Comfort Coffee

Back in highschool and uni, I was a pro-coffee drinker, one of the obvious signs of being a lazy student - you know, those who had to spend the whole night long staying awake just to cram half of the semester's study inside their heads during the precious hours of darkness. I got to a point where even after several glasses of black coffee, I'd fall asleep anyway.

Well, life has been kinder without obligatory books to study, and my need of coffee somehow disappeared. In time I developed my natural intolerance to caffeine, and would end up staying the whole night up just because of a mug of coffee in the morning. It was absurd. My husband would look in panic if anybody offered me coffee after dinner, which is customary here, since if I said yes, he'd be the poor soul keeping up with my chats until early dawn.

Well, there's actually another reason why I stopped drinking coffee ever since I came here: I don't like the coffees here that much. It's always either black or espresso, and I cant bear cappucinno or any creamy versions - the cream they use here is absolutely horrid to me. I've never seen any cold version - even in the middle of a heat wave people still sip their steaming espresso. So with the joy of re-discovering all the yummy lattes at Starbucks when I travel, I decided that I'll just try to drink at least one glass of coffee in the office, so if I do feel like coffee based drinks, my body can handle it.

The office has a Nescafe machine that pours various kinds of coffees - cappuccino, espresso, café crème, café au lait, café macchiato, wiener melange, hot chocolate - don't remember what else, but I usually stay clear from most of the buttons since some kind of milk or cream would be involved. So I learned to make my own version of dirty mochaccino in my jumbo mug: 1 part coffe, 1 part esspresso, and 1 part chocolate. I've tried 2 parts espresso and 1 part chocolate, but it's still a bit too sweet for me. I call it dirty since the taste is just so so and there's only a wee bit of milk in the chocolate...

Anyway, I found this site, www.yohan.nl, a petition to open Starbucks in Holland. I'm not really sure it's ever going to happen though. Dutch people love being, well, is boring is a cruel word, but well, let's just say they like things plain then. Fancy is overkill if done too often. Coffee is best served black, or with milk and sugar, whipped cream and a drop of liquer is as far as they go. Give them lacings of caramel and a wide veriety of syrup and you've lost your market.

Doesn't mean the Dutch don't like their coffee. They do. They even have special coffee machines where you can put in coffee pads (yes, PADS) to make 2 single servings of coffee, straight into the mug. Now here's the catch: the mug size is 150 ml. This is the serving size we're used to. Espresso mugs hold 100 ml. And so the tall Starbucks size is already threateningly big, an excessiveness Dutch people most likely aren't likely willing to pay for.

In most asian country - OK, I'm only guessing here, since I've only been to like 4 asian countries and that's including plane stopovers - they sell coziness of the cafe, where people sit for hours at a time sipping their tall or grande or whatever. The size then makes sense, and the popularity. Here people don't relax over coffee, they relax over beer. Anything involoving other types of drinks and food, when coziness is the measure, are preferably be done at home. If you check the pricing at local cafes and pubs you'll know why. Besides, most Dutch I know have clean cozy homes anyway.

So, I guess I'll be depending on overseas trips for my comfort coffee drinks for the next few years!