UTMC

So, today, I went downtown to see the surgeon who's treating me so he could write me a prescription for more physiotherapy and rehabilitation sports (my household doc couldn't prescripe it because it would have blown the budget the health insurers have to set her because, apparently, our healthcare system is so expensive because docs prescribe unnecessary stuff...). Anyway, the waiting area was full, I had to come back about one and a half hours later. No point in buying the tram ticket to go home, so I loitered about in the downtown area.
Eventually, I decided I could go and drink a cup of coffee. As luck would have it, I walked past a coffee shops's standup thingy advertising a freshly brewed coffee and a criossant.
Of course, it was no ordinary coffee shop, no, it was the green octopus, the cursed mermaid, a Starbucks.
I considered walking back the way I had come, about two hundred paces, to a self-service bakery and coffee-shop where, surely, I could get the same items for a lesser price. Walking that distance however was not particularly inviting since I dearly wanted to sit down, having tried out not taking one of my painkillers (which my household doc had suggested, just to see what would happen). What happened was pain in my legs, so sitting down was definitely on. Unlike the sparsely furnished self-service bakery cum coffee shop, Starbucks had propoer upholstered comfortable chairs to sit in, there was another coffee shop closer by.
Of course, there was an alternative coffee shop, closer by than the self-service bakery place. As if cursed by predestination, this was, of course, yet another Starbucks. So Starbucks it was.
The coffee did, pleasantly enough, filled a large mug rather than a tiny cup, the croissant was not made up largely of air like cheap croissants often are.
The coffee was, surprisingly enough, good. Not surprisingly good, just good, similar to what I'd brew up myself. I was slightly disappointed that it wasn't the mind-altering flavor experience one would expect from a place as succesfull as Starbucks, but as someone who can definitely tell a good coffee from a bad one, I must admit this one was good. No more than good, not something worth seeking out, walking extra paces to get, just good. And large, which I like.

So, I fell. After all these years of resistance, after seeing them crop up more and more in my field of view, I succumbed. I sat in a comfortable chair at a Starbucks and, dare I say it, enjoyed a mug of coffee and a backed good with it. At least, I didn't pull out an electronic communications device. Still, I feel so dirty...

No shame in it mate, it's like McDonalds. Consistently the same everywhere you see the logo.
I will, however, look down my ample Dutch nose at you should we ever cross paths...

Bigshankhank wrote:I will, however, look down my ample Dutch nose at you should we ever cross paths...

And I deserve it, too.

Well, at least I got weak out of convenience. The other day I recieved a similar confession of weakness.
A friend of mine has an arrangement with his vegetarian gf that he won't eat meat when he's east of the rhine. So, sometimes, he jumps on a train, goes to Cologne central station (which is west of the rhine) only to go into the train station's burger king and have a whopper. He sticks to the agreement's letter. If nothing else, I have an example of proper weakness to look down on.

DerGolgo wrote: as someone who can definitely tell a good coffee from a bad one, I must admit this one was good.

This, here, is the awful secret of Starbucks' success. Until fairly recently no one in North America could tell a good cup of coffee from a bad one because, aside from a few specialty shops frequented by ethnic types, there were no good cups of coffee. Starbucks was something of a revelation.

DerGolgo wrote:And large, which I like

Doesn't hurt in this market, either

i hate to say this, DG, but the lack of decent coffee in schwaebisch hall last summer was incredibly painful. the coffee in the bistros was just really bad. even the coffee i bought at the market was horrid when made in my travel french press.

fortunately, an expat friend of mine who lives in switzerland travelled through for a visit, and brought me some sumatra ground coffee. from a starbucks in munich.

we talked about this issue during his visit, of course. it appears that the germans are just a little behind in coffee culture development. with starbucks cropping up everywhere though, coffee culture will soon start to flourish and decent competitors will also crop up in opposition to the chain.

i was able to find good coffee (a chain type shop, even) in london and of course the coffee in bruxelles was great.

Odd. Back when my family regularly headed to the old family place in Scotland, our Scottish friends implored us to bring them the good German coffee. Nothing particularly fancy, just the name-brand stuff you can buy at all but the super-discount supermarkets. Jakobs Kaffe went over most popular, if memory serves.
Truly bad coffe (truly bad, not just a little bad like the stuff in the hospital) is rare here, IMHO. At least in places where they have actual ceramic cups or mugs. Petrol station coffee is, I believe, bad just everywhere. A bit like the crude oil it seems to be made from.

