Tavern “Marger“
The best known city tavern was located at the former Square of Queen Natalija, near the Cathedral. The Tavern “Marger” was the first place in Niš where people could play pool and dominoes, and the owner of the tavern, Đoka, used to “mark”, i.e. to record the number of played games. Patrons of the tavern gave him the nickname “Marker”. Since Đoka had a problem to pronounce the “k” sound, which he used to pronounce as “g”, his nickname as well as the name of the tavern were changed into “Marger”. Beside the tavern, the whole quarter was called, and still is today, Marger. Regular patrons were writer Stevan Sremac, and legends of old Niš – Kalča, Smuk and Kurjak, immortalized in Sremac’s novel “Ivko’s Slava”.
Tavern “Kalča“
The tavern “Kalča” was located in the central part of the present-day shopping mall “Kalča” and at the beginning of the 60s it was a gathering place for merchants, actors, athletes, craftsmen, politicians and journalists. Along with Serbian and cabbage salad, good rakija was drunk and cooked, “ćevapi were eaten with spritzer” and “beans were sweeter than a Wiener schnitzel”. Regular patrons were boxer Ljuba Bandoglavi, footballers of “Radnički” Peki and Paki and actor Žika Milenković who used to get the key from the bowlegged waiter Iva and stay long in the tavern. When they would enter “Kalča”, they would buy “Politika”, a newspaper, in order to know what the day was when they got there.
Tavern “Galija”
As for “Galija”, which still exists in Niš, there is an interesting story about Vučko Mitrović, an orphan from the neighboring village of Sečanica. When he was 12, he came to Niš looking for a job because he didn’t want to be a servant and a swineherd at his uncle’s. He started to work in tavern “Prilep”, where from an apprentice he became a right-hand man of the owner in a short time. In that time, the First World War started and Vučko left the Tavern and became a soldier. He managed to survive the Albanian Golgotha and Corfu, and he was sent with other soldiers to Africa to recover. On that voyage, their ship by the name of “Galija” (Galley) was sunk by a German submarine and Vučko saved himself by floating on bales of hay. When he returned to Niš, he opened his own tavern and named it Galija in memory of the ship. During the 70s, the tavern became one of the most popular places for students, rockers, hippies, and poets. One of the most popular Niš bands was created here and named after the tavern – Galija.
