I feel vindicated

Posted by Sari

I bought a latte from Robert's Coffee on my way to work from the Buss station, and the smell of the coffee, the feel of the cup and even the little card you can collect stamps to get a free coffee  made me forget all the unpleasant post 9/11 stuff and made me nostalgic for the States. (Though over the water they seem to prefer to punch holes through the cards rather than stamp them...) I bet Cherry is blooming in Princeton, all those American Gothic houses, neat bar-coded bonus cards you could attach to the key ring, bookstores, museums, PBS documentaries... ah well maybe in August, if they let me back in the country :-)

So when I got to work I surfed to by quondam colleague's webjournal for some vicarious cultural crossing and felt very vindicated that he found just about the same things baffling, annoying or just noteworthy as we did during our stay: the paralysing effect of creditlessness, Starbucks, the stone age banking system, the State of the Union speech...

I do have to admit I completely revised my opinion on something I found utterly baffling in the beginning: iced coffee. I used to write whole entries on bulletin boards on this ridiculous idea, but nothing, I tell you, nothing is as great on a hot day than a Starbucks Frappucino. If I could only get the coffee shops here make me something like that: not just a latte with ice-cubes but a coffee milkshake. Anyone know where to get one in Helsinki?

Comments

[peterelk]

"I bet Cherry is blooming in Princeton..."

Dunno about the "Garden State", but at least in our local park they're in full bloom.

Nice blog; didn't know you had one.

[Manu]

PBS documentaries? I bought two of those last year, Ken Burns's Baseball on 9VHSs and Civil War on 3DVDs. They last 18h 50min and 11h 30min respectively. They are such a comprehensive studies on their subjects so I guess that is what makes them appealing.

I always thought fandom people would find nothing more contrary to their liking than documentaries, but I seem to have been mistaken. We don't have PBS here, but at least we have Dokumenttiprojekti on TV2 and Doc Point Festival held annually in January. Errol Morris you could say is my favorite documentarist and I'm so glad he won the Oscar this year. I have five of his films on tape.