On Coffee and Cafe Culture

These days, I see children as young as six or seven sipping on sweet Dunkin' Donuts coffee beverages.   I'm always shocked.  Why would children need coffee?  They can't be tired.  I always had energy (too much, my parents might say) as a child.  You almost never see a child with a cup of regular coffee, either--it's usually a frappuccino or an iced vanilla latte.  Why are such young children getting coffee on their way to school?  I suspect it's because coffee-on-the-go has become an integral part of our culture.

When we lived in Fresno, my mother would take my sister and me with her when she did her Saturday morning shopping at the lovely La Boulangerie in Fig Garden Village.  La Boulangerie is a French-style bakery in the middle of a small shopping center.  We always bought bread there because they had dozens of different types of loaves of bread and my mom could find whatever kind of bread she needed.  It was baked every day, and so you never got a stale or pre-sliced and pre-wrapped loaf.  It was always bustling and loud inside, where you would pull a ticket and wait until your number was called.  Bread was almost the only thing I would eat until I was about ten, so I loved being surrounded by the smell of freshly-baked breads, pastries, and rolls coming out of the oven, as well as by the cheerful noise of people chattering while they waited for their bread.

Sourdough loaves (my favorite) at La Boulangerie

Even more exciting than waiting for the bread, though, was getting to pick out a special treat, or even better, getting to eat our breakfast or lunch there.  If we were in a hurry, I would ask for a French roll and then swipe a few packets of salted butter to take home with me.  Sometimes I'd ask for a coconut macaroon or two.  On occasion, my mom would decide that she had enough time for us to sit at a table and actually eat at the cafe.  If the weather was nice, we would sit outside. I always ordered Earl Gray, a cup of soup, and of course, a roll.  This is what it's like in Paris, I would tell myself, as I munched happily away.  (I was by this point--thanks to the Madeleine books and the movie My Father's Glory--a self-proclaimed Francophile, although Paris-ophile might be more accurate).  Once in awhile, my mother would take work to grade, in which case my sister and I would bring whatever books we were reading at the time and sit peacefully reading as she graded.

I don't remember when the first Starbucks opened in Fresno, nor do I remember where the first one was located.  But I remember the first time I went to one.  It was the one in Fig Garden Village, a few buildings away from La Boulangerie.  A friend and I, feeling very grown up, agreed to meet at Starbucks to sit and talk.  It seemed the height of cosmopolitanism to arrive separately, order our own too-sweet frappuccinos, and chat while we gulped them down.

For years, Starbucks would be a meeting place, no matter which part of Fresno we were in and no matter what our eventual destination was.  There were about a dozen Starbucks in town: a big one in River Park, a small one across the street from Fresno State, and one near the freeway entrance, among others.  It was the most logical place to suggest.  They were everywhere, everyone knew where each one was, and everybody loved coffee.  Or at least, everybody loved the sugary, frilled drinks that claimed to have a few splashes of coffee in them.

When I went to college at UC Irvine, I was surprised--and then delighted--to discover that the coffee shop attached to the university bookstore was not, in fact, a Starbucks.  It was instead an independent coffee shop (whose name, unfortunately, escapes me.  Needless to say, the story of the UCI cafe is not a story with a happy ending) that was not technically affiliated with the wonderful university bookstore, but happily served people who visited the bookstore to buy non-textbook books.  I spent many a happy morning there, reading a book or studying over a cappuccino or sandwich.  During finals week, the cafe was open all night, meaning that even if I was not staying up all night to study, I inevitably went at 2 a.m. purely for the thrill of being in my favorite place at an odd hour.

The fall I studied abroad in Florence, Italy, I made sure to find a local cafe to frequent.  There was a lovely one toward the end of my street, Via de Benci.  For awhile, I tried to be as Italian as possible by ordering my espresso or cappuccino at the bar and guzzling it down right there.  But as I had no urgent place to go from there, I eventually paid the extra euro to have my coffee brought to me.  Unless it was raining, I always sat outside, no matter how cold it was.  I loved studying for my art history course and being able to look up and see the top of Palazzo Vecchio.

I was horrified upon my return to UCI to discover that the little cafe had been replaced by a Starbucks.  It was a nice Starbucks, to be sure, with indoor and outdoor seating, but gone were the special iced teas and specialty sandwiches I'd so loved.  Instead of the old, mismatched patio furniture, there were typical Starbucks leather armchairs and ottomans.  (For me, the cafe change also signaled the start of the bookstore's downward spiral.  When I was trying to decide where to go to college, the bookstore was the primary selling point.  It was a real bookstore, not just a university bookstore, with an excellent reading series.  It has since stopped the reading series, and I suspect it is just a step away from becoming a Barnes and Noble.  Here is a link to an article about some of these changes: UCI bookstore ends author reading series).

Until I officially moved to Krakow, I never articulated (or really thought about) the importance of cafes to me.  They were more comfortable in to study than the library, and you could talk at them, so they made for good meeting places.  That was it.

When I moved to Poland, however, the plethora of cafes quickly deepened my appreciation of this kind of space.

