Hi, I’m Sasha - and I write short travel stories.
Coffee. It’s not the same everywhere.
When I was 14, I started drinking a cup of coffee before school. Since then, it’s been my favorite reliable moment of each day.
Times I’ve skipped coffee: the week I got my wisdom teeth out, whenever I have something resembling the flu (but will drink when I have pneumonia,) and one time while doing a 3-day fast.
Times I don’t skip coffee: every other day.
My coffee usage peaked in college, while I was working, studying, and attending classes. And it took a delicious dip into the crema that is espresso during my 5-year stint working at a boutique french bakery where I ground beans for each beverage I made. I can tell you the exact temperature of milk being steamed just by its sound, or tell you an espresso shot was pulled too quickly by the look.
Pure crisp water helps with the taste of coffee - like that found in Oregon. If you’ve been having Dunkin’ or Starbucks coffees all your life, you know the resemblance of coffee.
But you don’t know true coffee.
Not the way we pretentious Oregonians know it, with our hard tap water goodness.
Some coffee is so thick that you practically need a spoon to eat it, like the Turkish coffee at Nicholas Restaurant. Then there’s the deliberate sharpness of an americano with just a splash of cream.
The United States has hundreds of miles of lonely highways between good coffee. In an RV, you can make your own. In our RV, you’ll find a French press, a drip maker, instant coffee (yes, even instant) and a cold brew set up. I realize my affinity towards coffee has migrated to a fundamental lonely cup a day. Less pleasant. Less of a ritual. Life coffee. Normal coffee.
It’s different than the hot coffee on a rainy day while I trudge through rotting leaves that have fallen to the Portland sidewalks.
Travel coffee: it’s not the same. More necessary than enjoyable. I love all coffee. But I miss Portland coffee.
Here, wherever here is, it always seems different.
Safe travels,
Sasha
Thanks for traveling with me. This is part two in a short series of things I took for granted before traveling.
To go further down the rabbit hole, check out this article on the history of Portland, Oregon’s coffee culture scene.