Konobar je bio vrlo pristojan, iako je kafić bio pun i svi su govorili u isto vrijeme.

Croatian past tense is usually made with:

• a present-tense form of biti (to be)
• plus a past participle

So:

• je bio = was
• su govorili = were speaking / spoke

The participle agrees with the subject:

• bio = masculine singular
• govorili = masculine or mixed-gender plural

That is why the waiter gets bio, while svi takes govorili.

Because je is a clitic. In Croatian, clitics usually go in the second position of the clause.

So the neutral order is:

• Konobar je bio vrlo pristojan
• Svi su govorili

You will often see this with short forms like je, su, sam, si, smo, ste. English speakers often want to place them more freely, but Croatian has stricter rules for these little words.

Again, this is because je is a clitic.

After conjunctions like iako (although), the clitic often comes immediately after the conjunction in standard Croatian:

• iako je kafić bio pun

This is the normal, natural order. It is one of the most important word-order patterns to get used to in Croatian.

Pristojan agrees with konobar.

Since konobar is:

• masculine
• singular
• nominative

the adjective also appears in masculine singular form:

• pristojan = polite

Compare:

• konobar je bio pristojan = the waiter was polite
• konobarica je bila pristojna = the waitress was polite
• konobari su bili pristojni = the waiters were polite

Vrlo means very.

So:

• vrlo pristojan = very polite

Yes, jako can also mean very in everyday Croatian:

• jako pristojan

Both are possible, but vrlo often sounds a bit more neutral or slightly more formal/written, while jako is very common in speech.

Because kafić is the subject of that clause:

• kafić bio pun = the café was full

Subjects normally appear in the nominative, and the nominative singular is kafić.

You would get kafića in other grammatical roles, for example:

• Nema kafića. = There is no café.
• Vidim kafića. = I see the café.
  (less common unless it means a specific place in a particular context)

After biti (to be), Croatian normally uses the short adjective form here:

• kafić je bio pun = the café was full

That is the standard, natural predicate use.

Puni exists, but it is more typical before a noun:

• puni kafić = a full café

So in this sentence, pun is exactly what you would expect.

Svi literally means all or everyone, but grammatically it behaves as plural.

So you get:

• svi su govorili = everyone was talking / all of them were talking

Croatian also has svatko (everyone / each person), which takes a singular verb:

• Svatko je govorio.

But in this sentence, svi su govorili sounds more natural because it emphasizes a whole group all talking at once.

Govoriti is an imperfective verb, so it works well for an ongoing background action:

• people were talking
• everyone was speaking at the same time

That fits the scene perfectly.

If you used reći (to say), it would sound more like a completed act of saying something specific, which is not the idea here.

A similar alternative could be:

• svi su pričali

That would mean everyone was talking/chatting, which is also possible, but govorili is a bit more neutral.

U isto vrijeme means at the same time.

It is a fixed, very common expression:

• u = at/in
• isto = same
• vrijeme = time

So literally it is something like in the same time, but in natural English we say at the same time.

A learner may wonder about the case here. This expression uses u with the accusative, but because vrijeme is neuter singular, its nominative and accusative forms look the same:

• nominative: vrijeme
• accusative: vrijeme

So the form does not visibly change.

Because iako introduces a subordinate clause:

• Konobar je bio vrlo pristojan, iako je kafić bio pun...

In Croatian, clauses introduced by words like iako, jer, kad, ako, and similar conjunctions are normally separated with a comma.

There is no comma before the second i because that i simply joins two parts inside the same subordinate clause:

• kafić bio pun
• svi su govorili u isto vrijeme

Croatian word order is flexible, so yes, you can move things around. But the meaning or emphasis changes.

The neutral version is:

• Konobar je bio vrlo pristojan

If you say:

• Vrlo pristojan je bio konobar

that sounds more marked or emphatic, as if you are highlighting very polite.

So the original sentence is the most natural default order for ordinary narration.

Because there are two separate clauses, and each one needs its own verb:

• Konobar je bio vrlo pristojan
• kafić bio pun

In English, we also need was twice:

• the waiter was very polite
• the café was full

So Croatian is doing the same thing. The first bio belongs to konobar, and the second bio belongs to kafić.