Vaso de poliestireno

I wrote a little bit while I was in Spain, just some observations on life in Seville. :)

Every morning I have class from 9:45 to 12:00. It’s a long time, but fortunately our teacher allows us a thirty minute descanso (break) at 11:00. Usually during this time, my friend Abby and I go to a café and buy café con leche (coffee with milk). It’s exactly what we need to keep us going for last part of class. Most Sevillanos take a descanso in the mid-morning, since they eat breakfast at about 7:00 and don’t eat lunch until about 2:00.

What I noticed immediately after I bought my first cup of coffee was the type of mug they serve it in. Well, it’s not really a mug at all. It’s a thin glass, about 5 inches tall, seated on a saucer. The barista fills half the glass with steaming coffee, then tops it off with cold milk. I prefer to add a large packet of sugar, but that’s just my beginner coffee-drinking way.

At home, I watch my dad and brother drink coffee all the time. They grab a mug out of the cabinet, thick plastic with a large handle. The mugs are usually decorated in some fashion: there’s the Eastern University mug, the chiropractor mug, the NASCAR mug. The males in my house choose their mug according to their mood, and fill it with their caffeinated beverage. But even in coffee shops in the United States, the coffee is served in a mug: at the diners, at the breakfast spots.

And of course there is the other kind of coffee shop. In my area of Pennsylvania, we head to Wawa when we want a cup of coffee, or a sandwich, or a snack, or almost any other kind of food. There are other variations of Wawa across the county: 7-11, Sheetz, Turkey Hill. None of them are as good as Wawa, but that’s another topic for another time…

It’s at these places that you can get coffee to-go. Or perhaps you get your coffee to-go from Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks. All class American conveniences. There, the coffee is not served in a thin glass, it’s served in a cardboard cup with a plastic lid – or worse, in a Styrofoam cup. Then we can take our hot drink wherever we go, if we’re in a rush to school or the office or to meet up with friends. Always in a rush, we are.

But here… Styrofoam cups are non-existent. You can’t go to a coffee shop and ask for your café con leche to-go. There’s no lid resting on the side of your saucer, and no handle to take your beverage wherever you go. The coffee comes in its glass, and you sit at the bar and drink it. Often it’s too hot to drink right away, so you must wait. You must make conversation, you must read the newspaper, you must take your time. I’m sorry? Take my time? But I come from a culture of RushRushRush. I don’t… I don’t know how to do that.

Well, you must learn. Here, the coffee comes on the counter, and it stays on the counter. You don’t pay until you’ve finished drinking it, and even then you must wait until the waiter finally sees your waving hand. There is no grab-and-go, no way you can be in a hurry.

Perhaps that’s why I began to drink coffee here. It’s such a part of the culture. Getting a cup of café con leche means entering a coffee shop, sitting down, and waiting. Waiting for your cup, waiting for your sugar, waiting for your coffee to cool, waiting for your change. The waiters are in no rush to serve you (how ironic is their title), and so you take your time.

On Monday morning, a few friends and I are meeting up for café con leche during descanso. We’ll probably go to our favorite place, about a minute’s walk from school, the shop with the picture of a pig on the outside. We’ll order our coffee, we’ll pour our sugar, we’ll wait for the liquid to cool. And while we do all of this, we’ll talk. We’ll learn about each other. We won’t rush around, scrambling to find the time to do everything we need to do. We’ll put our to-do lists on hold, and we’ll just take our time enjoying our mid-morning break.