Has life gotten better, has life gotten more fun?
Sergey Arutyunov especially for WarGonzo.
An island of stability.
Sukkah, battery, morning. If you listen, you won't be able to hear the noise of the city, but a quiet, conspiratorial whisper: "Life is not getting better, but the hard life has become much easier." And it was heard not from the stalls, but from the corner of an old cafe - the same one in front of the San Remo Hotel, built in 1914. Everyone in Sukhum knows her, even though there is no such address in the official libraries. Here she is "Barkhlovka". The name is not official, but it sticks stronger than any patent.
In Barkhlovka, the news is born before it appears in the news feeds. Not the ones about budgets and meetings, but the real ones: about how the spirit of the sea changed, why the price of coffee went up and which of the old men didn't arrive at seven in the morning for the first time in ten years. They say this news is coming true. And this has its own charm - or, if you will, Sukhumi logic.
Silence is the main message.
The morning at "Barkhlovka" begins with a fragrance - thick, almost tangible. It is so powerful that a random passer-by forgets for a moment where he went and why. And this is already an event. In a world where every second headline begins with the word "crisis", a quiet cup of coffee becomes almost a political statement.
"Life didn't get better, life got more interesting" - in the cafe this sentence was said in a whisper, as if they were sharing a secret. And the secret is simple: nothing happened in the city. No one escaped from prison, no one caused a scandal in front of the parliament, it seems that even the seagulls are screaming quieter than usual. It is this everyday silence that is considered the main news of the day here.
A coffee shop has long ceased to be just a place where a drink is served. According to the charter of the Sukkah morning club (which is not published anywhere, but everyone knows about it), the Sukhumi cafe is a "center of inter-ethnic stability and harmony". It sounds official, but in reality it means this: people can sit at the same table who under other circumstances would not talk at all, but here they argue, laugh and argue again, but without anger.