The table is set for dinner at the home of the Serb family where I spent last Christmas.

Last year, I celebrated Orthodox Christmas with a Bosnian Serb family in East Sarajevo. We climbed out of bed at six in the morning for a traditional and unbelievably heavy meal of roasted lamb that I could barely stomach at sunrise, half awake and half identifying as a vegetarian at the time.

We began the morning tradition by throwing dry barley onto their uncle as he entered the home, then promptly tucked into our multi-course feast. After our meal, groaning and groggy, I joined the family’s two teenage daughters in collapsing on the couch to watch “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” for the first (and only) time in my life.

After a few hours of lolling around in front of reality TV, we all piled in the family car and drove to visit the grandmother in the neighboring town. The next ritual unfolded, to my quiet astonishment, like this: all the family members still considered “children,” including myself (I was 23 at the time), were to crawl around making farm animal noises on the kitchen floor.

The grandmother threw fistfuls of candy and coins down at us, and we had to fight each other for the loot. A good deal of tackling occurred in pursuit of some unwrapped gummies and about $2 in change.

While this was not how I had foreseen my holiday celebrations unfolding, it won high marks for originality and contributed to my lasting affections for the spice of life in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This year will mark my second winter in Sarajevo, but I have a different vantage point this time around. Whereas last time I stayed in the Serb part of East Sarajevo, I now live in the city’s old town, which is majority Muslim and carries the vibe of an old-fashioned Turkish bazaar. The old city is striking for its Ottoman architecture, reflecting the commingled cultural influences of Turkish and Austro-Hungarian rule.

Sarajevo is often described as a “Meeting Point of Cultures;” it is one of the only cities I know where you can pass a cathedral, an Orthodox church, a mosque and a synagogue all in the five minutes it takes to walk to the vegetable market. It is a city with a deep, resounding heartbeat, one whose reverberations can be heard best by climbing up to the Yellow Fortress at noon to overlook the valley below, when the church bells sound out in harmony with the Islamic call to prayer.

Winter in Sarajevo is a time for tasting sticky, honey-soaked cakes and hot mulled wine at outdoor Christmas markets. Though many people escape the city’s bitter cold in search of sunnier weather along the Dalmatian coast, those of us who remain in the city for the holidays have barricaded ourselves indoors, under layers of blankets with the space heaters blasting, or taken refuge in the blissful warmth of Sarajevo’s cozy, though often smoke-filled cafés.

I have been passing many of these cold, lazy days in a little tea shop called Franz and Sophie, a gem of comfort tucked away in an alley behind the city’s main cathedral. The shop is owned and run by a kindly, bespectacled Bosnian man named Adnan Smajic, Bosnia’s first and only certified tea sommelier.

Adnan’s shop is the epitome of the holiday season, with Frank Sinatra’s Christmas album crooning through the parlor and the only twinkly-lit Christmas tree I have yet seen in the city. Adnan is a Bosnian Muslim, at least by cultural tradition, and does not celebrate Christmas himself. Yet he told me he loves to decorate Franz and Sophie for the season because it creates an undeniable atmosphere of warmth and festivity in his shop.

Adnan knows most of his customers personally, a fact that is exemplified when he enters from the street, bell tinkling as the door swings shut behind him, and makes his rounds to the three small tables, hugging the regulars and greeting them by name.

His wriggling little terrier, Julie, trots along at his feet. She is a bundle of energy, wound up like an elastic band. Julie often leaps up on customers as they wait in line, trying to snag their mittens and hats to claim a new chew toy she can drag under the tree.

More than for its ample Christmas spirit, Franz and Sophie has become a place of familiarity for me in a city that will never quite be home. By living abroad, I have made an intentional departure from my comfort zone, from Dunkins drive-thrus to the effortless ability to understand the conversations happening around me.

Although I know I will never feel like a true local here, when I slip into Adnan’s shop and he greets me with a hug, and thrusts Julie’s collar into my hand to keep her from tackling the elderly woman at the checkout, I feel a few steps closer to home.

Sarah’s View from the Borderlands is Sarah Freeman-Woolpert’s new biweekly column for InDepthNH.org. Freeman-Woolpert is originally from Pembroke, New Hampshire. She graduated from The George Washington University in 2015 and is currently spending 10 months in Bosnia and Herzegovina conducting research on youth activism and civic engagement. To read more of her writing, visit her blog at stilllifesarah.blogspot.ba.