Best of 2015- Coffee Cups

As opposed to cats, coffee took quite a long time to grow on me. When everyone was downing cup after cup during exam sessions, I would put on a refrained smile and keep on reaching for my can of Coke. Mind you, I still love Coke, and it’s one of those things, like Coldplay, that I plan to be forever unapologetic about. Yes, it’s an explosion of sugar and artificial flavour enhancers (just like Coldplay, come to think of it), but even the distant fizz of a can being opened puts me in a state- I know, it’s called addiction, but everyone needs the poison of their choice.

So back to coffee, I did have a nice big cuppa one night before my American history exam, and then at 4 am, when I could recite all the amendments of the constitution pretty much by heart but was still staring at my bedroom ceiling with my limbs shaking I said no more of this lethal brown liquid, and to this principle I stayed true for almost a decade.

Then, about three years ago, one fine morning in January I said, well, it’s kind of cold and I’m sort of sleepy, maybe I could have a latte. So I did. A big latte filled with honey and agave syrup- more precisely, what today I call a crime against both humanity and common sense, surpassed only by the green monstrosity of matcha latte. Next day I said, well why not have that latte again. A hundred or so days later I gave up on the honey, and then the agave syrup departed from my life as well.

Soon enough, I discovered that I was craving morning caffeine to degrees which could not be properly serviced by a latte. So I switched to flat whites. And then, on another epic day, in Italy, as luck would have it, I discovered that I could simply have a pitch dark espresso. 

And ever since, I have measured my life with coffee cups. Or with distances from one coffee shop to another- of which there are plentiful in Budapest, because we are painfully cool, I know. And still, I have missed a few, so I might as well add visiting them to those new year's resolutions I never manage to keep and see if for once I succeed.

'New wave' Turkish coffee in Kelet- minus the dregs, which is a bit disturbing

The real deal, dregs and all, in 2Cafe Karaköy

Espresso with a prickly friend, Addicted2Caffeine

That time I read about owls in My Little Melbourne

Summer delights in the Massolit garden

An Italian novel demands a small but viciously strong espresso

How my morning walk invariably ends up looking come spring

Lavender days in Budapest Baristas

The My Little Melbourne pit stop with a bit of reading thrown in

The inevitable accident of spilling the coffee while shuffling it around for a better shot

As I was saying, Italian novels and espressos

A Massolit espresso in all its lonely beauty

Spring with latte in Sarki Fűszeres

And for a change, spring with latte in Espresso Embassy

When in Vienna, have some coffee (I might have tried reading in German as well, I guess)

When the table matches your accidental bookmark in Café Demel

Geometry in Espresso Embassy

And here's my espresso with one of those lovely surprise finds in my home library

I am a pretzel fiend and proud of it

The almost nearly perfect espresso- and my favourite coffee shop logo at Budapest Baristas

So I went a bit over the top in Café Torino, but I just had to indulge in a bicerin, and cute little cookies

To more serious stuff, that killer Italian espresso in Café Florio

Channeling France in Gerlóczy

Autumn rains arrive at My Little Melbourne

And then autumn moved on

But here's to finishing in a very summer mood, with a Velence lake espresso

Transition Random- from Summer to Autumn

One day I will probably make peace with the fact that I always run out of schedule with the monthly randoms, but until then I can pretend that at least this time I actually meant the stuff to run over two months, and therefore cover the transition from summer to autumn and such. No, of course I didn’t mean to, but so it happened.

The temperature is one thing, but what strikes most in this period is the change in the quality of the light. I somehow always take spring light, how it increases in intensity and how the days grow ever longer, for granted.  But in autumn I always rebel against the dying of the light, and notice each day how it grows fainter, how the dawn arrives later. Horrifically late, I would say, as I grope around in the dark at 6 AM, fixing the horizon for that spot where the light will break- given that I’m surrounded by inner city buildings, the spot is usually somewhere behind a rooftop, but ultimately some sort of crimson spot will show at the bottom of the sky.

Or it won’t show, because we’ve been rudely transported to some Belgian weather bubble, with low grey skies and fine drizzle. And as pointed out by a fellow coffee drinker one morning, drizzle is the worst because it frizzles the hair and umbrellas just won’t solve that. Rain does however have a certain charm when observed from indoors, perhaps from a train hurtling through foggy meadows, so here comes the time for low lit still lives inspired by the Dutch masters.

The up side of autumn light when it does show itself is its balmy quality, which makes for spectacular sunsets and sunrises- and the later arrival of dawn allows for sunrise hunting without having to wake up insultingly early. Not that I succeeded in doing that so far, but I might as well try- until then I must make do with sunsets on Gellért hill, though they are not half as fun, as the sun unceremoniously ducks behind the hills in the process.