Cappuccino.

Okay, i know i say this all the time, BUT....today I poured my best cappuccino ever so far. :) You can check it out here. At this point i'd say I have a long way to go latte-art-wise. Definitely coming along, though.

The slow day...

I used to think that 100 customers was a VERY slow day. Not anymore. The 9 we had today totally threw me for a loop. How do you describe a day with only 3 couples and one out-of-town family of three? Slower than brushing the dirt away from bones at an archeological dig? I think so. Perhaps it should be seen as a warning sign when your staff can describe EVERY customer that came by in a day. It's days like today that I want to declare, "We are nowhere!" and cry myself to sleep. But then, i cup a beautiful Ethopian and remind myself why i'm here in the first place- the people. Then i think: if that is the case, then why aren't there more of them? I. have. no. idea. The upside: every customer got personal attention. Lidz and I talked to a student named Monica for a while and she promised to return tomorrow (with a magazine i lent her). So maybe having time for each customer that comes through the door is a good thing. Or maybe i should install a second door. Then maybe 18 customers would walk though. 18. Wow. Already it's sounding to me like a packed day.

Suddenly...

Today, it hit me. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the crappy shot of espresso I had just been served at a random coffeehouse on the square. Maybe it was my three nights of endless searching for signs of a coffee community in Poland, I don't know. What I do know is, that today it hit me: perhaps I really have arrived here at the ground floor of specialty coffee service in Poland. Woah. So then I thought, where do I go from here? I decided to start where I live: Poznan. Today, I collected what I hope to be the first of many e-mail addresses from baristas across Poznan. I guess what I'm trying to create is a network from which a community can be born. I want to learn about coffee together and grow together and throwdown latte art together. What I have so far is one e-mail address and TONS of Poznan cafes to visit and the only thing I can say in Polish is, "Can I talk to the barista who made this cappuccino?" (except not at any normal speaking speed.) So, basically, I got nothing. Well, here goes nothing.