Entry tags:

bosnia, paris, photography, vanity

Carly and me

Me and my friend Carly


Me and my friend Coffee

Carly's mom is visiting her in Paris, so I took the two of them on a brief tour of Pigalle and Montmartre the other day. Carly has some more pictures from their visit to my neighborhood — and some much more interesting pictures from their time in Rome and Venice (sans moi, of course) — here. But anyway, the above photos are from when we stopped for coffee at a cafe on the Rues des Abbesses, a stone's throw from Van Gogh's apartment.

I never drank coffee in my life 'til about six months ago. Okay, well, that's not exactly accurate; I was never a coffee drinker 'til about six months ago. I had a sip of my mom's coffee once when I was about ten years old and totally freaked out at how gross it was. It tasted like getting punched in the spine. I vowed never to drink coffee again.

Fast forward about twenty years and I'm in Bosnia in August 2006. Normally I always drink tea to wake up in the morning, but every time I ordered tea in Sarajevo I was served some sort of bright red herbal tea without caffeine*. Turns out black tea is not at all popular and therefore non-existent (or at least somewhat rare) in that region. So I started drinking Bosnian coffee in the morning, which is a pretty neat experience. It's super strong and there's a semi-elaborate ritual to preparing/serving/drinking it. And best of all, it comes with candy! So I got used to coffee in Bosnia and drank it every day for the month or so that I was in the Balkans, but then I stopped drinking it when I returned to France.

Then I went back to America for the better part of a year, and then returned to France last year. For some reason I decided to start drinking normal French coffee this time, part of an effort to try to get used to more typical French stuff and let go of some of my American habits (although I suppose drinking tea is actually a very very English habit; no idea how that happened). I actually like coffee now, and that's great as I'm always happy to acquire a new taste and thereby expand the realm of things I enjoy. Wine was easy, coffee not too bad. Absinthe, now, that's been a tough one.


* Fun fact: The French call the stimulant in coffee (café) caféine and in tea (thé) it's théine. I have no idea why they make this distinction and we don't. Note: It does not follow that the stimulant in Coca-Cola is cocaine. Not these days, anyway.