Jan 2003
Dear Santa,
All I wanted for Christmas was...
Wait!...this piece is about coffee, (ad Santa´s daughter is clearly in need of a cup!).
Ok, once more, "the truth must out": I, and I alone, have discovered the cause of what is wrong in modern Germany. Well, and Bill Clinton, who apparently once said, "It´s not the economy stupid, it´s the coffee!”.
As we all know, Germans are not so proud of their history, however, they do seem to be proud of their coffee. In my view it should be the other way around!
Take Leipzig, my base, as an example: This city boasts one of the oldest cafés in Europe - once the haunt of Bach, Nietzsche, Goethe, Schiller and others of their illustrious ilk. Then came the changes, and the demise of all that was good, with the appearance of "Blümchen Kaffee” - so thin and weak and wishy washy it wouldn´t keep an insomniac awake, AND concomitantly, the watering down of German high culture - to the point that this one time nation of thinkers is now permanently on holiday, resting on bratwurst bolstered bottoms and dreaming of better BMWs - nothing more than petrol heads deriving intellectual stimulus from american style TV game shows (only unfunnier)...!
Coincidence?...I think not!!!
And so, unable to cast off my cliché black clad, underweight, night owl, chain smoking image, I´ve skulked, sniffed, snorted and snarled my way through the establishments in search of the real thing...AND I have been finally rewarded: True black gold DOES exist here, in a tiny bar, "Cafe Barcelona”, unsurprisingly spanished and so narrow you couldn´t swing a Gato Negro in it, but filled with wonderful food and people and music and waitresses, and... serving a hot, oily dark liquid, slowly expressed into a clear glass, thick creamy head rising, the aroma entering one´s nostrils to permeate the deepest recesses of consciousness, then to penetrate unconsciousness, then, yes, YES...! Indeed, I have walked many kms through snow covered cracked cobbled streets late at night (my first winter in boots with holes in their soles) for this stuff, more times than I can remember.
There is no secret really "wake up and smell the coffee” as they say!
I really will have to write to SOMEONE about this!...next Christmas?
Hasta la vista (baby!),
Dean