When you enter a Bosnian house, politeness dictates you take off your shoes . It makes perfect sense in a place where most people walk everywhere--those shoes can have mud and all sorts of yuckiness. But bare floors (which is what most Bosnian houses have) can be cold in winter, so there is also a tradition of keeping slippers by the front door to slip on once your shoes are off.
You would not, however, go to the shoe store to buy these slippers. You go to the produce market. There hand-knitted slippers sit in piles next to the piles of lettuces and cabbages.
A bunch of us got slippers for Christmas and are enjoying our toasty toes.
1 comment:
Comment from Ariel which I accidentally deleted--sorry, Ariel!
That's the answer I've been pondering. Normally, my house is shoe free. However, now the floor is concrete and seems a bit cold. The challenge is that many Americans get kind of bent out of shape when asked to take off their shoes. I'll find some slippers soon and go back to having a much cleaner floor.
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