I am Swedish and for me, as for many of my compatriots, coffee is serious business. By chance I recently found the blog Literary Starbucks, at which three Minnesotan university students write about famous or fictitious people having coffee at that particular café chain. High-brow humor and plenty of strange subtext and references, of course. The following paragraph captures the dieselretro essence of having an espresso.
Hemingway goes up to the counter and orders one espresso. It’s hot. He drinks it in silence. It makes him remember his father’s cabin. He thinks about the woman he loved once. He does not smile. The coffee reminds him of war – short but painful, swallowed down quickly. One could order worse drinks. He leaves Starbucks and walks out into the rain.
