears.My friends were from all continents but none from the old country. And then, unexpectedly, Yugo- nostalgia kicked in. This term has entered the lexicon sinceYugosla- via fell apart and we dispersed around the world. Like Ostalgie inGermany, the pining for the old East, Yugo-nostalgia exhibits it- self in various ways. In me, it’s displayed as an emotional attach- mentto positive aspects of the old SFRJ. I don’t pine for it, but I do miss it. There are days when I need to
remind myself where I come from. So I head to Astoria.Here, I get to pick the traditional foods from back home. There’s the Old Bridge restaurant (28-51 42nd St; 718-932-7683; www.oldbridge-
ny.com), where Bosnian expats come to chow down on cevapi, served with a flatbread and two yummy sides — a cheesy spread called kajmak and a spicy red- pepper puree by the name of ajvar.Somedevotees swear by the cevapi at the no-frills Cevabdzini- ca Sarajevo (37-18 34th Ave.; 718- 752-9528). Some days, I crave bu- rek, a deliciously flaky pie made of phyllo pastry and stuffed with either spinach (zeljanica), cheese (sirnica), potato (krompirusa) or ground beef, and washed down with a glass of yogurt. Those days have a destination: I head to Djerdan Burek (
www.djer-
dan.com), which has three loca- tions around town, in Astoria, Brooklyn andMidtownWest. On any Tuesday or Friday
night, I can walk into Kafana and sit down for a slice of burek and live starogradska muzika, the folk music we grew up with in Yugo- slavia. Back home, a kafana was the type of place our fathers fre- quented, a placewherethey could go to get away from home and wives to chain-smoke with their friends, bonding over football and women. New York’s Kafana may have taken things to another level, but there’scomfort inknow-
ing it is there, complete with the singalongandthe food staples.As if I’ve been beamed from the East Village straight back to Belgrade. When I crave Croatian food, I
stop by Istria Sport Club (2809 Astoria Blvd.; 718-728-3181) inAs- toria, an unassuming basement restaurant that serves specialties fromIstria, a heart-shaped penin- sula in thenorthern Adriatic.Last January, a Croatian Guinean friend celebrated her birthday with a Sunday lunch at Istria Sport Club. We had a feast of grilled fish and homemade pasta known as fuzi, as a few enthusi- asts played boccie in the back garden on an unusually warm winter day. Around the table sat friends from several ex-Yugo re- publics and a few additions from years spent abroad, including Ja- maican, Italian and Japanese- German. When Yugo-nostalgia strikes
on a Sunday night, I know exactly where to go. At Nublu (62 Ave. C;
www.nublu.net), a trendy Alpha- bet City music club, Bato theYugo and Gypsy Boogie perform updat- ed versions of gypsy classics every week. I stopped in on a recent Sunday night and, although tired, felt my body jerk itself from the bar stool when I heard one ofmy favorite old tunes. The moment the music started, movement took over my body as though it were possessed. I was born a citizen of Yugosla-
via. At 18, my Yugoslav passport was declared defunct and, with- out anyone asking what I thought, I became Croatian. I still am,onpaperandinconversation. Yet when I walk the streets of Astoria and find a store that sells the bar of chocolate I once sa- vored as my special childhood treat, when I walk into Kafana for a meal of prebranac that so re- minds me of my aunt’s in Bel- grade, when I have fuzi at Istria Sport Club on a Sunday after- noon, it feels like I’ve traveled all the way back to the old country. For aNewYork minute.
travel@washpost.com
Mutic, who was born and raised in Zagreb, Croatia, is a New York-based travel writer and co-author of “Lonely Planet Croatia.” HerWeb site is
www.everthenomad.com.
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