Coffeeology: the coffee-sipping Anthropology

I wanted to become a barista when I was younger. For real! The type who makes coffee so elegantly, like art; who is fast enough but also seems not to be bothered with time; who strikes the best foam milk temperature for cappuccino and then pours it in the cup making all crazy, crafty shapes; who looks stylish wearing the barista apron; and who serves you such a good coffee that your day on takes a liquid, balanced, aerial flow and eventually this person becomes your ‘fix my day’ person.

But, to be honest, I am a better at sipping than making coffee. So, at some point, I had to let go of this fantasy of mine.

Yet, I never stopped admiring and (shoosh! secret secret!) envying these divinely perfect baristas.

However, this is not a post about the coffee artists (yes, I mean the baristas). This is just a short – well, perhaps longer than short – intro to explain my attentiveness to the subject.

It’s an ordinary autumn evening in Samothraki and the ferry has just arrived from the mainland. I like watching this kind of traffic; people and cargo loading and unloading. Someone would expect haste in their movement, just for the sake of the travel atmosphere. But even packages are being carelessly carried here and there, between chit chat and greetings. It’s an ordinary autumn evening and people have just returned from their ordinary visit to the mainland across, while others are ordinarily expecting their deliveries to have found some space in the ferry and arrive with it. I’m watching the ordinary scene from inside a coffee place I ordinarily go to, but this time I’m in a rush – a cacophony to the others surrounding me in the inside as well as the outside – standing in line for my cappuccino to go, as I should be going soon. And there I see it.

No, of course I don’t see the Piazza Navona suddenly in front of me! But my barista fantasy, reshaped.

I see the length of the line contrasted with the harmonious hands of the solo barista of the café, taking their time to make each coffee on its right time; no sloppy foam milks and not a drop of coffee spilt outside the cup. The busy tourist and the wandering traveller would probably perceive this differently; the lack of expertise or the poetry of the rhythms away from the melting pot. 

But making coffee is equivalent to narrating a story; while drinking it a journey to the senses, the memories and the… undisclosed desires (oops! there goes my ‘fantasy’ cover-up!).

There are rushed coffees, the ones you drink before work in the morning, opening the eyes and opening up your self to the sun-shining day.

There are afternoon coffees, to keep you going. And evening coffees, for their taste (and some times their effects too) – and, oh, how much do I love these tasty evenings!

There are night coffees, for a number of reasons we cannot start stating here (work included if you are the night-shift type). And, unless you are in the heart of the melting pot, you brew them at home. Alone, and usually with a melting heart.

There are coffees with friends. And coffees with family. And coffees with strangers (we’ ve all done that, let’s get honest).

Decision-making coffees.

City-wandering and site-seeing coffees.

Train, ferry and bus station coffees (and we hate the majority of them).

The final coffee at the airport (once I wrote a short story with this title).

Lovely dates and lonely days, accompanied by a coffee, or two.

 

But let’s get back to my barista fantasy revisited, i.e. undisclosed desire, or I will keep writing this post forever (and I’ m running out of coffee over here)!

The barista of your ‘small place’ (i.e. away from the melting pot, where coffee vending machines have never been eyed and the liquid magic in the cup costs something more in coins and notes, precisely because you buy magic in a nonetheless capitalist society – how odd that sounds!) knows you; and you know the barista; and the barista knows your schedule, even if you are not aware that the barista knows! Some people might call this gossip, but – nah! - I call it non-policed security. Or you wouldn’t be so cool about your deliveries being somewhere in the ferry and having someone picking them up in case you don’t show up.

The barista also knows the coffee(s) you drink and can read your mood – and thus your coffee appetite – from the way your foot crosses the porch, and of course from what foot that is, the right of the left!

Additionally, let me inform you that the barista is more concerned with the coffee beans than with your majesty and in case a – god forbid! - ‘bad’ coffee is produced, (s)he is to answer to the beans for that! It wouldn’t be art otherwise.

And, finally, allow me to remind you that the barista has a life of his/her own and, my dear unwilling capitalist, your life is not more remarkable to attention and your schedule not more urgent than theirs. Not in the ‘small place’, where you might buy the magic, but not the magician!

Then, to return to the ferry arrival scene and my eyes rolling from road to line and line to road, let me conclude – this post that turned into an inner dialogue in the writing process – by stating how pedestrian that stance of mine was! I mean, until I realised all the aforementioned.

Perhaps, I never became a barista after all because I cannot let go of the tense and create magic when surrounded by tensed customers staring at their clocks; let alone initiating these customers to the magic (of coffee, let’s not forget). And I would have never settled for becoming a barista lesser than that! So, I became an anthropologist, staring at baristas, at least most of the time. And THAT’S my undisclosed desire!

But you know, the way some people dance only in their room, away from the public eye (at least I can take pride in having participated in several public dance performances – yes, I decided to show off at the end of this article, after having hit myself so hard throughout it!)… I take my time, my inspiration and my senses down memory lane when I brew coffee at home ;-)

Last picture: the Greek coffee (/Turkish coffee / Arabic coffee / you name it) I brewed for my sister a summer morning in Samothraki. It was kind of magic, as she had never been a fan of Greek coffee and yet I managed to initiate her – at least for as long as her vacation lasted!

Photographs: courtesy of Octovria Kotsira. You can see all her coffee photographs on Instagram here.