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

Torino My Love

Sunday morning in Turin, and I was on a casual stroll on the foggy banks of the Po, when a little old lady with the compulsory little dog swaddled in a tiny jacket walks up to me. Mind you, in Italy even the dogs wear really thick jackets in what could only be indulgently called cold weather. For most Scandinavia, it would probably be full blown spring. So she sees my camera and expresses her regret that I should be here in such bad weather. While I am impressed by her concern, I can only smile. This is not bad weather- it’s wonderful weather. The fog floats over the river, people come running or walking their packaged pets, and there’s a hill to the other side of the river. Well, I know this place. It’s home.

Of course I’ve never lived in Turin, but it’s one of the few cities where I imagine myself staying for a longer time and enjoying it. It’s not only the familiar setting of a city on a fully fledged river- it’s also that sensation, getting ever rarer, that this place has not yet been totally vampirized by hoards of tourists holding the Mole Antonelliana between their fingers for a silly shot. So instead of a postcard perfect sunny morning, give me the fog, and the satisfaction of having actually felt something of the essence of a place, not just seen the surface of it.