Coffee Crisis

I have a terrible confession to make: I kind of want to go to Starbucks.

I really don't like Starbucks. Actually, I've never really given them much thought, but I'm sure they are evil in some way. I think I mainly dislike them because my friend Lidia used to always complain about them (she is Canadian and I think she secretly thought they might one day take over from Tim Hortons, coffee chain beloved of Canadians), and also because they seem to exclusively serve horrible coffee in idiotically large sizes.

The Starbucks in Aarau is pretty, though. It is in a nice location next to a park (although admittedly half the park is taken up with a kiddy playground. There are never really any kids in it, though, possibly because the ground is covered in gravel and if you fell over you would probably lose all your skin as a consequence) and the seats they have in the shop look really comfy and there is a huge outdoor section where there is always sun shining on at least some of the tables. The tables are big and people seem to sit there for half the day with their books and newspapers and laptops and sunglasses (although perhaps only because it would take half a day to drink such an idiotically large coffee).

When Reto and I walk past we often make lame, predictable jokes about going there and ordering a grande komodo-dragon half-caf skim soy americano caramello-hazelnut frappuccino (or something equally idiotic. These jokes were funny when LA Story came out; they aren't any more). It's sad because this is what it probably would be like if we actually went there (we would order idiotic things that came in cups the size of buckets and sit there drinking them until we became lactose intolerant or died of disappointment), but it would be nice because it would be in the sun, in those comfy-looking seats.

There is a coffee shop in Aarau that I really like. It's called Gossip and it's all dark and weird (the other day they had polystyrene rabbits as decoration in one corner of the room. Bizarrely, the rabbits were facing the corner of the room as though they were being punished for being naughty. Or possibly it was supposed to be reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project. This might be more likely, actually, because the next day they had mysteriously vanished. Possibly they had been hideously killed and dismembered, not necessarily in that order. Then again, maybe they had just finished being naughty. Or maybe they were just polystyrene rabbits and I wasn't supposed to take any sort of message from them). Gossip is really cosy and nice and they always give me interesting coffee cream things with wacky pictures of camels on them (I am going to explain that one day. Suffice to say that in Switzerland it is not uncommon to whiten your coffee using very small portions of cream that come in little containers like you used to get long-life milk in) and they have recently made one side of it a non-smoking side.

I intend to resist the evil lure of Starbucks. After all, their coffee is truly hideous, and I don't like being in the sun anyway. I should try to remember that.