At one of the many cafes lining Rynek Glowny in the summer

Krakow, like most Polish cities, is teeming with cafes.  Regardless of what neighborhood you are visiting, you will find numerous cafes.  It is almost impossible to choose your favorite; it makes more sense instead to pick your favorite on this street or in that square.  The first few weeks that I lived in Krakow, I felt lonely all the time, and thus never went to cafes, self-consciously fearing that my being there alone would broadcast to everybody the depths of my loneliness.  Eventually, I learned not to let this fear stop me.  One of my co-workers introduced me to Bunkier, which remained my favorite place in Krakow.  Bunkier was a cafe (attached to an art gallery) that was right in the Planty, the 2.5 mile park that surrounds the city center like a moat (which is what it was, centuries ago).  In the summer, there was an outdoor terrace with wicker chairs and small wooden or glass tables.  In the winter, there was still an outdoor terrace, but with plastic fabric covering the sides and heaters hanging above the tables.  Like most Polish cafes, it served both coffee and beer.  You could go to Bunkier, order a cappuccino, and stay there for hours without anyone bothering you or shooing you away.  I loved sitting outside and watching people walk through Planty or carry on conversations inside the cafe.  Bunkier's close proximity to some of the Jagiellonian University buildings made it a popular spot with students.  You could often see students poring over heavy textbooks.  It is also a favorite spot among Krakow's literary figures, and I would make a game out of trying to guess which customers might be poets or translators or writers, discussing Wislawa Szymborska's death or Adam Zagajewski's newest collection or the Milosz Festival.

My dad with a book and beer at Bunkier

Although Bunkier was my favorite cafe, there were dozens of other charming little places I went while I lived in Krakow.  Prowincja, for example, was a shabby, dimly-lit cafe on Bracka street.  It was always crowded and cozy, possibly due to its famous hot chocolate.  It was also owned by the Polish singer Grzegorz Turnau, and people would whisper excitedly when he came through the doors.  Jama Michalika, on Florianska street, is one of the oldest cafes in Poland (it opened in 1895).  It became a popular place with Krakow's artists and bohemians and housed a cabaret known as Zielony Balonik (the little green balloon).  It is full of plush green furniture, dark wood, and mirrors.  I would sometimes take my journal to Jama Michalika and imagine I was a writer myself.  In the summer, cafes would open up their outdoor sections, and the main Square (the Rynek Glowny) would be full of tourists, enjoying a cold beer and the sights of Europe's largest Medieval square.

Prowincja

Many of the cafes in Krakow have been there for years.  When my mother's friend, my Ciocia Magda, visited with her husband and daughter, she wanted to go to Noworolski, a cafe she had gone to when she was a student in Poland.  Noworolski, like Jama Michalika, had been popular with artists, and had had a rather dramatic history of its own.  (It had been a Nazi hotspot during the Occupation, and was later taken over by  Communists.  After the fall of Communism, it was given back to its rightful owners).  Although Noworolski's cakes were no longer as delicious as they had been (nor were the prices as reasonable), the Baroque atmosphere and the trip down memory lane made the visit enjoyable nevertheless.

Wujek Mike, Lucienne, Ciocia Magda, and Gordon at Noworolski

One of the reasons I loved these cafes was precisely that they had been around for so long.  If you meet anyone who has lived in Krakow before, they will inevitably tell you of their favorite cafe.  Almost always, the cafe is still there.  The servers may have changed, but the atmosphere and recipes remain intact.

The second, more important reason is that I associate these Krakow cafes with books and writing.  Anybody who has ever looked at a Buzzfeed post about irony or watched an episode of "Sex and the City" knows to mock the skinny, turtlenecked person in the corner of a Starbucks with his or her laptop for being a pretentious writer.  Walk into any Starbucks or Peets, and you will inevitably find at least one person hunched over a laptop, clearly writing the next Great American Novel, or a Screenplay, or a Beat-style Poem (the capital letters are necessary).  Krakow, often referred to as the cultural capital of Poland, undoubtedly has a similarly high proportion of would-be artists.  But they are harder to see amongst the others.  You seldom see a laptop at any cafe (although this is probably changing and will probably soon cease to be the case).  You will see people hunched over leather-bound journals or yellow legal pads.  People will be reading paperbacks, not kindles.  Writers, translators, artists, and musicians have their favorite cafes where they can sit incognito, reading or working for hours at a time.  In the United States, writers may have a preference for Starbucks or Peets or Dunkin' Donuts.  But more often than not, they are probably getting coffee to go, on their way to teach a class or meet with their agent.  Only in the case of celebrity authors, like B.J. Novak or James Franco, might it matter which coffee shop they choose.  (Tabloids are filled with proclamations that "Stars are just like us!  They get coffee to go!").    On Monday, the first day of my spring vacation, I walked to Brookline and decided I would sit in a cafe for a few hours, reading Paris to the Moon.  Once I'd finished my coffee, however, I was subject to glares from new customers coming in, looking for a place to sit and eat their lunch.  Why, if I was finished, was I still there?

I know there are real cafes and coffee shops in the United States, of course.  But the accusation that non-Americans often make--that we are a busy, hurried nation--often seems to be true, at least when it comes to coffee.  Many people still go and sit in cafes, especially in the morning (and even more especially if they are students studying for exams).  But the majority will grab their coffee to go, on their way to work or class (and to be clear, I am often one of these people, and I often lamented the fact that it is impossible to get good coffee-to-go in Poland).  This perhaps explains the monopoly Starbucks has on the coffee world.  When it comes to making drinkable coffee and serving it quickly and efficiently, nobody is better.  But suffice it to say, if anyone has a favorite Starbucks, it probably has more to do with how long the line usually is and less to do with how warm and inviting the atmosphere is.

For awhile, I thought I would never feel all that comfortable in Boston because there is no local cafe within walking distance of my apartment.  But one of my happiest days in recent weeks was discovering L.A. Burdick's, just down the street from where I work.  This small, intimate chocolate shop also serves coffee and tea (in real ceramic cups), along with beautiful cakes and tarts and pastries.  I was able to sit there for an hour in the morning, quietly reading, with nobody rushing me.  I decided that every month, on the last day of the session, when I have no work left to do, I will treat myself to a coffee and cake at this little cafe.  I will sit there, quietly reading, sipping, and munching, enjoying the solitude, and thinking about my book, just like I did so many years ago, on those trips to La Boulangerie with my mom.

L.A. Burdick's in Cambridge