The Coffee Un-Connoisseur
I have never been a coffee drinker. Mostly because I have a small enough bladder as it is and because caffeine makes me fly higher and winds me tighter than my genes have already dictated.
Here in Italy I commit coffee sins everyday. I drink cappuccinos after breakfast, (they think all that milk on a full stomach is not a good idea), I don’t drink coffee after meals and I sometimes as for decaf. Coffees here are not drunk, but taken (the right Italian verb=prendere=to take) at all hours of the day/night and usually standing up in a bar. People walk into bars, order a coffee, drink it like a shot of alcohol, pay and leave in a matter of minutes. Sometimes people meet to chat, have a piece of cake or pastry and sit at tables but this is not the norm. The only time I drink whole milk is with my coffee because there are no other options. When I lived in Seattle, I used to drink mint mochas, Mmm….. chocolaty coffee with a shot of mint. After a while my girlfriends, one in particular, started asking me if I was drinking coffee or candy. With my first trip to Italy approaching, I figured I better wean myself off the candy.
At home on the weekends, I like to have a cappuccino with breakfast or lunch. When I first met Deme, he made me coffees and poured them into my portable coffee mugs so I could sip them slowly as I waited in traffic on my way to work. When I tell the baristas here that Seattleites port around 24, 36 even 42 ounces of coffee, they are shocked! I’ve been here for 5 months and have never seen a “to go” coffee cup. They however will bring espressos, macchiatos and cappuccinos, to your office on nice trays if you happen to have a business close enough to the bar. I don’t take coffees in bars often; I end up having freshly squeezed orange juice and save my tiny coffee appetite for the weekends, when I get them handmade by my #1 barista.
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