Tuzla // A Delicious City of Salt

The Pannonian Lakes in the heart of Tuzla // © Ajdin Kamber // Shutterstock

Salt. What is it good for? Absolutely everything. Say it again! I don’t know how to write the noise made after the initial word in that song, so you’ll just have to do it yourself.

It might get bad coverage from time to time, but we wouldn’t be where we are today without salt. That isn’t an overstatement. If anything, it is an understatement. Humans can’t live without the stuff. It allows our muscle fibres to contract and relax. It maintains a balance of fluids in the body, transmits nerve impulses and makes cardiovascular functions a thing. Without it, our brains would swell, our hearts would fail, and we’d be entirely buggered.

Homer called it a divine substance, while the Romans referred to a man in love as ‘salas’ (sic), giving the world the word salacious. On the subject of words you can thank salt for salary, salad, soldier and more. The Oxford Dictionary has more references to salt than any other word. Human settlements developed alongside the pursuit of salt, religions have it at the centre of rituals, it was one of the first trade commodities, one of the first large-scale industries, the first monopoly. Put simply, salt is way more important than you realise, and way more interesting too.

Salt hasn’t just been vital for the development of all human life as we know it. It has also been utterly indispensable for the development of the city of Tuzla, the third-largest in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one that often goes overlooked in the grand scheme of BiH tourism. It shouldn’t, obviously, but I’m flogging a dead horse on that front at this point.

Tuzla has heaps to offer the prospective visitor. For one, it has the most pleasant city atmosphere in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a city where the character of history has managed to survive all the tumult of recent times. Like most other places worth their salt (chortle, chortle), it has great cafes and excellent restaurants to go with its attractions, museums and galleries. The Ismet Mujezinović Gallery is one of the best in the country, for my money.

It also happens to be the only city in Europe with salt lakes in its centre.

Tuzla’s beautiful lakes again // © Ajdin Kamber // Shutterstock

Tuzla and salt go hand in hand. When the city was first mentioned, all the way back in 950 by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, it was mentioned as a fort by the name of Salines. That eventually developed into a Middle Ages settlement called Soli, which then gave way to the name it sparkles under today. ‘Tuzla’, by the way, is the Ottoman Turkish word for ‘place of salt’. The Ottomans ruled these parts for more than 400 years, ramping up the production of salt and spreading it far and wide across the world. Rumour has it that Louis XIV used it at his palace in the 17th century. It was presented at the 1876 International Trade Fair in Philadelphia. Salt is important, if you’ve forgotten.

The Salt Museum sits a couple of kilometres outside the centre of Tuzla, on the grounds of the modern salt factory that still pumps out the stuff at will. The eternal love story between Tuzla and salt is romantically told throughout, although you’ll have to take my use of the term ‘romantically’ with, yes, a pinch of salt. This is a museum, after all, not some two-bit nipple peepshow on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The museum was filled with documents, photographs and artefacts, holding the hand of the visitor from the early days of discovery to mass industrial production. Sure, a vague understanding of the Bosnian language is needed to really interact with the museum, but many of the exhibits and pictures speak for themselves.

Mass industrial production here kicked into high gear at the end of the 19th century when new sources of salt were discovered. The 20th century brought modernisation and the ebbs and flows that such a process inevitably drags along with it. The relentless extraction of salt means that parts of Tuzla are actually sinking, which surely isn’t going to be too good in the long term.

A peak inside the Salt Museum in Tuzla // © John Bills

Most interestingly though, the character of Tuzla can be traced alongside its relationship with salt. The abundance of work in the mines meant that people migrated here from all over, creating a city that came to encapsulate the multiethnic character that so vaulted Yugoslavia. Miners strikes were common, which in turn led to a city that politically leans to the left more than most places in these parts. As Bosnia and Herzegovina lurched towards war at the beginning of the 1990s, more people identified as ‘Yugoslav’ here than any other city in the country. Tuzla was the only city in Bosnia and Herzegovina that voted for multiethnic political parties when elections were held in 1990. Tuzla is different, in the best possible way.

Without salt, that might not be the case. Salt is one of the most important food products on the planet, although its modern abundance makes it easy to forget that it was once one of the most sought-after commodities on the planet. Wars were fought over it. Civilisations depended on it. Without salt, there is no us. Without salt, there is no Tuzla.

I mean, we should probably eat a little less of the stuff, but the point stands.