Note please that that stuff that dissolves in warm water isn't coffee, no matter what the folk at Nescafe say.

DG, this may just be the difference between the north and the south, or maybe small towns versus cities, then. and my expat friend originates from california, as i do.

i was in Schwaebisch Hall, which isn't a big city. and there were no chain stores except in one area of the city where the modern clothing stores were and where the market was.

Starbucks may have been my intro to good coffee. It was that or Coffee People in Portland. It was all part of the special adventure in visiting the city. We'd always plan a half day or so of wandering around Pike Place Market, and a stop in at S'bucks was always a highlight.

You could smell the coffee from half way down the block, and inside it was dimly lit and wonderfully cluttered with all sorts of strange instruments and devices related to the alchemy of a good brew. It had the organized chaos of one of those shops opened up by some hippie upon their return from adventures in exotic far flung corners of the world.

I haven't been back there in years, it would probably just make me feel old.

Rev wrote:

Bigshankhank wrote:No shame in it mate, it's like McDonalds. Consistently the same everywhere you see the logo.

I have been in countries where I had no grasp of the language, where they probably had some incredible local cuisine and going to a small family restaurant would have been an experience I would remember for the rest of my life.
And I just wasn't up for it, so I got a Big Mac and some fries.

I've got a pretty adventurous palate, but yeah, sometimes you just want something familiar. On the other extreme, a friend of my SO at the time traveled to Thailand with us and spent the whole trip eating nothing but granola bars she'd smuggled in her bag. Fucking granola bars, in Thailand! Home of some of the greatest food in the world!

calamari kid wrote: I've got a pretty adventurous palate, but yeah, sometimes you just want something familiar. On the other extreme, a friend of my SO at the time traveled to Thailand with us and spent the whole trip eating nothing but granola bars she'd smuggled in her bag. Fucking granola bars, in Thailand! Home of some of the greatest food in the world!

Sounds like Karl Pilkington, bringing "crisps" everywhere he travelled.

A quarter century ago, a girlfriend took me to a wee Italian restaurant, and I had my first cappuccino proper. It was a revelation. As of now, we have worn out five espresso machines, because we live in the sticks, and Tim Horton's is as gourmet as they think.

I love her & hate her at the same time.

Double post. Need coffee.

I only recently started drinking coffee again.
Due to the fact that I was treating espresso like it was a normal cup o' joe, and drinking it out of 8oz mugs, I quickly got addicted to caffeine, though I've weened myself down.
At any rate, that is all besides the point at hand, which is this:

I had to laugh a few weeks ago when I made the mental note that it is a ten minute walk from the Starbucks on campus to get a cup of coffee. As in, the Starbucks never even entered my radar as a potential place to GET coffee, even though I was essentially standing in it.

I hate that place because I've watched it destroy the business of many locally owned, very tasty coffee shops, because the yuppie fuckotrons decided they preferred soulless corporate homogeneity over good quality produced by people in their very own communities.

So I guess it's not even the place itself that I hate. It's the "culture" that it represents, where the most important thing in deciding what is good and bad is not the quality of the thing itself, but the quality of the advertising and corporate partnerships (like putting a starbucks inside damn near every Safeway grocery store).

But as a good friend of mine says, you can't win every battle, and absolutes make a person unbearable. Thus, the other day, when it was starbucks or nothing, and I really needed a cup of coffee, starbucks it was. In my defense, I didn't actually KNOW I was buying starbucks until I heard the barista say "Venti," as I was at one of those places that "proudly brews starbucks coffee." Had I known that it was that kind of joint, I would have planned ahead and gotten coffee somewhere else.

If need doesn't _well_ outweigh the icky feeling i anticipate having after the fact, i'll just suffer. Hate that icky.

Starbux may be semi-ok though (as succubus megacorps go)...i read somewhere that the xtrian fundies launched a boycott of the outfit over something semi-decent that corp did recently...forget what exactly...

Rev wrote:

Bigshankhank wrote:No shame in it mate, it's like McDonalds. Consistently the same everywhere you see the logo.

I have been in countries where I had no grasp of the language, where they probably had some incredible local cuisine and going to a small family restaurant would have been an experience I would remember for the rest of my life.
And I just wasn't up for it, so I got a Big Mac and some fries.

I'm pretty adventurous under those circumstances. I've been pretty lucky playing Dysentery Roulette with street vendor food and little restaurants wherever I go.