I'm in Turkey, so where's the Coffee?
Today all I had planned to do was hang around the cafe for five hours or so and go home, but wow did plans change fast. Fifteen minutes after walking into the cafe and poking around for a little while on the laptop I decided to pay my usual respects to the ladies of UKNOW until the call of cushions of Funky Cafe was too much to resist. Returning downstairs Hasan told me Omral had just called and now I was to go to Beshitash and fix their espresso machine. Now, I have never 'not' fixed an espresso machine, and I saw the guy who would come to Caffino do it on more than one occasion, so I hoped in a taxi, "Merabah. Beshitash, Bacheshire University, Lutfen." "Tamah" I was on my way.
Beshitash is right on the water, and it has this huge commercial district much like Taksim, but more open air fish markets. Right as I walked up to the University Asli, who works at the cafe there and is my roommate, stepped out from a side door and noticed me. She let me in and went off to buy some simits which are a kind of sesame covered roll that taste great with nutella. It didn't take too long to find an english copy of the instruction manual online and I got to work on this machine.
Unlike Caffino and other self respecting coffee shops, this was an automatic machine that even sucked in milk and frothed it, though there was a steam wand as well. Now the beans they had in the machine were a few months old and needed replacement, so was the milk. After that cleaning was done I had the task of finding beans to grind. Looking around the produce stalls I didn't see a single coffee bean, so Ozan, Asli's boyfriend visiting from Ankara, left with me for a more thorough search of the market district. We finally found a beer and cigarettes stall that sold coffee beans on the side. We bought a kilo, mission accomplished.
Returning to the cafe the machine still didn't work with new beans in it. As the resident expert I declared something was wrong with the grinder and since the tool to loosen the grinder was lost, we would have to wait for another time for the cursed contraption to work. One of the workers suggested throwing it in a dumpster. "Tamah." Heading back to Funky Cafe now.
It was a little after four in the afternoon, Hasan might still be there, I'd be able to say hi before going home. I walked down to the cafe to see Apau locking up the gate, "Where is Hasan?" "Beshitash." I laughed to myself, we probably passed each other in taxis. I got a quick snack and went upstairs to see the ladies of UKNOW again after saying good bye to Apau. Everyone was in the office, Geoff even showed up to announce his trip to Tel Aviv leaving tonight. And I walked back down the hill watching the sun set as I went, found a cat to pet, and got to my door.
What a day, but this really feels like a vacation, even working feels like vacation, different and endlessly refreshing.
Beshitash is right on the water, and it has this huge commercial district much like Taksim, but more open air fish markets. Right as I walked up to the University Asli, who works at the cafe there and is my roommate, stepped out from a side door and noticed me. She let me in and went off to buy some simits which are a kind of sesame covered roll that taste great with nutella. It didn't take too long to find an english copy of the instruction manual online and I got to work on this machine.
Unlike Caffino and other self respecting coffee shops, this was an automatic machine that even sucked in milk and frothed it, though there was a steam wand as well. Now the beans they had in the machine were a few months old and needed replacement, so was the milk. After that cleaning was done I had the task of finding beans to grind. Looking around the produce stalls I didn't see a single coffee bean, so Ozan, Asli's boyfriend visiting from Ankara, left with me for a more thorough search of the market district. We finally found a beer and cigarettes stall that sold coffee beans on the side. We bought a kilo, mission accomplished.
Returning to the cafe the machine still didn't work with new beans in it. As the resident expert I declared something was wrong with the grinder and since the tool to loosen the grinder was lost, we would have to wait for another time for the cursed contraption to work. One of the workers suggested throwing it in a dumpster. "Tamah." Heading back to Funky Cafe now.
It was a little after four in the afternoon, Hasan might still be there, I'd be able to say hi before going home. I walked down to the cafe to see Apau locking up the gate, "Where is Hasan?" "Beshitash." I laughed to myself, we probably passed each other in taxis. I got a quick snack and went upstairs to see the ladies of UKNOW again after saying good bye to Apau. Everyone was in the office, Geoff even showed up to announce his trip to Tel Aviv leaving tonight. And I walked back down the hill watching the sun set as I went, found a cat to pet, and got to my door.
What a day, but this really feels like a vacation, even working feels like vacation, different and endlessly refreshing.
posted by Alex Gray at 18:13
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