Reading
@Shrink's post, above, with his comment that "Espresso, in one form or another, is the
non plus ultra of coffee" sets me thinking about countries that have decent coffee cultures, and those that don't.
Much of Europe has pretty decent coffee, - in recent years the coffee available in the British Isles has improved beyond all recognition, and, while France has always had good coffee, Italy especially, excels, as does Austria. And Germany.
Sweden, too, is a coffee drinkers paradise, - they take their coffee very seriously, but, for me, the Balkans - even after their war - a place where I have observed well over a dozen elections since the mid 1990s - was the definition of what constitutes a 'coffee culture'. Even the poorest, most remote and backward place, had superb coffee, and endless small coffee shops, where beautifully served coffee appeared on trays.
Coffee drinking was - and is - a way of life; meetings started with a coffee; you had a coffee during the meeting, and conduced a meeting postmortem with your staff over another coffee afterwards.
My most recent visit took place in late 2014, when I was sent to Gorazde, in Bosnia, (and Novi Goradze, in the Serb part of Bosnia) to observe an election. Gorazde was infamous during the war; an ancient Muslim city, it had been besieged by the Serbs, but had not fallen.
My staff introduced me to people who told extraordinary tales of shelling and killing during the day - the river Drina, wide and meandering, flows through the town, while the foothills of nearby mountains overlook it, giving the besiegers an advantage. Yet, at nightfall, guns, cannon and mortars fell silent, while a thriving black market - trade enduring in the midst of death - in cigarettes and coffee took place.
Sitting at a lovely riverside café, and pointing to the hills overlooking the town, my driver and interpreter both puffed at their cigarettes, drank the beautifully served espresso, and remarked to me, "whatever else happened during the siege, even when there was no food, and no heating or electricity, we never ran out of cigarettes or coffee."
