Now that I'm off the sauce, coffee shops seem to make a lot more sense. I'd forgotten about them a bit during the last ten years. Why would I want to hang out in a coffee shop when I can hang out at a bar? Why would I hang out in a coffee shop when I have coffee at my house?

I used to loooooooove coffee shops as a tween (barf I just actually used that word) and places like the one pictured above were my very favorite kind. This one doesn't just look like it's in someone's house, it's in someone's house. Which is why it looks like it's in someone's house.

Coffee shops are also cool because they're one place where you can hang out for hours and no one seems to mind. Or was that just when I was a kid? Cos now I know for sure that I feel like an asshole if I'm just sitting there after I've finished my coffee and biscuit or whatever, or maybe that's just in restaurants in the United States of America.

Everyone (in America) knows that servers haaaaaaate it when you chill at the table for even a little bit after you've finished consuming whatever you've purchased there. It's why they drop off the bill and ask how you want to pay, or abruptly cut off service and get all brusque about bringing refills of water. They want you out of there so they can turn the table and get the next tipping customers in there. It doesn't matter if you've just dropped $250 on $15 worth of food and drinks and are therefore basically entitled to take the table home with you, they want you gone. Buh-bye.

Cool thing about being here is that people don't tip. True, servers walk away with a lot less cash at the end of the night, but as their hourly wage is higher, they also don't worry about walking away with nothing, as some minimum-wage earning servers do in the States. While the lack of monetary incentive often produces mediocre-to-downright-terrible service, staff really don't give a shit if you hang out there all day. Café culture isn't unique to Europe for no reason.

(I live for my "European" moments, because most of the time, it seems so normal here, and as long as I don't have to interact with any actual human beings, I could pretend I'm in an older, dirtier, flatter version of my hometown. Ha. Ha. <-- dry humorless laugh)

One thing that definitely sets this place apart from my hometown is an indoor table which looks like this Is that wicker??!!??

And I have those communist-ass wood spoons in my house, hand-me-downs from Christoph's communist-ass mom and communist-ass dad. The ashtray is cast iron and could be used as a murder weapon. The glass is a promo, but at least the cups and saucers and sugar dispensers look as if the proprietor stole them fair and square from some other, more successful restaurant. Good on him. Sitting at this cafe was basically like sitting at my own house, except with strangers in it, and dirt everywhere. Ha.

I will definitely be back to this place, because no one knows about it yet, as it's only been open for three weeks and has no sign outside, because it's in someone's frickin' apartment. Therefore when this place becomes the new most happening place to be in Kreuzkölln, I can say me and so-and-so go way back... maybe I should learn his name first though.