Coffee Houses of Europe. They go back a long ways, not only as places to perk up for the day but places to enhance the mind and spirit. Friends met there. New friendships blossomed. People wrote books, imagined their next musical creations, even discussed religion and politics in a cordial way. And they sipped coffee, in part to block their adenosine receptors but also to savor the taste of a liquid not as readily available to them as it is to me. I don't know what a Viennese menu would look like. Most likely drip coffee and pastries. And I would imagine on a chalkboard. Maybe Turkish coffee or something made in a finjan, poured with ceremony. I suppose they could froth milk with a whisk. And no reason not to have a stovetop espresso brewer. I really don't know the history of how the different forms of coffee preparation came to be.
Coffee for me, as for many others in America and beyond, starts my mornings, nearly always at home. Clever minds have created k-cups and drip machines that require no effort other than placing a cup in the right place and pushing a button. There are drip machines for ground coffee and individual cones that require only a Melitta filter, a scoop of coffee from a can or bag, and some patience while hot water is poured over the ground beans. Then the mug, mostly from my collection with decorations or writing that mean something to me, gets a splash of white stuff and goes upstairs to my desk. Spills are rare. I sip and begin whatever task I think best to undertake. By the second cup, I feel fully alert. Cost, minimal.
We still have coffee houses and we have takeout, something our European forebears had not really thought of. In my younger years, coffee at a diner counter was part of other caloric intake, though with the development of styrofoam and 7-Elevens, people could pick up a cup and move along. Instead, we had coffee breaks, which exist today. Workers set aside their tasks for some social time. Food trucks stopped at large employers' parking lots. Companies kept an urn in a central place. Part nutrition, more restoration and interaction. For about thirty years, though, the coffee house has been repurposed. WaWa and the like does enough sales to offer a variety of urns with different flavors, then a counter where people can customize additives before placing a spill proof lid atop the cup, paying, and returning to their car. They usually sip alone.
Starbucks and regional shops offer fewer varieties, usually four or so, but they offer people. Sometimes people go as small groups, though usually not. And they bring their laptop computers. Not that different from Vienna, where some came to schmooze while others came to work, though without that disturbing silence of a home nook or corporate cubicle.
Periodically, My Space is not the best place to perform my next task, even if making the next cup of coffee is trivial. It is often worth putting on a coat, deciding which of five destinations would be my preference and driving a few minutes to get there, select my coffee, pay the barista, and find a place at a table or counter, all before I've done anything productive. Then as I sip, with chatter around me sufficiently unintelligible to keep me from trying to listen, I take out my pad and pen, rarely laptop or smartphone, and focus on the work I brought with me until the coffee is gone, sometimes a bit beyond. I am not really buying coffee as much as I am renting workspace for $3. Counting driving time back and forth, I could have devoted more task time by not venturing out but at the expense of focus. So I travel a few minutes each way, settle down, but with coffee fixed to my preference I usually depart having accomplished something of satisfaction. Never regret the effort or the expense.
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