The Literacy Review - Gallatin School of Individualized Study - New ...

My Coffee Habit
Pietrina Micciche
When I was a child, I didn’t go to school on Wednesday afternoons. I remember I
liked to spend much time at my neighbors’ house. Two retired teachers lived there. I
liked to go there because I could speak about everything with them. I regarded them
as my grandparents. When the lady went to the market, I joined and helped her with
the shopping bags. Before returning home, she used to drink some coffee with pastry.
According to the season, she would get me cookies, ice cream, hot chocolate, etc. I loved
that moment and that place. It was an old pastry store. For generations after generations,
the owners had made pastry, and the atmosphere was very friendly. The owners never
took vacation, but all the clients sent them a postcard when they travelled. The family
used to pin the postcards on the wall, and year after year that wall became a world
map. I was fascinated looking at it, and I often dreamed of traveling, too. In the coffee
shop, there was another place I loved, too, an old buffet with a collection of cups, small
and big, round and square, of different colors and designs for coffee and tea. After my
neighbor died, I went on getting my coffee there.
When I was a student, I liked to go to the city center near the Grand-Place.
Nowadays, the Grand-Place is the main tourist attraction in the city of Brussels. Among
the attractions are beautiful buildings and good Belgian beers. There are lots of stores
where Belgian chocolate is sold. I used to go and drink hot milk chocolate in a typical
café called Falstaff, with fine woodwork and ornate stained glass. It was carved by the
famous Victor Horta, the carpenter, whose architecture style is called Art Nouveau.
After I got married, I moved to Luxemburg, where I found a place for my coffee habit.
It was in the center of the city next to a square called the Platz, with many trees and many
coffee bars around it. I found one on the left corner. In that place, I could see the square.
I sat, drank coffee and read a book, or looked at people around me. The funniest time
was the last November days when they prepared and opened the Christmas market.
There were many small wooden shops, where adults and children bought Christmas
decorations, sweets, hot wine with cinnamon or hot orange juice with cinnamon. It was
delicious and I appreciated that special atmosphere. Those specific fragrances are still
in my memory.
A few years later, I moved to the North of Spain. Over there, I tried other coffee varieties:
solos, cortados, cafe amb lle. People used to go to bars to have coffee. Some of the bars
had a terrace. In Spain, the weather is great, and it is very common to sit outside to
drink coffee. I remember one bar located just in front of the sea. Those bars had nothing
special, but the view was terrific. Everyone looked either at the blue Mediterranean Sea
Adapting
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