The second stop of our little travel into the world of coffee is Greece, accompanied by Eleni.
I enjoyed our conversation from the start because she opened by saying that in Greece any time is coffee time! That’s how every Greek consumes 5.5 kg of coffee per year. Impossible you say? Not if you can choose among a variety of caffeinated drinks.
All-year-around good choice is the traditional Greek coffee, made by boiling the fine ground coffee powder in the typical pot called briki, then steering and finally waiting just a bit for the coffee powder to precipitate. Important warning: you need to know how sweet you like your coffee upfront because sugar is added at the moment of preparation. Sweetness levels go from half sweet, sweet, to very sweet or …just black when your life is already sweet enough ;D (not realistic, right?).
Traditional Greek coffee is a variation of the Turkish coffee brought to Greece during the Ottoman invasion, presuming around 1750.
Then we go to the summer options.
Frappe, made by adding instant coffee to cold water. Shake it, then add ice and lastly milk (or even ice cream, if you like to follow Eleni’s dad’s advice!). It turned out to be an unexpected beverage obtained in 1957 at the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair.
Freddo espresso: espresso coffee in which you add ice and shake it.
Freddo cappuccino: same as freddo espresso with the addition of milk foam on top and, if you like, a pinch of cinnamon.
Freddo cappuccino: photo taken by Eleni
Coffee in Greece is a very strong part of the country’s cultural identity. Drinking coffee is a ritual. People take their time for it, and by that, I mean hours because everything, basically, fits in a cup of coffee: gossip, work-talks, socializing, healthy discussions… Based on this, I concluded that the high amount of coffee consumption is not due to the need of caffeine per se but to the social environment around coffee drinking. Nice, eh?
Back to Eleni, she likes the traditional Greek coffee, no sugar (her life is already sweet enough ;D), just black and strong. She started drinking coffee when she was at the University and the intake increased during her PhD, in line with every good PhD. She drinks it because it makes her more energized during the day. This is a notorious effect of the caffeine which binds to the receptors of adenosine, preventing (at least for some time) to feel drowsy and tired.
When you are abroad, coffee made right is not easy to find. It is an endeavor every serious coffee drinker goes through, and finally (when lucky) finely selects the (almost) right place where the ritual can be continued. I guess for Greek students in Wageningen the right place is only back home. But at least for a few years the important thing is that there is a harbor for them to ritually meet.
A good thing to know is that even if you are not at all into coffee, you are still welcome to invite a Greek friend to go for a coffee, as long as you are up to enjoy the pace of Greek coffee drinking.
I now realize that consciously or unconsciously I’ve been interested in getting to know somebody’s unique story and, through that, be able to connect with people. As Lenny nicely put it, I cannot just go around and suddenly come up to somebody asking ‘So, what’s your story?’.
Lenny is now a toxicologist but we know each other from her MSc time in Wageningen, before her successful PhD and post-doc track. So, she knows that I might just come up with that question unannounced!
Lenny and me holding one of mine tomato in vitro plant, 2016.
Anyway, this time I’ve decided to be slightly less odd and take a little detour by talking instead about coffee drinking and traditions as part of one’s culture to reconnect to when you feel particularly lonely.
For her the simple act of making and drinking coffee, for example, is a way to reconnect to her Indonesian identity.
Incredible what one may discover just around a chat on coffee, eh?!
How did we come to that? Starting by asking ‘How do you take your coffee? ‘.
Lenny prefers coffee served warm. She uses the ceramic cone and coffee-filter paper which allows to make the perfect pour-over coffee. The nice thing is that you can smell the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Not any coffee though: a cup of Indonesian specialty coffee!
The taste of Indonesian coffee varies according to the place where the beans come from: coffee from Bali (e.g. Kintamani) is nutty and citrusy, the one from Sumatra (e.g. Aceh Gayo) has a strong earthy aroma, the one from Sulawesi (i.e. Toraja) is smooth and easy to drink, overall quite famous.
The magic that happens by drinking Balinese coffee is that while sipping she feels in Bali, although Bali is not the island from where she comes from. Nevertheless, it’s part of Indonesia and that’s something she wanted to reconnect to because, being so far from home for a long time, she was afraid at some point to lose or forget her identity.
She started drinking coffee during her study time back in Indonesia when she drank instant coffee. However, that coffee (if coffee can be called!) caused her gastritis so she had to stop drinking it. She says that she tasted the real coffee when she started her coffee business together with a friend, who learnt to roast coffee beans to perfection in Australia.
She saw first her dad drinking coffee, of course. When she was little, her father would give her just a few little spoons because only adults are allowed to drink coffee.
His favorite way to prepare a good cup of kopi (Indonesian for coffee) is to add grounded coffee (mostly Robusta) to a cup, then sugar and later pouring hot water on it. Afterwards, he would wait till the cup had cooled down. This is the way most of Indonesian people enjoy their coffee!
There are also places where you can buy coffee. Those are called warung kopi (same name for both cup of coffee and coffee place). The two possible variations you can get at warung kopi are kopi hitam (black) and kopi susu (with milk). Going to a warung kopi is a moment dedicated to networking. Drinking coffee in Indonesia takes time so you share that time with friends and some times strangers that you may meet at the warung. Interestingly, every warung kopi is also a meeting point for people that do the same type of job or have the same hobby. This way you are sure you are going to have meaningful conversations about a topic you have at heart!
If you have never been in Indonesia you may not know that a real Indonesian specialty is kopi luwak as this is the result of a natural process of which Indonesians are very proud. Since the berries have been partially digested by an indigenous animal, the coffee that you obtain is much less acidic, and therefore perfect when you drink coffee first thing in the morning. On the other side of the spectrum, you find the coffee from the robusta species, which represents the most common type. This species grows everywhere in Indonesia and it’s cheaper than the Arabica but it can also be very strong as it contains more caffeine than those of the Arabica.
The coffee business she mentioned earlier sounded very interesting at this point so I asked her more about it. She told me that coffee was not an indigenous plant to Indonesia. However, during colonial time, farmers started to grow it within their tea plantations. At the start of the coffee business, her wish was that, as the Indonesian specialty coffee got known in the world, Indonesian people would also become more aware of the richness of diversity they have available. Moreover, by buying directly from the coffee farmers, she would pay them a fair price for their beans. Reality is that farmers would otherwise be getting very little for that. Together with his friend, she would then roast them light or medium to preserve as much as possible the flavor that could disappear by roasting dark.
Her knowledge in coffee making and flavors is quite broad. In time she has learnt that making coffee is also an art. So, every now and then she also tries cold brewed coffee but to make that you have to start brewing in the evening as it is a process that may take up to 8 hrs. The interesting thing is that making coffee at a different temperature allows to extract compounds that give different flavors to the coffee. So, depending on the mood and on the day of the week, she may go for a cappuccino made with Balinese coffee or a cold brewed coffee in the weekends when time goes a bit slower, or for a Sumatran black coffee during a working day for a good kick of caffeine.
I know at some point we diverged into technicalities of coffee. However, it’s important to realise that coffee flavours and ways of preparation reflect one identity. It’s a strong connection to where you come from and in way represents yourself. In Lenny’s case, it connects her to her family and her country and allows her to not forget how beautiful it is to be called Indonesian, especially in times where you feel lonely on a PhD journey far from home. Now that I see through her eyes, I understand the slogan stamped on her coffee bags: a taste of diversity, a cup of Indonesia.
