Good morning, there.
I hope the week is treating y’all well. It has been a minute since I last posted anything on the blog. It’s not as though I didn’t have any material for it - I did - I just didn’t have the time or motivation, to be honest. For some reason, with the progression of spring, my hands have once again begun itching to keep up the blog. Perhaps because it is the one place I can vent and rant to my heart’s content.
Anywho, today, I was awoken with a few sharps raps on my door, which I wasn’t sure if I had actually heard or if they were figments of my dream. (I had not been sleeping well.) I checked my iPhone’s display for the time.
08:05 am
I thought, It can’t be the cleaning ladies; they come at 9. So, naturally, I closed my eyes, having accepted I had probably imagined the entire thing, ready to resume my incomplete dream. Then, came the second round of knocking. Okay, this time I had definitely not dreamt it. I shout, panicking, ‘Could you please come back after cleaning the other rooms?’ Yeah, I got that rapport with my cleaning ladies; it might or might not have been the first time they caught me oversleeping on cleaning day.
My groggy, sleep deprived, and still-half-asleep self got out of bed just as I heard the metallic clink of the cleaners’ keys and then of the door knob turning. I stumbled towards the door just in time to see a strange cleaning lady open the door. I repeated myself, this time without several feet and a door standing interference. ‘Could you please give me ten minutes,’ I say as politely as I can in my state. When she keeps looking at me, confounded, I realise I had been speaking in English; so, I repeated myself, this time in German, which turned out to be too much for my addled brain because I ended up saying something along the lines of “können Sie mir noch 10 Minuten geben - please - thank you.” You should have seen the look of utter disgust she threw me; like, she could no longer be bothered by students and their unsavoury lifestyles.
So, I got my ass out of my room as soon as I could and marched on over to my usual coffeeshop, ready to really wake up with the help of some coffee. I sat at my usual table with my cup of black coffee, my journal already out. I took my first sip, expecting to feel the lovely warmth of the lukewarm liquid traverse my throat, waking my conscious.
‘WHAT THE-’ I almost spat out my coffee. Almost.
Coffee in Austria is, generally, never great, but today it was especially shit. I felt just as dead having drunk that cup of coffee as I did before drinking it. WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK? For the small fortune I pay for coffee on a regular basis, there is no reason why I should not be able to get better coffee. It is not even about the taste anymore. I just want to be awake after spending three euros on a cup of coffee. Is that asking too much?
Do you, honestly, think I would have payed three euros if I had wanted to go about my day dazed, half-asleep, and now annoyed? For fuck’s sake, Austria, it is not that hard. Coffee? Awake! No coffee? No awake. Three euros poorer? AWAKE!! Three euros richer? No awake. For fuck’s sake!
What is more bothersome than the atrocity cafes here try to pass off as coffee is that others aren’t bothered by this “coffee.” Perhaps because no one is ever awake enough to fully comprehend the shit they are pouring down our throats. Because everyone is drinking the same fucking shit-ass coffee.
Loath as I am, I must admit these zombies are not the lowest on the human chain. Hard to believe, isn’t it? No, they are one-upped, or rather one-downed, by the group of supposed humans: the non-coffee drinkers.
Like, bitch, why the fuck are you even called a drinker at that point?
Every now and then, to practice the feeble empathy my parents managed to instill in me in my childhood years, I try to understand their blasphemous disposition. No, seriously. There are times when I just sit, looking profound as fuck, staring tenderly at my coffee, wondering “what the fuck went wrong in your childhood that robbed you of the ability to appreciate such unadulterated love?” When I cannot come up with a trauma which would excuse such blasphemous behaviour, I simply shrug and say, ‘These bitches be trippin’.’ Then, I sip on my coffee.
