One of the things I like about this area of Bucharest that I live in is the sense of community, as I know I've mentioned in other posts on here. While I love a good exploration of the city, I find it exhausting and frankly unwarranted to travel forty minutes across town just to "check out" some Insta-worthy coffeehouse. Luckily, I don't have to. I've got all the beauty of fall a stone's throw away from my home, which allows me to enjoy the sun and the crisp colors of autumn while working up an appetite.
My outings with S, an old, dear friend, are never rigidly scheduled and have fallen into their own blissful little routine. We grab coffee and walk the streets of our beautiful neighborhood while we catch up. Since neither of us likes crowds, sitting at the cafe is usually out of the question, as most places that have great coffee are quite cramped and packed on the weekends.
Still, this morning we ended up at Throwback Coffee & Stories, a place with bittersweet memories for me, as it's one of the few places I visited during the pandemic (also with S). Whenever I come here, I'm reminded of the days when segregation suddenly came back into fashion and discrimination was the order of the day. It's not made any nicer by the non-confrontational little sign they have outside that reminds patrons "we" don't talk about Covid or war here. While I sympathise with the sentiment, I do believe that speaking the monster's name arms us against it. As Pericles reminds us,
"Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics doesn't take an interest in you."
Anyway. Aside from that, it's a lovely little place that opened, if I'm not mistaken, right during the pandemic and has become a staple of the area since. I think the owners were a couple of boys from Cluj, a city in northern Romania who decided to take their business idea to the capital and seem to have made quite a success of it. We were waiting a long time for our coffees, but in such pleasant atmosphere, who's counting?
To someone as thinky as me, it often doesn't come natural to notice the good around myself (as you may have noticed). Especially in this day and age, we seem to have bought into this idea that happiness and beauty are somewhere...out there. It's very mysterious business, isn't it? Finding the beautiful, good things, and we persist often in the belief that they're far away from our present situation.
Somehow, satisfaction needs to be an organized, oft paid for experience.
And while the people at the counter did insist we pay for coffee, this little morsel of beauty was neither.
This morning was the pleasant surprise of walking out into expected cold only to be met with warmth.
It was sunlight in my eyes after waking up. It was a good matcha latte. It was leaves of yellow. Some days, that's all it takes to put you in a good mood.
