Coffee shops are places where magic happens. You'll read this text and thing: "another of those privileged bastards talking about wasting time" but bear with me. The world in a coffee shop is a fundamentally good place. You, your neighbor, boss or lover are their to enjoy themselves. The waiters are attentive but distanced. Even if they wanted they couldn't become everyone's friend. The drink is relatively harmless. The decoration creates a different atmosphere from your living room or any other space where you need to be. Moreover, it creates a different world. The world changes in the coffee shop because your mind changes temporarily. I like specialty coffee, the central european or asian variety, light roasted, intense secondary aromas and slow filter based preparation. In my small town recently a specialty coffee shop with the best coffee in the world has opened up. They probably won't make it economically but for them it's an experiment to proof to themselves what they are capable off: world class coffee that would work anywhere else and in happier times that is not yet another financial crisis. For me it's a place to taste coffee, spend hours on small talk and learn about a beverage that frankly didn't have as much of an attraction over me as tea. People I didn't even imagined existed in my town spawn: hipsters. There's an older guy with a thick golden watch. A young bearded dude who is very calm and discreet, doesn't work but puts 5 Eur on his pourover every morning. Tourists. Musicians playing at a nearby classical music festival, jockeys from Dubai competing on Europe's highest race track. Pilgrims. Artists. Mostly women because Matcha is insanely popular right now. Over time I discover that the atmosphere is rather cold, tourists move on quickly, artists are self-centric and the hipster is aloof with his own cellphone reinforcing his opinions. The space is very small and I converse with the owners. Shared interests and a lot of time make for long conversations that actually give me energy for the remaining day. Over months the reason to go to bed is actually my coffee in the morning. It is like having found my place, my rhythm, it's the vault stone of the ceiling of my routine. The owners become friends in my mind, I extend the invitation to go beyond their professional space which never happens. They are rather called and aloof too. Recalibration of my expectation, i still like the drink and the coffee talk. Normally I'm an introverted person. My favorite activity is hearing my own thoughts. The second favorite is hearing the thoughts of others, as long as they expect something from the future. The owners, a married couple from abroad, are wonderfully enterprising and inventive. It is a down to earth creativity that I leg, pragmatism that led to a new space that shaped at least an entire year of my life and gave me even greater respect for coffee. Cultural beverages like this are extremely important, because with and around them community happens. While it is quite uncomfortable to occupy eachother's time on the street, by accident, when everyone has something else to do and the only alternative are bigger gatherings where you cannot really focus on each other, a coffee is the sweet spot of just enough time to share something personal but not long enough to having to change one's plans for a friend. A beer, a glass of wine or highball have the same purpose but the older I get, the less I like the use of alcohol. I like my mind being sharp. I like to remember the conversation and I don't need the boost in self-esteem anymore. Only very rarely another person is worth the added intimacy of a bottle of wine for example. Culture happens around coffee. That sentence is richer than it sounds. Recently I have been reading Mokyr,[^1] because the explanation of why innovation happens has been awarded with the Nobel Prize. It happens because of culture. Culture determines, whether you and me want to challenge nature in some way and translate a bag full of it's mysteries into human language for the future to build their wonders with. And then what culture depends on the place. Every coffee shop is different. Even in a small town like mine, in 5 places you'll get 5 completely different sets of customers. Sure, there will be some overlap but the atmosphere, the majority kind of patron and your thoughts will differ sharply. There's the corner bar with a betting desk, a TV playing sports and the guy drinking a glass of white wine at 9 am. Horses race, radio plays 80s rock, someone is reading a newspaper and a bunch of old men discuss why they're going to vote far right. On the other side of town a verveine-bar-cafe serves verbena schnaps on a polished chrome counter, old men with french hats (the one you imagine with a baguette), in sunday suits and polished shoes. When you come with your wife they lift it greeting you with the courteous "messieurs dames" and among each other they'll conjure the good old times, when Jean still had his farm and the beautiful Madelaine still sold eggs at the market before breaking their hearts. Smack in the center is my favorite. The coffee tastes like a cup of paint but it comes in seconds with a glass of water before you even sit down. It's big enough for you to merge into the crowd and overseeable so that you remember regulars and conversations. The owner's son has gentle eyes and slow movements and paints the neighboring shop blinds with his set of spray cans. I come here to work and am freeer than at home. I come here to look at other people and forget my ruminating thoughts. I come here with my wife Simone or Hannah, whose days are agony and doubt, but who will formulate plans to turn the world upside down with her superior creativity here. The coffee in hand makes muscles and neurons flare up like Sun Goku, existence becomes a game to win, the biggest dream a sequence of todo's, days spent on the elysian fields with the winds of possibility rolling over you and carrying your thoughts away with them into the future. The other patrons are all of the city. Workers, shop owners, clergy, the old guard on sunday, tiktokers filming on wednesday, a girl eating her lunch sandwhich while watching Netflix. The waiter has a friendly fight over why Marseille deservedly lost to PCG with a regular,[^2] the delivery guy stops for a coffee here instead of driving all the way to my apartment. In the old town they serve coffee and waffles, the owner is widely known for her could shoulder but one day she asked at my table: "Who's perfume is this?" - "Mine, why?" - "It's Pi, isn't it?" - "How do you know?" - "Love it, the coffee is on me today!" There's the 90 year old lady running a cafe restaurant in some god forsaken village in the mountains. She's carrying a ton of ego for every tooth she's missing, laughs heartily, flirts with my 25 year old friend who looks like jesus and filter coffee here comes from the microwave and a presteeped batch of 5 liters. I read in a book about coffee shops that our modern life in which we are mostly at home and the rest of the time at the job is relatively new. Coffee shops are one of the places where we are neither here nor there, with our bodies and minds. The "third place" that Starbucks popularized and wasn't quite able to achieve. All of these places are completely different, new people, new thoughts. For 1.50Eur you open the door to another world. And then you go cure cancer, invent the future or build a house. You challenge life head on. Ride the tide. Sometimes you close the door behind you and never come back. When I said goodbye to Vienna, it was in a coffee shop.[^3] Glueing the pieces of my own shattered personality back together kintsugi style: a coffee shop in Berlin. Letting go of a girl I loved and she moved on - a coffee shop playing indie rock. The other day, it was grey and cold but my favorite establishment was lit up in warm, diffused light. A girl was dressed in a violet fluffy pullover, tiny gold chain, her clavicula so well engulfed by the autumnal atmosphere that she appeared like a Rossetti painting. In life, it is certainly true that when one door closes another opens and nowhere is this more true than in the coffee shop, where interdimensional doorways lead to any place in space and time you can immagine. But the magic is temporary, the dimensions close, relationships cool. It's all in our head. For a while we want to feel liberated and powerful in a pocket universe down the street and we are. Take action, make friends, remember those thoughts before you take the next door. [^1]: A Culture of Growth [^2]: "mais t'es fou!" [^3]: My mom - it was a bar where I downed a couple of beers with my dad.