Coffee as a Drug: Waking Up as Incarnation

When I was a child there were cigarette advertisements on television. I particularly remember the Marlboro cowboys driving the cattle through the rivers on their horses. And in the evenings we relaxed happily around the campfire, with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. This shows that it is a question of convention when you drink coffee. Many people think that one coffee in the afternoon and they won’t be able to sleep at night. In Sweden, for example, people see things differently and treat themselves to a cup after dinner to relax.

In my childhood, I was offered malt coffee with cake when the adults drank coffee beans, as they said back then. I didn’t like either at all. The malt coffee was disgusting, the coffee bitter. I started smoking before I even drank coffee, in ninth grade, for the usual puberty reasons. Actually one of the stupidest drugs, very expensive in the long term, and you hardly notice anything except the desire to smoke regularly, otherwise you feel bad. This is the serious addiction to the light drug.

But there is also the desire to drink coffee until the afternoon at the latest. Apparently there is a caffeine level that cannot be allowed to fall, just as the nicotine level causes problems for smokers. They need supplies every hour to “relax,” as they say. Some people can only smoke if they take a sip of coffee. When I used to travel with my girlfriend, she always took her coffee machine with her, which she turned on in hostel or hotel rooms so she could have something to drink when she smoked. The double addictive pressure of “Coffee and Cigarettes,” as Jim Jarmusch called an episodic film in 2003. Unfortunately, in Germany it is not possible to go to a bar to fortify yourself with a quick espresso, because the bar usually only serves Pilsner or a filter coffee that was made around 100 years ago.

Drinking espresso in this country has long been considered a sign of luxury and cosmopolitanism. In football magazines, portraits and interviews with successful managers and coaches often say that they sipped their second espresso during the conversation to maintain their concentration. Those who can afford it have a machine at home – those who can’t, one of those machines for pads that are very harmful to the environment but can be used to make a not-so-bad espresso.

I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in the 12th grade in an advanced social studies course with a left-wing teacher. Before class started, coffee was made and drunk. And then at the beginning of the school year we visited a coffee exhibition together: How poor are the coffee farmers? 35 years later, my son sent me a video from Peru, where he had visited a coffee roastery: “What you are drinking is garbage! “This is just waste from the good coffee we drink here,” the Peruvians shouted to Europe. My son had tried to teach English in the rainforest. But the children were too nervous, they chewed coca leaves and drank coffee with them.

For me, the dosage was a problem for a long time, the portion spoon was an eternal mystery: How much coffee for how many cups and: heaped or leveled? When in doubt, an extra spoonful for flavor, my friends said, and then my own coffee regularly made me dizzy. That’s when I first realized that coffee was a drug.

The stuff from the espresso makers on the stove was also almost undrinkable: very bitter and far too strong. If you don’t let the stove’s water container dry long enough, mold will form on the bottom and you’ll never be able to get rid of it. And people think that’s where the foul taste comes from.

The mocha cooker is better: because the sugar is cooked, it tastes nice and sweet. However, you shouldn’t take your eyes off the thing and then lift it from the stove just before it boils over. Also applies to the espresso pot, which spills all over the stove if you’re not quick enough. That never happens with the electric espresso pot, but it never tastes good either.

Generally speaking, coffee should taste good and kick. Awakening as incarnation. The normal office coffee is just a burden – black gold that you pump out of large thermoses against all experience and that regularly ruins your afternoon, a muddy soup that gets into your body and attacks your circulation and/or your stomach. The soluble, boring instant coffee is not an alternative, just the repetition of the same taste experience, the dullness of which some people find calming. Then it’s better to mix a “Turkish” in the cup, where you don’t know when you’ll drink off the dregs.

On a Sunday outing, there are almost natural-law-like disappointments about the “coffee specialties” that many restaurants ceremoniously offer on the menu. In fact, any coffee ordered in public that tastes good is a surprise.

In the 80s, cafes started introducing espresso machines. Café au lait was the trendy drink, served in medium-sized bowls that were held to the mouth with both hands to sip the supposedly French way of life, with a beard of milk left over the upper lip as a caricature of such coffee consumption. It was similar with cappuccinos, which were usually topped up with cream from a spray bottle.

The right to frothed milk was only recognized by the café owners with the latte macchiato, which is still slurped away today with a luxury connoisseur’s expression, even if it is just hot milk with a dash of coffee that the children in Italy are given so that they can enjoy it Get used to coffee. In Germany, a “latte” is constantly seen as a drink by the ruling snotty class, which buys up the cities and makes them more expensive. “No Becks, no latte, no bullshit” is written on the awning of the “Baiz”, one of the last anarchist bars in Berlin.

No matter how poorly it is cooked, coffee remains a distinctive feature. For a long time I worked for a small newspaper that was far out on the left waiting for the masses. In order not to get too tired, we experimented with different ways of making coffee in the cultural center. At some point the coffee machine, which was always sticky and calcified, was replaced by a French press pot, which we then generously offered to our colleagues: “Do you want to experience something different? Then drink real coffee!”

And I also suddenly knew how to dose: three tablespoons for three cups. And then don’t let it steep for too long. A new colleague who was supposed to do the literature taught me this and turned out to be a coffee scientist. He spoke of grueling years of self-study until he finally liked his coffee better. Therefore, he also determined the choice of coffee brand that would be best suited to the French press method. And I have to admit: Yes, there is coffee that tastes good even in the office.

The seal of quality continues to be called “Like the first coffee behind the border”; it doesn’t matter whether that means France or Italy. The countries where, according to legend, coffee is always tasty, at least if you believe in it. Others believe in God, we believe in coffee.