Žitni
(Place, tavern, firm, Yugoslavia)
Anyone acquainted with the layout of downtown Zrenjanin knows that it stretches from city hall to Žitni square. The main street ends with the other square (once Vilzon's, after Woodraw Wilson, followed by several later names), which isn't even a square anymore, it's a raised plateau between the police HQ and sdk, on which the glassbox is. The bank used to own the glassbox, it had a vault in the basement, which is still there, but the bank now uses only a small part of it, the chinese department store most of the rest of the ground floor, there's a medical lab and a cafe about which I never guessed where the entrance was, maybe through the abandoned and neglected underground below the square, where once DBA had offices.
That square (now Đinđić's) connects, over the pedestrian bridge (once Great aka Eiffel's), to the Žitni square. The configuration of it is somewhat weird, as all the tributaries come at corners, Pašićeva actually diagonally. And while the traffic went over the square, it went diagonally, from the bridge to Pašićeva, from Miletićeva to Koče Kolarova, crossing at right angle in the middle. When the Eiffel's bridge was dismantled and taken away, the two triangles adjacent to it were converted into a bus station, for vicinity traffic - the intercity was a block away, in a sidestreet. Maybe there's still some of that zigzag curb, once concourse, underneath one of the kiosk-cafes.
That didn't hold for too long, as the city busodrom was made in 1975 and the station was moved away, while the square was turned into a huge parking lot, and still is, without much change or maintenance.
Along the southeast edge of the square they tore down the extant ground floor houses and built Tekstil's novogradnja aka Pride (ponos - v. house dictionary); that's where later there were various shops, including furniture, Chineses, Lilly's pharmacy (current), some french bank, the Generali insurance. There was a bike and sport gear shop and then gone. In the hole at the corner to Pašićeva there was a chinese shop, in the basement (where she entered with a big axe in the tote an scared the Chineses). On the southwest side there's probably the oldest novogradnja, I think just two or three floors, with various shops at ground level - a bank, burek, two or three shoe shops, the „Novosti“ shop and reporters' office, a dairy restaurant, where mom took me often when I got tired of window shopping downtown, for an icecream or a snack. This was later replaced with another chinese shop and presently the Moskva tavern. Also at least one butcher shop, agr cooperative Zrenjanin, the Najlon (nylon) tavern (aka „ресторан Мостар“, i.e. restaurant „Mostar“, can be read as if latin when uppercase), Bagat's shop (sewing machines from Zadar, retail and repair), the „Vojvodina“ bioskop (movie [theatre]) with a cakeshop in the lobby, later converted into a furniture salon and then into a chinese shop. This last part is already by the bridge, high above the bank [of the river] and actually belongs to the Dunđerski palace, i.e. the brewery compound.
The northwest edge is a few houses by the Begej, or rather above it, the ground on the square being rather high above water. There was a paintshop at the corner since forever, then there was Modus (where she bought cloth by the meter, and sometimes ready sewn pieces), and the last ten years it's not the usual merry yellow color it always was, but graphite black with windows painted over, there's a bet joint inside, the customers hate being seen in there. Then few artisanal shops, still working just switching owners periodically. There was the Venecija (Venezia aka Venice) pizzeria back in the mist of 1983 - the only guys ever to include a zaprška in the topping. Onions and pizza, please not together. By the other corner is some bank, or two banks already, and in the back yard (open to the other bridge) there's some small beer joint, we visited once, they have some artisanal (ooops... sorry, I'll correct this before the political rectification cops get me: craft) beer. In the space where the tavern's toilet is now, the DC-99 used to have its lab, after it moved in 1974.
The fourth side is somewhat pointless, with just a gas station and the main thoroughfare, there's nothing there facing the square.
Among the landmarks... that dairy restaurant was some miracle of the early socialist design, somewhat completely modern, and the food was good - buns, pogačice, yogurt... And it did brisk business, at least half of the staff from the surrounding shops must have had breakfast there.
The „Najlon“ tavern got its nickname after the narodnjak female singers, probably since the times when nylon stockings were still a novelty. It was one of the smash-the-glasses places, where the last dinar went into her cleavage, with a possibility of a flash of a knife sometimes, which is actually improbable, this being smack downtown and the police HQ too near. There was always a handful of such taverns (e.g. „Drina“, „Moravac“, „Lokomotiva“, even Šanta for a while). Najlon vanished before the internets, so there's near impossible to find anything written about it.
The „Vojvodina“ bioskop was the third, neglected one in town, so its repertory was a mixed bag - reruns of last year's hits, cheaper genres (late westerns, kung-fu, Shatterhand, pyrotechnic SF), less popular Fest movies, and domestic production (except Bulajić's spectacles, those went to Balkan downtown). The trouble with domestic movies was that there wasn't one ever where you could understand what the actors said. As if all domestic studios conspired to use sound equipment incompatible with this movie's projector. There was no such trouble wth foreign movies.
Until about 2021 the square was the chinatown, there were always between four and seven chinese shops, plus two more some 100m away. Today (2025) only the one in the former bioskop remained, because the Chineses also regrouped into department stores (glassbox, Nama, former „Sloga“, and even the shop by Braca's kiosk, revamped for the sixth time).
Mentions: 23-VIII-1963., 31-XII-1971., february 1972., Photos, 19-VI-1972., Pozorište, 26-VI-1972., february 1977., december 1978., december 1982., april 1983., 25-II-1996., 02-IX-1996., october 1996., 01-VIII-2005., 08-VIII-2005., 12-VII-2010., 05-X-2010., 24-I-2013., 28-VIII-2013., 24-VII-2014., 29-VIII-2017., 09-IX-2017., 05-III-2018., 28-V-2018., 31-VIII-2018., Bajaga i Čorba, 08-IX-2018., 18-IX-2018., 24-I-2020., 22-V-2020., 13-VII-2020., 01-IX-2021., 23-X-2021., 14-III-2022., 11-V-2022., 29-V-2022., 10-VI-2022., 05-VIII-2022., 07-VI-2023., 08-VIII-2023., 16-II-2024., 26-V-2024., 09-VIII-2024., 28-IX-2024., 12-IV-2025., 26-V-2025., 08-VI-2025., 21-VII-2025., 04-VIII-2025., 16-VIII-2025., 08-IV-2026., 10-V-2026., Braca, burek, DBA, DC-99, house dictionary, narodnjaci, novogradnja, pogačice, sdk, Šanta, yogurt, Zadar, zaprška, in serbian
23-IV-2025 - 30-VI-2026