Coffee and Reading

I absolutely believe that the feel and quality of a city is dependent on the people that inhabit it. Yet all of the cafes, shops, restaurants, festivals, landmarks and the public transportation place such an important role as well. Would Portland be the Portland we know without Powell's or the Hawthorne Bridge? It would still be incredible, true, but not in the same sense because of that difference. Everything and everyone works together in Portland - the city that, ahem... works.

I don't think I will ever find a cool Portland-esque cafe here, no matter how hard I try. Now I am starting to realize that that's ok. The chique European cafes with warm paint tones, Indian art mingled with Rothko prints and pricy drinks that come with amaretti will have to suffice.

There is still that lofty and ultimately insignificant goal of finding that cafe, and I think the coming months will provide a good time to quietly and unassumingly explore and perhaps actualize it. For now, however, I have fallen peacefully into a Monday routine. I wake up around 9 or 10am and putz for a while, eating müsli, showering, checking email and preparing lunch. Then I bike over to Deli Star, a cut corner cafe on the same street as the LC Institute. I order a capuccino - though I plan to branch out, naturally - and set to work reading the intense psychology reading. Ideally, I would have already finished the article and not have to, as is often the case, print it out hurriedly at the university copy shop that morning.

At 1:20 I bike the half a block from the cafe to the Institute, which is housed in a beautiful old apartment building covered in ivy. By that time my mood is glorious and I am oh-so-thrilled to speak to people rather than read small text and examine graphs in German. This routine is a lot like my Ugly Mug [cafe] days in Sellwood during the year, and right now it is a welcome pattern. I just hope Munich does not become too routine for me and I adjust so much that I forget to explore. I doubt this will happen, though, as there are always interesting events and conversations to be experienced.

Photo Credit: wikipedia.org, manolotalks (Flickr)