Parking Lot Coffee

Which countries consume the most coffee in the world?

You’d think it was Italy, or Turkey or Spain. Wrong.

They are the Northern countries like Finland, Canada, and the US, a little less North. This is per capita. Cups per capita.

This is almost as surprising as reading statistics that claim that Finland has the happiest population in the world. Have you met a happy Fin? I haven’t. They are famously humourless.

Maybe the coffee helps perk them up.

The Danish also consume lots of coffee and claim to be really, really happy. My trusted sources there tell me this is to do with the amounts of happy-pills everyone is popping there. Something rotten in the state of Denmark, indeed.

Coffee As Fuel vs Socializing

North American and Northern European habits around food and drink are notably different from the South. In fact, most things to do with life in the South are simply more normal.

The North treats food and drink as necessary inputs for the human machine to produce something, or to perform in a certain way. Maybe it’s the Protestant thing. Or maybe it’s the crappy weather.

Most coffee in the efficient countries is consumed in paper cups, with carcinogen-leeching plastic lids, while driving a car, alone, to work. And home again.

Coffee in the South is consumed sitting in street cafes and in little ceramic thimbles, brought to you by a barely-present waiter. With a glass of water and a cookie. Usually with other people.

I used to drinks lots of coffee in my car. Or sitting in parking lots. Of course there was no place provided to sit usually, and so I had to make due with kerbs.

The profit-driven world - the successful world - really shows its colours by the way it treats the customer that wants to drink a coffee in a real chair, with some shade. Take your paper cup and get in your car, peasant!

This coffee-to-go has affected car design too. American cars have 50 places to store your drinks. Some even have heaters and coolers.

Euro cars, until recently, had nothing but cigarette lighters. Besides, no one would dare to drink a coffee in their car for fear of looking weird. Like someone with no control over his own time. No ability to sit like a human being and contemplate life over the sweet aroma of ground coffee beans. What a wasted life.

Tut tut.

Wasting Time

Daily slow-time is a religion in places like Croatia. People can sit for hours, sipping on 50ml of coffee. Because it’s not really about the coffee. The coffee is the excuse. And a good one too. It’s about sitting and talking, and not doing too much work.

Too much work leads to stress, and stress is bad for the health. So you go for coffees and cigarettes instead.

This is exactly how it is.

There is no concept of wasting time in the Southern mind. This is an English phrase that has few counterparts. If you fancy yourself a ployglot, try to interpret this phrase in Mediterranean languages. It might be hard.

Langourous days, especially in hot weather, are a thing to enjoy. An admission that you can’t control the weather, and that there is a proper way to experience it. Usually under a veranda, with an espresso.

In a ceramic thimble.