Šanta
(Place, tavern, firm, Yugoslavia)
A tavern on the corner, just a block from Lesnina to downtown. It got named by its founder, who limped (šantao), so it was originally „Birc kod Šante“ - birc being short for bircuz, which is mangled Bierhaus, beer house. We tend to do such things to german words.
It's about a hundred years old. It changed hands several times - the original Šanta held it until after the WWII, when he was accused as a collaborator with the occupators, but then was saved by the partisan whom he kept hidden in the tavern's attic, while the soldiers were drinking downstairs. It became state owned, and was remodeled a couple of times. In the seventies it got styled in the quasi peasant style on the inside, and completely faithful to its original style on the outside - what with the lettering in plain black paint over the door, and the one lamp with tin shield and a glass jar. The chandeliers inside were exactly the same as those we saw in hotel Belgrad I in Moscow (see 22-III-1979.).
In the seventies, they used to host poetry evenings, though the lyrical side of those wasn't exactly pastoral or philosophical, it was mostly dedicated to Bacchus - „if drinking affects your work, nobody's really forcing you to work“.
The next time we went there (total of twice, in all these years) was on 21-VI-2018.. By then, it was sold to some solo entrepreneur, and then to another, who knows how many times. The current owner did something nobody did before - cut a side door and put some six tables outside, on the lawn in the sidestreet.
Or was it the previous owner - I see that door and terrace on the upper picture, which is from 2010.
Despite having sat there only twice, this tavern is significant as a landmark - it's one of the named corners in the city, like Venac (the once shop in šreh of the city hall, then a supermarket, now museum, still holds the name of the original establishment), Vida (farther corner of the park by šećerana, once a tavern), kinta (the corner and the whole area, after the „Last dinar“ tavern of yore), Red cross (still there, though not exactly on the corner), Gramag (gra-mag, short for „gradski magazin“, next to vodotoranj but somehow more memorable than it).
Mentions: 06-I-1968., 08-II-1969., 13-X-1969., 19-IX-1970., and the rest of the month, 16-X-1972., february 1977., 22-III-1979., 02-VII-1981., 21-VI-2018., 20-VI-2020., 19-VIII-2020., 16-I-2023., kinta, Lesnina, šećerana, vodotoranj, in serbian