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it it 'otildMisshereamthetheown,washalf-i aboat we with il of hernanytheirandtheFULL OF FOOD.BALKAN RESTAURANTSNO RESTRICTED MENUS.A DAHOBROU8 PB^TY.lL.nade Beta Iraida hie wave restfter-,hou-•oute it in Gov-largesausei air*rowdWe it in can-■peetjpub* i thehaveidant :t U*L yet rtous beenIf from the moon one could take agiant's-eye view of A.Tt.P- darkenedEurope these winter nights, this little^outh-weat corner known as the Balkanswould stand out for the first time as a peninsula of comparative brightnessand luminosity, writes Terence Atherton, “Daily Mail” correspondent atBelgrade.From Belgrade to Bucharest, front Sofia to Salonica, Istanbul and Athens, the main cities of these still backwardcountries, now steal the noetumalglamour that once belonged to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague and—Warsaw.There are no “black-outs’* yet in the Balkans. Eife goes on very much asj before. Lights flare through the nights, the cabaret bam are open, the restaurants and cafes busy.The main streets of Belgrade and Sofia cannot compare in elegance, of course, with the Kurfurstendatnm,Under den linden, and the Kartnerring, show streets of Berlin and Vienna. Their delicatessen shops are smaller and tawdrier and rather badly lit. The Balkan restaurants—save one or two in Athens and Bucharest—are relatively drab, andthe people who eat in them not sosmartly dressed.But to-day these differences count for little against another and a bigger difference, which makes visiting commercial travellers, newspaper correspondents and mere secret agents from the Third Reich wish heartily that they could linger longer, if not permanently, in this Balkan backwater. These Balkan shops are crammed full with food.The Granaries are Full.The restaurants have no meatlessdays, 110 ration cards, no restricted menus. Everything that the healthyTeutonic appetite could aspire to—fat hams, juicy steaks, browned and crackling roast sucking pigs, sides of bacon and beef, bursting sausages and Blut-wursten, and tremendous sheep’s-milk cheese—all are here without restriction, asking to be eaten, to be washed down with uncontrolled, unrationed quantities of good, cheap, wines, beer and rakija (plum brandy).The Balkans to-day are an eaters' paradise, an oasis of plenty in war-rationed Europe. There is a prodigality of things to eat and drink.Good harvests have filled the granaries and ellos-^and the newly formed national reserve stores—with plenty of nearly everything but maize, the one weak crop. Flour, wheat, is plentiful^ bread—the Balkan staple—is cheap. It is. a pleasant but a dangerous plenty.Is it any wonder that Germany, restricted and pinched for food, is already looking with envious eyes and ill-concealed impatience at this Balkan eomu-eopia?inainGP«tn!o*1fiE001 V inylt;aiA«aicl,]
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